RSS feedsLiz Bagnall, co-founder of event production company Stagestruck, has what she describes as quite a different approach to events. ‘Our unique selling point is our ability to offer world-class, end-to-end production facilities for events of any scale and type from our own resources.
‘Unlike other production companies, our project handlers and producers have in-house access to all the required tools of event production.
‘Our service offering extends into creative design, specialist 3D brand development and multimedia/video production. BP, Rexam, Carlsberg and Daimer Chrysler are among our leading clients,’ she says.
Oddly enough, in spite of knowing one another socially, it wasn’t until Liz Bagnall had read an article written by Jenkins that she became aware of what Wingrave Yeats had to offer.
‘When we work well, we are brilliant at what we do. Looking back, the problem in 2003 was that we had grown to 30 employees and £3m sales too quickly and hadn’t adjusted to being that size. Since then, we have more than doubled in size again. Things were busy and they weren’t going the right way. The directors were not communicating well and it was obvious there was an increasing amount of discontent among several of the people who work with us. We were losing our way in everything but the actual business offering.’
The directors needed to know how to cope with the enormous growth, while maintaining the quality required by demanding clients. They hadn’t expected to find answers from a chartered accountant, however. ‘We had never dreamed of finding the answers to the problems we were facing by talking to someone from a firm of chartered accountants. The last thing we wanted was a man in a suit. Our culture is unconventional and creative – it is the way we do things that has made us among the best in the industry.’
A good illustration of how Jenkins made his presence felt at Stagestruck was an occasion when the directors brought all their staff together to talk about a change programme they had to implement. ‘There aren’t many accountants around who can walk into a business like ours, understand what the problems are and work with us to overcome them. What he did say, and the way in which he said it, made the suggested change understandable to the entire workforce. The event caught everyone’s imagination, mainly because he understood how to put across a difficult message. Since then, his role has been to help us build a management structure, install a human resources programme and make us focus on where the business is heading.’
Since the work that Stagestruck does is largely project-orientated, its workload in the lead up to an event can be intense. So, by necessity, the work it does with Wingrave Yeats tends to be in phases.
Jenkins attends board meetings and then he and the directors arrange working sessions around items on the agenda. Most of the work that needs to be done can only be done by the directors themselves, so he tends to set tasks to be completed by the next meeting.
‘Critically, Christopher is the type of person who works with you, to help you actually achieve all the things you knew you should do,’ she explains. ‘The evidence of what he achieved lies in the fact that we responded quickly to the remedies once a business professional had endorsed our path and, indeed, in the crucial fact that work is once again fun.’
Businesses in sync
Liz Bagnall says that working with Wingrave Yeats has been like a meeting of minds. ‘One of the reasons why working with Wingrave Yeats appeals to us is that our clients and customers have remarkable similarities. We are both relatively small businesses, but both deal with FTSE 100 businesses as well as the SME sector.
‘It was a strange coincidence that both of us seem to be just as much at home with large corporates as with medium-sized growing businesses. That has to do with attitude: if you know you are good at what you do, there is no reason why you should not try to pitch against competitors with perhaps better-known brands and win.’
