(Editor’s note: This is the eighth installment in a monthly series highlighting some of the region’s unsung manufacturers that make products essential to the economy and, in many cases, our way of life. Previous installments can be read here.)
While working in Boston in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Gareth Conners identified a gap in the automation market for smaller performance venues – at the time, most moving stage technology was targeted toward large-scale productions, such as Broadway and Las Vegas shows.
“I was like, if you could come up with a more modular, economical automation system, I think it would be well received,” Conners recalled.
But one person who wasn’t fond of the idea was his then-boss, who Conners said wanted nothing to do with the concept.
So, in 2004, Conners took out a second mortgage on his house and set out to start the business on his own, originally running the operation out of his basement and giving himself six months to make a profit.
That business became Creative Conners Inc., which Conners built big enough to occupy a 10,000-square-foot manufacturing space at 84 Cutler St. in Warren.
As Conners had hypothesized, there was a market for his concept and not much competition. He hit his profitability goal in just over five months, and nearly 20 years later, the company now serves theater companies throughout the U.S., with its technology powering performances ranging from student and regional theater productions, Broadway musicals, corporate launch stages and The Weeknd’s 2021 Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Tucked away in a quiet corner not far from downtown Warren, the manufacturer serves a niche but expansive audience, designing, coding and constructing around 100 different products for moving stage sets.
Conners’ interest in theater dates back to his teenage years, when he worked on a stage crew for his high school productions in Chicago. This interest continued through college, and after graduation he spent about eight years working for the automation department at a Boston theater.
“The thing I always loved doing was automation because it’s a great blend of the art side of theater and the highly technical aspect of engineering,” Conners said. “Doing automated machinery, writing a lot of code and then developing electronics is always fun.”
[caption id="attachment_436365" align="aligncenter" width="955"]
WIRE WORK: Kathryn Davis is an automation technician at Creative Conners Inc. in Warren, a manufacturer of software, electronics and machines for moving scenery and theater sets.
PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS[/caption]
Like the audience it serves, the company tends to attract a niche type of worker, Conners says.
“There are a lot of folks like myself who were just kind of theater nerds,” he said. “We went to school for theater and got art degrees. But then we have some folks who also studied mechanical engineering, or electrical engineering, or computer science.
“The best folks that we find are folks who have studied a traditional engineering discipline, but then either minored in theater or were part of the theater club,” he continued. “The hard thing to do is kind of blend all that technical expertise with the kind of kookiness of working with artists.”
In the company’s early years, Conners primarily worked with university-based theaters, then expanded to serve regional theaters as well.
Creative Conners continued on an impressive growth trajectory for much of its existence, Conners said. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
While nearly every industry suffered, theaters underwent some of the longest, most complete shutdowns. The first warning signs came from overseas in late 2019, when customers in South Korea and Germany shut down and requested refunds. Soon, clients in the U.S. were calling in with the same request, and the business was losing money with no end in sight.
“It was brutal,” Conners said. “It was pretty much illegal for most of our customers to operate, so everything shut down.”
With that halting, Creative Conners lost around 70% of its revenue in 2020, and about half of its staff.
The business experimented with other types of manufacturing as it attempted to tread water, including machine work for other companies and producing personal protective equipment. But nothing provided the financial boost the business needed, and by the end of 2020, Conners feared the business was beyond salvage.
“By January 2021, it looked like that was just it,” Conners said. “There was no work, there was no way to patch it over. We were just kind of done.”
The manufacturer’s fortunes turned when a large corporate customer decided to undertake a multimillion-dollar renovation of its on-campus theater, which the company used for product launch events.
“That basically buoyed the entire company until the fall of 2021,” Conners said, “which, by that point, our customers were coming back and starting to do shows again.”
The company hasn’t completely rebounded to 2019 levels, Conners says, but it is back to its 2018 revenue levels and 19 employees, compared with the approximately 25-person staff it had prior to COVID-19. Fourteen of those employees work in Warren, with another five based in New York City and Los Angeles.
Today, Creative Conners remains one of the few companies providing smaller theaters with automation technology, Conners says, but its customer base is almost evenly split between these local and regional venues and large theater companies.
Going forward, the manufacturer hopes to expand into the live music touring sphere, which it has touched on in the past for clients, including The Eagles, Imagine Dragons, Rhianna and Eminem. Conners also plans to install more-permanent fixtures in theaters, and to advance the company’s subscription-based inventory and management software offered to customers.
And while widespread recession anxieties have gripped many businesses, Conners remains optimistic that the manufacturing operation is well poised to weather this potential economic downturn.
“People have been so cooped up in their houses for the past several years that the demand for live entertainment is very, very strong,” Conners said. “We are busier than we’ve been in years, and seemingly with no end in sight, fingers crossed. So, we’re going really strong.”
