Exploring Life & Business with Dennis Finnegan of Lumi Event Services

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dennis Finnegan.

Hi Dennis, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
(PERSONAL)
I began working in the DJ business in New York in 1995. While I enjoyed entertaining, I found my passion behind the equipment in lighting design. Around 2000, I began picking up road shows handling staging and production support. I fell in love with the lifestyle- traveling, seeing new places, meeting new people and creating experiences that helped people forget about the chaos in the world for a couple of hours. This led to life on a cruise ship and eventually to bus and truck touring across Europe in 2005. After that, I decided that it was time to stabilize so I came back to NY, freshly married and began working locally in production.

(LUMINESCENCE)
I found the local work frustrating. Many of the companies I worked for cut corners and many of the coworkers I would be paired with either had poor attitudes or simply didn’t care. We were providing sub-par experiences to our clients and I knew I could do better. In 2007, Luminescence Production Services was established. We began working in the social market supplying services for weddings and family events. When the economic downturn happened in the late 2000’s, we incorporated installation services to keep our calendar full, building out restaurants and bars, some which remain active today!

(NICE UPLIGHTS)
In 2011, I was feeling a bit melancholy; we were getting stale and needed a new and exciting product to reinvigorate our offerings. I connected with an inventor in England who had created a new kind of uplight. You see, up until that time, we ran par cans throughout an event and it was quite involved; you had to ensure your power calculations were correct it was necessary to run cable throughout the event space to electrify. Even with all of this, you were limited to one color because these fixtures used gel sheets. At that time, LED technology was very new and uplighting solutions required a separate battery and separate transmission and wireless control. It was clunky and unattractive. These new fixtures had a sleek round aesthetic, great color rendering and no visible controls, batteries or radios. Everything was contained within the fixture and it was unlike anything else available at the time. I invested heavily in this product and we called the service “Nice Uplights”. It was a simple concept, but it was a game-changer for us opening doors to events we never previously had access to. Through this product, we connected with designers and expanded our reach well beyond the NY metro area.

(HOLOGRAPHIC ENTRANCE)
Uplights ran strong for the next few years but as Moore’s Law will tell us, technology growth is exponential and eventually the industry was flooded with LED uplighting product (although ours was still the sexiest, in my opinion). By 2014, it was time for a refresh and there was a new activation idea that was beginning to materialize; an immersive experience that allows guests to walk through the event’s branding visuals that we called “The Holographic Entrance”. This event experience was unlike anything anyone had seen before and it took us nation-wide with hubs in NY, Florida, Las Vegas and California. We integrated Holographic Entrances into brand pop-ups, concerts, trade shows and conferences and even the occasional ultra-private social event!

(LUMI EVENT SERVICES)
As the expansion was happening, I needed help to manage our west coast interests and the timing worked out that my friend Sean, also freshly married had recently moved out to California, so he began helping with events. We watched this thing catch fire and after realizing the potential for growth, we formed Lumi Event Services early in 2020. Based in Anaheim, it was the perfect jumping off point to service events in Southern and Northern California as well as support Las Vegas. Ant the timing couldn’t have been worse…

(COVID – DRIVE-IN’S AND HYBRIDS)
2019 and Q1 of 2020 were absolutely stellar! Everything was trending upward and we were excited for Lumi’s growth potential. I remember clearly doing a show in March of 2020 in Vegas and watching closely what was happening on the news; The first day of the show had full attendance, the second day about 50% and by the third day the town was almost empty. We rushed to the airport to make our flight out… The country was shutting down. Obviously, what transpired next was unprecedented but we were a healthy company going into the pandemic and we were resilient. One night very early in April, I was closing the shop and something about the stillness of the air made reminded me of being a child and I remembered going to drive-in movies with my family. It occurred to me at that moment that we could pivot here. We created turnkey drive-in movie systems that allowed municipalities to create safe, socially distant outdoor experiences for their constituents. We also converted a loading bay into a streaming studio complete with cameras, backdrops, sound and lighting allowing our corporate and charity clients to continue to connect with their contributors during the shutdown. The skills learned during this time creating these online events became a core offering for future live-hybrids.
This along with consolidating our inventory from Vegas and Florida to the California and NY offices allowed us to limp along until the world came back to life.

(REIMMERGENCE)
Covid killed our industry. When we were all finally allowed to begin gathering again, we had lost many of our clients and it was like starting over. I knew we had to go big. We exhibited at our industry’s first trade show and pulled out all the stops: Lighting, Sound, DJ’s, Photobooths, Cryojets, Confetti and of course, our Holographic Entrance! We reconnected with old clients and began building new relationships with venues and planners that were also in the same predicament. It was like we all lifted each other up together.

(TODAY)
Luminescence Production Services and Lumi Event Services have certainly evolved over the years but our core values of personal service and delivering a superior experience remain true in every event we produce. We’ve cultivated a culture of great people and we’ve built strong relationships with our clients and partner venues that are unmatched by the “bigger guys” because for us, it’s personal.

As you know, we’re big fans of Lumi Event Services. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
A full service Audiovisual, Lighting and DJ service based in Anaheim, Ca. We partner with venues and event planners to service their clients in a professional manner with personal style. With clients ranging from NBC, Disney, Amazon, Shutterstock, Madame Tussaud’s, The Beach Club in Santa Monica, Oso Beach Golf Course, Convene, the City of Mission Viejo, the City of Lancaster and many Private Clients we’ve produced thousand of events ranging from Celebrity Events, Corporate Meetings, Trade Shows, Municipal Functions and covering the full circle of life from weddings to celebrations of life, we provide each client with respect and attention to detail. We love what we do and it shows!

How do you think about luck?
You can have education, persistence and capital but if you don’t have a little luck (for example, being in the right place at the right time or being able to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself), it’s not going to work. This thing is magical and I’ve learned to trust the process.

Pricing:

• Not Applicable
• We quote to order

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lumievents.com
• Instagram: @lumievents
• Facebook: @lumievents
• Twitter: @lumievents
• Youtube: @lumievents

Image Credits
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