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DB Studios Rides Surfwear, Now Doing a Little Pet Food

Irvine-based DB Studios Inc., known as Display Boys, has found a niche with Orange County’s surfwear companies.

The company, which builds store displays and tradeshow booths, started out doing work for surf companies, said Darin Rasmussen, who began his career at Huntington beach-based Quiksilver Inc.

Display Boys counts several of the county’s action sports companies as clients: Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., Irvine-based Stussy and Costa Mesa-based Volcom (see related story, page 1).

Even Oregon-based Nike Inc., which has a sales showroom in Lake Forest and owns Costa Mesa’s Hurley International Inc., has tapped Display Boys for work.

Besides surfwear, Display Boys does work in “just about all industries,” Rasmussen said.

It recently entered a new segment,pet care,with projects from Nestle SA’s Purina. Display Boys helped the pet food maker launch a brand and other products called Pet Promise, Rasmussen said.

Display Boys renovated the pet aisles at Wild Oats Markets across the U.S. for the launch. It added “structural and graphic elements with Pet Promise in the spotlight,” Rasmussen said.

“This is a brand that knows you can’t just hit the shelves with a new product,” Rasmussen said. “You have to make a grand entrance.”

Nestle Purina now plans to launch Pet Promise in hundreds of stores “with Display Boys supplying the visual elements,” Rasmussen said.

Display Boys started out in OC in 1989 with Rasmussen and partner John Riley.

The company now has 35 workers and is looking to hire three more,two senior designers and a purchasing agent, Rasmussen said.

“We have continued steady growth over the past five years,” Rasmussen said. “Even in troubled economic times, brand products have to stay consistent and strong visually at retail.”

Display Boys is on the hunt for another facility for production and fulfillment operations, Rasmussen said. In 2001, the company moved to its Irvine digs, which are twice the size of its old space in Costa Mesa. It also has an offsite warehouse used for storage and distribution.

But it needs more space to keep products and handle shipping.

“Our plans are to keep Irvine for design, prototype development, sales and administration,” Rasmussen said.

Display Boys is working on store fixtures for Pacific Sunwear, which is one of its biggest clients, he said.

“It seems like every week we are inventing a new way to merchandise products in their stores,” Rasmussen said.

And it doesn’t come cheap. Some elaborate tradeshow booths can cost as much as $500,000, though typically it costs about $100 a square foot, he said.

“I have to be a designer with six gears, not one,” Rasmussen said. “I go from mild to wild in the same day. In the morning I can be working on designs for Purina pet care and in the afternoon working on a showroom for Nike.”


More Work for Mob

Foothill Ranch-based Mob Media Inc. has some new work.

The shop said it recently picked up four accounts and is awaiting word on a few others.

The American Lung Association of California tapped Mob for public relations and advertising work promoting smoke-free apartments.

And Mob put together a media campaign for a recent conference at the University of Southern California. It created radio and prints ads, which will air through June and are running in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Mob also picked up work from Charo Chicken in Huntington Beach, Barbeques Galore Inc. in Lake Forest and Gryphon Colleges Corp., which is owned by San Francisco-based Gryphon Investors Inc.

The marketing shop is handling broadcast, print and online media planning and buying for Gryphon College’s direct-response marketing push and redesigning Web sites for Gryphon College, which has four schools in California and Arizona.

Mob said it plans to hire some workers to handle the added work.

Paul Otis, Mob cofounder and chief executive, said the shop picked up a chunk of new work through word of mouth.

Plus, Mob has spent the past year and a half building its sales team. Otis said he hired the “best account executives” and pushed to diversify its clients so the shop wouldn’t rely on one big client.

“We’re starting to see the results of their work and the relationships they built,” Otis said. “It doesn’t take a week to get something like that done.”


Y & R; Clarification

A few weeks back, I wrote that the Irvine office of Young & Rubicam has just one automotive client, Ford Motor Co.’s Land Rover North America, now that Jaguar Cars has taken its work elsewhere.

But the shop says it’s still got a hand in Jaguar.

The shop’s Wunderman direct marketing unit and media:edge, its media planning and buying arm, still do Jaguar work.

Plus, the shop says it handles Lincoln Mercury’s Western region dealer association business from its Irvine office. Lincoln Mercury, another Ford unit and Y & R; client, left Irvine and went back to Detriot about two years ago. Y & R;’s Detroit office took over the work.

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