April 3, 2017

Meet Jorge Lopez of J&M Events in Santa Clarita

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jorge Lopez.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Jorge. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I always had a love for music but I couldn’t sing or play an instrument so in 1980 at the age of 17 I enrolled in broadcasting school and eventually worked in radio as an on-air personality here in Los Angeles for 15 years. While I was in school, I also started a DJ business doing parties, weddings…etc. I eventually started adding more services such as lighting, dancers, performers and even video services. By the year 2000, we became a complete event production company offering technical production services such as audio, visual lighting, staging and decor and video production.

The growth and expansion of our company has been driven by the requests of our clients and specific experiences that motivated us emotionally. For example, we performed at a wedding where the bride’s father was in a wheel chair and convinced the bride to sing a song for him in lieu of the father & daughter dance. It was an incredibly emotional moment and after the wedding when we were speaking with the bride about how every time she watched the video it must make her cry again, she said she didn’t know because the guys who did the video went out of business and she never received her video! Within 2 weeks of this we added video services to help our clients.

While our office and warehouse is in Santa Clarita, the event we produce take place from Santa Barbara to San Diego with a great deal of them in the downtown LA and Hollywood areas. Today, our services include photography, technical direction and even web steaming services. Of course our team has grown as well as it is now comprised of 38 talented individuals who are committed to make sure our client’s experiences are always what they deserve.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have definitely been some bumps along the way. Some due to the economy such as in 2001-2002. Companies were laying people off and it sent the wrong message to have employee holiday parties, one year we lost 80% of our corporate parties.

Another challenge was due to overzealous growth as I ventured in to a merger with a friendly competitor and although I really felt it was going to be successful I underestimated the psychological effect on the two principles in the merger.

The final main challenge came when we achieved a great goal of buying and designing our own office, showroom and warehouse which was all going great until the economic recession of 2008.

You really learn a lot going through these experiences, kind of like the saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”! The result was learning to manage our finances better and really setting and respecting budgets and financial forecasts.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about J&M Events – what should we know?
Our business has blossomed in to 2 entities, our entertainment division and our production division. Our entertainment reputation is creating fun, unique and personalized events where we engage everyone at the event making sure no one feels left out. Our production reputation is that we always take a big picture view of the event making sure we consider different perspectives such as, what is the message the client wants the attendees to take away from this experience and utilize methods to accomplish every time.

One of the proudest things about our company is running in to people throughout Southern California and how they respond when they see our company logo. Recently my best friend and I were getting to Dodger stadium and we were rushing so we wouldn’t miss the first pitch, as we were jogging through the parking lot a woman says “J&M, you guys did my sister’s wedding”! It’s really flattering to see the smile on people’s faces when they see the logo.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
We are very proud of the values that drive our company culture. Integrity, Caring, Creativity, Resourceful, Commitment to Excellence, Growth Driven, Trust, Positive and of course Fun!

These are not just words, we base our new team hires on this as well as include assessing these in our performance evaluations and most of all we review this in our weekly production meetings where we review the results of each event during the past week.

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