PROFILE: PRG Lighting Below: PRG provided lighting equipment for recent projects The BRIT Awards, Super Bowl and Oasis’ Dig Out Your Soul tour. Below: The view across the warehouse at Longbridge to the prep bays.
“The past perception of PRG was that we were a large corporation and therefore somewhat faceless, but that’s not true. It’s about local focus and all about our people...” Martin Locket
As one of its original founders, Martin Locket
was charged with defining the new group when the brand was acquired. He says: “PRG is such an exciting company to work for, one of the best things about it is that nothing stays the same for very long. It’s a progressive and forward-looking company with great vision and strategy for where we’re going and what we’re looking to create.” It was around this period that PRG Europe
was re-branded as PRG Lighting, and relocated from its former Birmingham and Greenford sites, to Longbridge and the Hoover Building in late 2008, setting in motion a transition for PRG Lighting, not only in terms of operation and strategy, but also its image and ethos.
“We have put a lot of effort into the way
that we present ourselves,” says Locket. “The past perception of PRG was that we were a large corporation and therefore somewhat faceless, but that’s not true. It’s about local focus and all about our people, who are the strength of our team.”
ACQUISITIONAL BY NATURE It’s a battle that many global corporations face; expanding rapidly across the globe whilst still striving to maintain a personal approach locally. And it’s fair to say PRG has been aggressive in its acquistitional growth historically; over the last 13 years PRG has made 27 acquisitions globally.
The story begins in the U.S. in the early
1980s, when Jere Harris, then a humble stage carpenter, co-designed an automation system called Stage Command and provided automation for large special events through his company, Harris Production Services, which soon expanded into lighting and later acquired audio and video companies, too. Now global CEO and chairman of Production
Resource Group (PRG), Harris arrived in the UK market with the purchase of lighting company LSD, but it was purchasing the VLPS brand (Vari*Lite Production Services) that really boosted the company’s credentials in 2004, giving them offices all over the world, with additional resource in the UK.
TPi JULY 2010 • 59
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