stagekings:
the journey so far
PART i:
Starting the adventure
The first five years: launching into action
Stagekings was born back at the start of 2015 with husband and wife team Jeremy & Tabitha Fleming. Jeremy explains the initial objective and reason for starting:
“We thought the Australian Event Industry - particularly the music & entertainment sector - could be enhanced by introducing custom-designed decorated stages, similar to some of the incredible large-scale designs that we’d seen across the European music festival scene”
Jeremy, with a long background in the staging and event production industries, also worked as a scaffolder and in carpentry and had spent time working in Europe in the world of events. Tabitha had over 15 years of experience working in sales and marketing for music labels including EMI, Sony Music and Universal Music who look after some of the world’s biggest artists, so together they not only saw the potential but were also very well placed professionally to understand exactly what was needed.
The concept quickly took off, and within a very short time, Stagekings were creating and building some of the largest custom stages and event structures in the country.
Mick Jessop was a pivotal addition to the team when he joined in 2016. Another well-known, hugely experienced and respected face in the Australian Event Industry, Mick came to Stagekings from his former role as a Production Manager for Sydney Festival, where he’d been for more than four years. With a strong background in design, he was also used to the intense challenges of large-scale and complex production builds.
After initially moving in and out of co-working office spaces, Stagekings finally took the plunge to set up their own dedicated space, and in 2018 moved into a 2,000m2 warehouse in sleepy Kurnell at the end of the Sutherland Shire peninsular (Stagekings has now moved to Caringbah), a space which they have been customising ever since. Part of the warehouse houses the ever-increasing stock of huge quantities of truss, scaffolding and staging when it’s not out on hire, whilst the rest is dedicated to custom builds and carpentry. The warehouse layout is constantly changing to adapt to different projects, and it makes for an exciting place to work.
Stagekings has grown at a phenomenal rate and has built an enviable and solid reputation in the national event industry for its pioneering and forward-thinking creativity, ‘can-do’ attitude and sheer speed of agility.
GOLD COAST 2018 COMMONWEALTH GAMES
“If you want something custom - literally anything - your first port of call is generally Stagekings. And particularly when you have an idea that is so unique that everyone else just sort of shrugs their shoulders and looks a bit confused. The Stagekings team will just say straight away ‘yep we can do that… and we can do it even bigger and better if you want’. Everyone in the industry knows about their incredible capability… and we’re all pretty envious of it to be honest!”
As with any business, the one thing that is fundamental to getting right is your team.
“You can have ambition, but to go at this pace with what we do, it just wouldn’t work unless you have an ultra-reliable and highly capable team in place. Basically, you need a dream team! When we started the company, I thought about exactly who I would ideally like to work with us. It’s taken a few years to get there, but somehow I’ve now managed to land every single person on the list”
As a result, Stagekings now comprises an impressive hand-picked team of some of the most experienced, creative and talented individuals in the industry, and this is undoubtedly at the core of its huge success as a company.
The company never seems to stop moving up gears and has expanded its portfolio and bullet-proof reputation to span an ever-increasing number of industry sectors. They have delivered major jobs for government and state civil projects, built entire television studios, made Shakespeare’s ‘Pop-Up Globe’ outdoor touring theatre across the country, and made a life-size replica of Edinburgh Castle for the Military Tattoo and built the sets for TV shows such as Ninja Warrior. Stagekings also designed and built most of the set for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony. Jeremy points out that it doesn’t always have to be huge though!
“As well as a rapidly increasing job list from all angles, recently we’ve seen a significant increase in interest from the Corporate Event sector, delivering smaller brand activations and structures. Agencies and Brands are continually trending towards a more customised and individual experience with their consumers, so they look for the most unique and genuinely creative concepts that maximise engagement. That’s where we excel as a team and as a company. The advantage we have is that we do more than just ideas or production, we can do it all”
AUSTRALIAN NINJA WARRIOR
PART II:
IsoKing, the famous pivot
The Event World falls over; Stagekings RISES to the challenge
It was Friday the 13th March, 2020. If we were superstitious, we might have known something bad would happen..
It is a day that every Australian working in the Events and Entertainment industry will remember forever - the day our entire industry fell over.
It was the day that our Prime Minister announced measures that lead to the immediate shutdown of our entire industry, by placing impossible restrictions on all events. It was the first national industry to be 100% affected by the COVID-19 crisis, and it happened very, very quickly.
We were halfway through building a massive set for Formula 1 in Melbourne; we were halfway through constructing possibly the largest truss structure in the country for Channel 9’s Ninja Warrior live film set; we were bumping out some giant stainless steel cricket balls from the T-20 World Cup. We were having discussions with dozens of event companies and agencies about creating some really awesome stuff.
In the space of just 48 hours, our entire income and job list for the next two years were completely cancelled. We had no choice but to make massive and instant cuts to our business.
“The mix of emotions I felt was impossible to put into words,” says Jeremy. “Financially the prospect was completely overwhelming, but letting all of our hard-working, loyal staff go was just too much to bear. I felt sick to the core. We pretty much decided there and then that we had to - HAD to - come up with something to survive”
So we do what we always do at Stagekings when we need to get highly creative. Which are most days!
We gathered our talented team together, and we brainstormed. But this time, it wasn't to impress a client, it was for pure survival of our business and of our people. This had to be our best work yet.
We thought about what would be needed at a time like this and quickly realised that tens of thousands of Aussies would have to start working from home with almost immediate effect. We had a CNC router (specialised cutting machine), a large and well-prepared warehouse set up to custom make pretty much anything, and an unbelievably talented team on tap. So we decided to produce super-simple but beautiful work-from-home desks - Stagekings style.
Overnight, our Head of Production, the legendary Mick Jessop, came up with a design that has rapidly expanded into the now-expansive and iconic ‘IsoKing’ home furniture range. Flat-pack, fast-to-assemble slot-together designs made from beautiful birchwood ply, with no need for fixings, tools or DIY skills to put them together.
It was an instant hit with the Australian public, and we started to receive an onslaught of media attention, who were desperate for a feel-good story in amongst the public despair of COVID. More than 200 interviews and podcasts later, Jeremy is still getting asked to talk about our pivot every week!
In the first year of business, we made nearly 40,000 IsoKing products and sent them across Australia to thousands of new awesome customers. But by far the best bit for us is how the knock-on effect of this success has been helping out our legendary event colleagues at a time when they really need it.
We increased our workforce from twelve to over fifty people working across four states, re-employing our entire staff base and quickly adding to the team with all kinds of highly-skilled event freelancers who found themselves out of work due to COVID-19.
Best of all, right at the start, we decided that we would donate a portion of sales to Support Act, the Aussie charity that is the heart and hand of the event & entertainment industry. We are very, very proud to say that we have been able to donate close to $90,000 to Support Act and other worthy Aussie non-for-profit organisations since starting IsoKing, and we are committed to continuing to support more into the future.
And that is how IsoKing was born!
Part III:
at home with florence
THE NEXT CHAPTER, TAKING FLAT-PACKED FURNITURE TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL
We feel truly blessed surviving (as a business) through Covid. We couldn’t have done it without you and we couldn’t have done it without the amazing creativity and tenacity of the IsoKing (StageKings) team!
After creating the work-from-home IsoKing range, which we’re still super proud of, people are still buying like crazy and which was the perfect product to help solve a very specific problem at a particular moment in time (that none of us will forget), we can now take our creativity to the next level and release a truly beautiful and functional range of products for your home.
This new range is a representation of how we feel right now. Inspired, progressive and grateful!
This is part 3 of the IsoKing story where we take everything we’ve learnt since covid serendipitously forced our hand to pivot to the furniture business.
We’re under no illusion... The road ahead isn’t going to be easy. We’re playing a different game now. We’re going to need more than our fair share of luck (but you make that right?) We still consider ourselves new to this and we’re now competing with the big end of town. What we do know is we have the support of many many thousands of Australians who have helped us to this point, through actually buying IsoKing products or by helping spread the StageKings story.
So thank you!
Thank you for helping us make a bit of history, for believing in us and, hopefully, for joining us on the next part of the journey. We can’t (and wouldn’t want to) do it without you!
Support act.
Support Act, the Aussie charity that is the heart and hand of the event & entertainment industry.
We are very, very proud to say that we have been able to donate $65,000 since we started the IsoKing adventure, and we are looking forward to continuing to support them into the future.