10 Years, Over and Out With our renewed concentration on slides and multi-image, things began to take off.We moved into subsets of the slide show, including speaker support and staging. I was fond of neither but understood their financial worth to the company — so long as they didn’t dominate our product mix. The “story” remained the […]

Our Logo Had a Hole in It (50–50!) Our stationary had a die-cut hole in it. The one on the bottom right. We always got asked, “Which one of you is the hole?” Godfrey was an environmentalist. Little did he know he was killing fish. In the early days off S-L-R, when there was little […]

Drowning in the Sorrow of Eugene O’Neill For years, we had produced work for the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. Through the auspices of PR Director Mike Krawczyk, and his successor, Richard Bryant, we had shot all their publicity images, produced slide shows, and even wrote and produced their public service announcements.In the summer of 1977, we […]

We Move Audiences! In 1979, Rob Riordan joined the Milwaukee Chapter of SME — Sales and Marketing Executives. One of their welcoming benefits to new members was “The Two Minute Forum”, in which the members were given an opportunity to take two minutes — and no more — to tout their wares. Rob seized the […]

From Multi-Media to Multi-Image We built our business on slides. We matured it on video and film. We broke it wide open on multi-image.If you said “multi-image” to a client in ’77 or ’78, they wouldn’t have had a clue. What they saw was amazing, but they’d call it “films”, slide-talks”, “videos”… almost anything except its […]

Early Markets: Arts and Charities, and Public Service Announcements My friend and client Mike Krawczyk from the Milwaukee Repertory Theater called it “Clubbing Your Way Up.” Early on, word of mouth spread from Arts groups to Charitable organizations that we had a way to get them in front of audiences or on TV cheaply. We […]

Fire can be Good for Business. Ric, Brien, Linda, and Rob with custom merch and a solemn oath to protect the 16mm Bell & Howell! The fire should have been a bummer, and at first, it was. But when you’re 25 years old, doing what you love, and you believe you’ve invented the whole industry […]

Something’s BURNING! Metro Block 1971, courtesy Milwaukee Public Library The Metropolitan Block Building Fire was a dramatic blaze that started on a Saturday morning in December and continued throughout the day. While the building had some historical significance, we never had any delusions about the place: It was pretty cheesy. But it was also cheap, […]

Iron Workers, Linda D., and El Robbo’s Arena! The Metropolitan Block Building, 1012 N. Third Street, was built in 1890. It was next to Usingers, kitty-corner to the Milwaukee Journal Building, across the street from discount shoes, a greasy spoon, derelict bars, and Mader’s Castle-like German Restaurant.This massive five-story office building had once housed many […]

What Came First, the Demo or the Sale? Ric and Brien vie for the “Elvis Ain’t Dead Yet” sideburn contest prior to going out on a sales call (826 N. Cass Street, Milwaukee’s East Side) Production companies have varying philosophies when it comes to promotion. But Ric and I agreed, in the first month of […]