Masterpiece Productions’ Client Roster Runs From Mossimo to Taco Bell
Five years ago this month, former catering and hospitality veterans Steve Norton and Scott Jones sat in Jones’ living room working on TV trays to launch their event-planning business, Masterpiece Productions.
Today Jones, the company’s president, and Norton, executive VP and CFO, work from a Newport Beach office overlooking John Wayne Airport and handle events for household names like Taco Bell Corp., Coca-Cola Co. and Fox Entertainment Group. In 1999, the 15-employee company was hired to handle in-house production for Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, where they most recently supported an event for Bette Midler’s production staff in conjunction with her millennium concert.
The company started out doing local events like fundraisers for the Saddleback Foundation and got its first big-name client,OC apparel guru Mossimo Giannulli,after one year in business. Its first international event, a conference in Toronto for Irvine-based wellness product marketer Nikken Inc., came a year later.
Masterpiece had first-year gross revenue of about $500,000; Norton estimated 1999 revenue at about $4.5 million. The Mandalay Bay contract,the result of a client referral,increased business “about 50%,” Norton said, and he projects revenue for this year to top $6 million.
Masterpiece contracts for an entire event, handling all arrangements with vendors from catering to audio-visual services. Its goal, says Norton, is to “nurture clients so they can be guests at their own events.” That can mean anything from providing ruffled shirts for party guests to a serving table carved entirely from ice or chocolate, to rosemary placed in heating ducts to create an atmosphere that suits the client’s occasion.
The client Norton calls a “watershed event” was Giannulli, for whom Masterpiece put on a gala 33rd birthday party at a Laguna Beach estate, complete with the Brian Setzer Orchestra and a setting that recreated nightclub lounges from around the world. That production entailed working with 30 different vendors.
It also garnered a Gala Award (the Oscars of the event industry) from Special Events magazine for best buffet design (including an ice table) in 1996.
In 1998, Special Events named Masterpiece Productions its company to watch for the year. Last year, Masterpiece became the first OC company hired to produce “Divine Design,” an annual, celebrity-studded AIDS fundraiser in LA hosted by Project Angel Food and held last month at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood
The attention to detail Masterpiece strives for in planning events carries over to the administrative side of the business, too.
Norton said they do financial forecasting anywhere from six months to three years out. Their first business plan took them six months to develop.
“We line-itemed everything,” Jones said.
And the pair initially found sales tax issues so complex (rented chairs, for instance, are taxable if used for meal service, but not if used for a classroom-style meeting) that they asked for a special contact within the state’s Franchise Tax Board to assist them. That person is now the tax attorney for Masterpiece.
Most of the firm’s business comes from referrals,both from clients and vendors,and runs the gamut from a 1,200-person holiday party for Irvine-based Taco Bell to an after-show party with Julio Iglesias at the Center Club for the Costa Mesa office of jeweler Mikimoto, and an international marketing tour for Fox Entertainment to promote an upcoming film.
“Every time I use them I bid them out against competitors and they always are competitive,and not just in a budgetary sense,” said Dorothy Sebade, Taco Bell’s manager of corporate events. “Masterpiece almost always comes back with a presentation that blows you away.”
Bill Thomas, general manager of Mikimoto’s West Coast operations in Costa Mesa, said he most appreciates the company’s creativity within a relatively small budget, calling it “different from what most clients would see.”
“Competing for the attention of consumers in Southern California is very difficult,” Thomas said.
But though clients repeatedly give Masterpiece high marks for service, attention to detail and willingness to work within a company’s budget constraints, the growth of the special event industry is also a likely factor in the company’s expansion.
According to a recent survey by Malibu-based Special Events, its subscribers reported gross 1998 event-planning revenue of $44.6 billion, $15.96 billion (35.8%) of which was attributed to corporate events. Respondents projected an overall revenue increase of about 15% in 1999, and 14% in 2000, which would put total revenue for corporate events at more than $20 billion this year. And 71% said they expect their biggest future growth to come from corporate events.
Though the partners are happy with the progress of the company so far, they approach growth cautiously and admit it’s a challenge to balance financial and physical growth.
“The larger you get, the harder it is to instill the company philosophy in staff and make sure it’s carried out,” Jones said.
Since its inception, Masterpiece has moved from a 900-square-foot office to 2,500 square feet, opened a Las Vegas office (prior to acquiring the Mandalay Bay contract), and doubled its full-time staff (the partners also use part-time staff for out-of-town events). Norton and Jones say they have plans for another office in LA and are actively recruiting,especially in Las Vegas.
Would they consider an IPO down the road?
“Everything’s always an option,” Jones said.
But there are caveats, too.
Though a current project has them working with Fox Entertainment to promote an upcoming film, Jones said the company has no plans to go into film production. And though they sometimes work closely with a company’s travel agency, they don’t intend to tackle the travel business, either. n
