Things have been moving along pretty well here at the new shop, so we’d like update our blog readers on what we’ve been up to and what’s coming up in the next few weeks.
In October, we shipped new gear to Asolo Repertory Theater in Florida. They got a new winch, a refurbished winch and a control system. We also sent a control system with 2 Stagehand AC’s and an FX to Kansas City Rep. They’re a new client with CCI, so here’s a big “Welcome!” We did some custom work for Mystic Scenic Studios, and shipped a couple of FX’s to Walled Lake Western High School, who are doing a chandelier trick for Phantom Of The Opera.
In the middle of the month, Gareth flew off to the Midwest to speak to the students at Purdue. Gareth always comes back from the talks with crazy energy after spending a whole day with super-smart and engaged students.
We also had a bunch of rentals, most notably Coastal Carolina University who rented a Revolver for the month to add to their existing inventory of CCI equipment.
We’ve got some good stuff coming up in November, too. Michigan State University has purchased their first control system. (Another big “Welcome!”) We have more custom interactive exhibits to build with Mystic Scenic. And speaking of custom work, we’re going to be doing some cool stuff for Daedalus Design and Production in NYC as they tackle a new tour of Einstein On The Beach.
We sold our first Revolver Starter Kit to Two River Theater Company (Wow, 3rd big “Welcome!”) in NJ so that’s on the docket for early November. And lastly, we’re close to finalizing some orders with Syracuse Stage and Dallas Theatre Center that should fill out November quite well.
November is also the time for us to build more stock. We like to have a certain number of products sitting on the shelf, ready to go. It’s a more civilized way to build things and our customers are happy when we can ship ‘Same Day’.
Of course, there’s much going on at Creative Conners that’s not directly related to building awesome products for our awesome customers. Gareth has started rebuilding his inventory control software that keeps track of our parts, assemblies and products. Now that there are 3 of us in the shop, it needs to be a multi-user system, so Gareth is taking this opportunity to build something in his favorite programming language, Python.
Royal Marty, our new Product Engineer, has been bringing his dog George to work this week, so we are now a 4-mammal shop. We asked George to solder up some OEM boards for us, but we got that tilted-head quizzical look that I usually give Gareth when he asks me what my next blog post is going to be about.
In the marketing department, we had a good week, sending out our fancy new brochures to all of our current and prospective customers. If you don’t get one by mid-next week, it means you probably aren’t on our mailing list and you can fix that by dropping me a note at ian@creativeconners.com. Finally, next week we’re filming a video that will give newcomers a nice overview of the Creative Conners system. I’ll let you all know when the video gets posted.
That’s it for now. Thanks for listening!