If you hire Bob Leon’s Colortone Staging and Rentals to stage your company’s event, you’re in for an experience.
Leon was bitten by the theatre bug when he was 15, after he landed a job as an apprentice at a summer stock theatre, and the ensuing years have provided him with thousands of new ideas for making an event memorable.
Leon started with a staff of two working out of the back of a van and today employs more than 40 people at offices in Cleveland and Salt Lake City.
“”To me, a successful job is one where I’m not noticed,” says Leon. “So we don’t get the recognition. We’re doing a lot of high-profile events, but we’re behind the screen. No one pays attention to us.
“We don’t have our name on anything you’d recognize out in the room. Success is that you didn’t notice what we did. We blended into the background.”
Among his company’s most recent notable achievements are events at the Sundance Film Festival, 2002 Winter Olympics and 2002 Para-Olympics.
This year marked the fourth year in a row that Colortone provided audio/visual equipment and staging for Sundance. When his relationship with the film festival began in 2000, the job was just to provide a couple thousand dollars worth of equipment.
Today, that relationship has mushroomed into business worth approximately six figures for CSR.
From Jan. 16 to Jan. 26, Leon provided sound systems, lighting and video gear for five parties hosted by the Institute for corporate partners including DirecTV, SKYY Vodka, Hewlett-Packard and Blockbuster. CSR also provided equipment for parties hosted by InStyle Magazine, FOX Searchlight film studio, HBO and the Independent Film Channel.
“It was organized chaos,” says Leon. “We were doing the biggest parties on the street. It’s very long days and very adverse conditions in the middle of the winter up in the mountains. But it’s very fun, and we’ll go back and do it again.”
Last year, Colortone staged the 2002 Winter Olympics and 2002 Para-Olympics in Salt Lake City. The gig required more than three years of preparation and included pre-event conferences and workshops for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. How to reach: Colortone Staging and Rentals, (440) 914-9500
