Like many other business leaders, Matt Emerson faced a difficult choice as the COVID-19 pandemic set in. His audio/visual production business, AVFX, was on the brink of closure and needed decisive action.
“Rather than laying off the majority of our team, which would have been the easier choice, I decided to put everything on the line to retain as many team members as possible,” Emerson said. “We sustained heavy losses, but we developed new service offerings that allowed clients to engage audiences when in-person events ceased to exist.
“This was a difficult balancing act, and it required a lot of creativity and hard work. But I believed in our team, and I knew that we had the skills and experience to make it through this crisis. I also believed that we needed to remain relevant to our clients in order to continue bringing in revenue.
“Ultimately, this risk paid off. We were able to retain our key team members, develop new service offerings, and continue bringing in revenue even during the toughest days of the pandemic. Looking back, I believe that this experience made us stronger and more resilient as a team, and it reinforced my belief in the importance of valuing our team and being willing to take calculated risks when necessary.”
AVFX provides video, audio, lighting, staging and creative services solutions for meetings, events and tradeshows nationwide. Now that the worst of the pandemic seems to be behind us, AVFX is seeing increasing demand for its services.
“We face the new challenge of finding ourselves with demand that now exceeds our capacity,” Emerson said. “We’ve had to rethink how we approach existing clients and new opportunities. Additionally, we experienced significant shortages in our freelance labor market coupled with wage inflation across the board. To combat these challenges, we found positive results by being more selective about the opportunities we pursued, increasing team wages and passing along price increases to our clients to help us maintain margins.”
Emerson’s plan for the company in the coming years includes seeking out acquisitions and expansion opportunities.
“My leadership style was highlighted over the past year as I’ve led my team through a successful integration between AVFX and CEAVCO [an AVFX company]. Through this acquisition, I’ve worked to bring together the best of each company’s culture to build a unified team,” Emerson said. “The success of this merging of teams is measured in low turnover rates, our ability to recruit top talent and successful client events co-produced by team members from both offices. Upon seeing our success, our private equity partners have become eager to add more companies to our platform.”
