Bespoke Audio Visual provides the technical equipment and staff needed to stage parties, galas, conferences, meetings, festivals, convocations, and other gatherings. In addition to staging events, Bespoke also offers production management and studio services. Based in Toronto, with an office in Ottawa, Bespoke puts cutting-edge technology to good use—but CEO Kyle Brooks wants to emphasize the personal side of the business.
“Our differentiator in this market is subtle and nuanced, and focused on our people and the way that we think and the way we question our clients,” says Brooks. “We have a very small sales team and we have a very large production management team relative to that sales team,” he shares.
Bespoke owns a vast inventory of audio and lighting equipment, computer and webcasting gear, video cameras, projectors, microphones, editing systems, and assorted components and electronics for live event staging purposes. The firm also operates a studio and offers technical support for clients who want to make videos or do other creative work.
Roughly half of the company’s customer base consists of corporate clients, including major firms such as Scotiabank and Rogers. These businesses hire Bespoke to stage “annual general meetings, town halls, investor meetings… These events can range significantly in size and scope. After that, about a third of our work is what we identify as third-party—a planner or producer calls us for equipment for their event. The remaining portion of our business falls into things like education, government, and not-for-profit associations,” says Brooks.
The company strives to foster a close relationship with all its clients. New customers typically deal with a salesperson first but are then “immediately handed to one of our production managers” whose job is “to follow an idea from beginning to end,” he explains. The production manager is tasked with determining the client’s goals and needs; as Brooks says, “a big focus for us is trying to figure out what’s important to our clients.” The production manager thus works with a team of project managers, project coordinators, and content creators to bring the client’s vision to fruition, while the production team develops floor plans and technical drawings, and coordinates with trades and other companies.
Professional as Bespoke might be, the company is far from rigid, and tries to make the production management process as fluid as possible.
“When we show up to the first conversation [with the client], we’re not showing up with a finished idea. We talk, we uncover, we go away, we design, we come back, we test it, we prototype it… We try to earn a lot of trust with our clients, where we can have open and candid conversations,” explains Brooks.
When it comes to smaller events, the company might only have a few days notice to prepare. Bigger events, by contract, can entail months of planning and preparation.
Once a live event has concluded, Bespoke hosts two debriefings. One debriefing session is held with the client while a second debriefing involves the project team and sales staff. The goal for both is to determine what worked, what didn’t work, and what could be improved. Most importantly, did the client feel their goals were achieved?
Over the years, Bespoke has staged several prominent live events across Canada and the United States, and the Bespoke website highlights photographs and case studies of some of these events. These range from glitzy celebrations such as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Tribute Gala, held in Toronto September 2022, to more staid corporate affairs such as a Manulife National Sales Meeting held in early 2023, also in Toronto.
Last year, Bespoke handled “the whole production… including all the broadcast cameras” for Canada’s Walk of Fame 25th anniversary bash. The event, which was televised, featured appearances by the likes of Avril Lavigne, Dan Aykroyd, and former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.
Brooks tells us that Bespoke is currently preparing for Collision, a huge Toronto tech conference taking place this June, and is gearing up for some potential projects with politicians. “For future work, I could hypothesize: there’s going to be a provincial election [in Ontario] and there’s going to be a federal election. We will likely work on those,” he reveals.
Indeed, Bespoke has worked on election campaigns for various major Canadian political parties. Currently, the company is solely focused on the Liberal Party, federally and in Ontario—not due to any political affinity but simply how things panned out. Bespoke as an organization is avowedly apolitical, stresses Brooks.
Most of the company’s work is far from glamorous or prominent, he says. Out of the hundreds of events staged by the company each year, maybe 50 would qualify as high-profile. But regardless of size or scale, all projects are important to this team.
Bespoke’s studio operations became popular during the COVID pandemic, when in-person events were often cancelled in favour of online activities. The studio Bespoke uses includes a large video wall, professional-grade cameras, and skilled technical staff. This proved a winning combination for organizations looking to make virtual meetings and other remote events more engaging and professional during the pandemic.
When COVID receded and in-person corporate meetings resumed, Bespoke’s studio business trailed off. At present, studio-based work brings in about 10 percent of company revenue, with live event staging accounting for the rest.
Brooks wants to grow the company’s studio-based virtual business, as he calls it. As a way of doing this, Bespoke has embraced motion-tracking 3D visualization software. Using a computerized camera setup, 3D motion-tracking software creates highly realistic virtual backgrounds. While motion-tracking 3D software is already being utilized in science fiction TV shows and movies, Bespoke was unique in making it available for its clients.
“Imagine a bank CEO who wants to do a training video in a bank branch but doesn’t want to take a bank branch offline for a couple days. They can come in to [our] studio and shoot in photorealistic environments,” says Brooks.
Motion-tracking 3D software isn’t the only high-tech tool employed by Bespoke. The firm is proud of its pioneering use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, for example. RFID isn’t new, “but it’s unique to our industry,” states Brooks. Every piece of equipment in the Bespoke warehouse has been fitted with a radio tag so it can be easily identified and tracked down. Using a scanner, Bespoke technicians can quickly locate any items in storage.
While Bespoke is a relatively young firm, it has a somewhat “complicated” history, admits Brooks. Back in 2010, his current business partner, Mike Wilson, started a production agency. Three years later, Bespoke began staging events. In 2015, the two firms merged to become Bespoke Audio Visual. Today, Wilson serves as Bespoke’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) and oversees the operational and financial sides of the business.
“Just under 70” people work full-time at Bespoke, says Brooks. Full-time staff look after the company’s office, studio, and warehouse space, and do design and production management work among other duties. Another team of roughly 150 part-time staff handle on-site technical work during the staging of events.
While some positions at Bespoke require a very specific skill set or technical knowledge, in general, “we hire for attitude over aptitude… We have three core values: curiosity, transparency, and community. You need to essentially embody those three values in order to work here,” states Brooks.
One final aspect of the Bespoke culture: “We have a lot of fun here. We have a dog culture in our office,” notes Brooks, whose dog—a three-year-old Goldendoodle named Winston—snoozed peacefully on the floor throughout his master’s video interview.
Asked to cite the biggest challenge facing the company, Brooks mentions two separate issues. Business-wise, cash flow, capital, and financial management are all challenges, he says. When it comes to the operational side of things, “the acquisition of talent” is a separate challenge. “Skilled labour in this workforce coming out of COVID was absolutely decimated,” he notes.
Despite these tribulations, Brooks wants to expand the firm’s geographic reach. Bespoke currently shares clients, projects, and staff with a special event audio visual rental firm called Proshow, which has offices in Vancouver and Calgary. Thanks to this partnership, Bespoke has established a presence in Western Canada, so the company has now cast its gaze toward Quebec and the Maritimes. There aren’t any plans to build brick and mortar locations in Eastern Canada, however; Brooks would prefer to expand through strategic acquisitions.
“Five years from now, I hope to have made [some] acquisitions… I hope to have a footprint in Eastern Canada, and I hope to be closer to creating a truly national, Canadian-owned AV company.”
