This summer marks 35 years since Bob and Lana Wiese decided to pool their professional skills — he worked for a company that rented audio-visual equipment and she worked for a large telecommunications corporation — to create a company that’s outlasted many of its competitors.
Studio Gear, founded in 1989 and headquartered in Milwaukee’s Third Ward with a Fitchburg satellite office, provides businesses and entertainment venues with state-of-the-art, audio-visual gear, lighting equipment, and video production services — primarily for special events, corporate meetings, fundraisers, and the performing arts. The majority of the company’s clients are in Wisconsin and northern Illinois, but Studio Gear’s crews travel all over the country with them.
“One thing that we decided early on was to consistently invest in the business,” says Lana Wiese, Studio Gear’s co-founder and president. “Our clients have an expectation that we’re going to give them a product with a ‘wow’ factor. So we know we’re going to spend significant dollars every year on equipment to upgrade to the latest technology and increase our overall inventory.”
Wiese says incremental growth helped sustain Studio Gear and made it an industry leader, even in the bleakest business environments. “When COVID hit, we lost all of our [client] jobs, but we still paid all of our employees,” Wiese says. “We were in a distressed industry during a very challenging time, and we fought hard not to reduce or furlough our employees. The most important asset Studio Gear has is not the equipment — anybody can buy equipment if they have the money — but the team and talent we have.”
Studio Gear survived the pandemic, in part by temporarily suspending gear acquisition and helping clients set up permanent studio equipment in designated spaces for such tasks as videoconferencing and presentations. When live events started up again, often in a hybrid format with both live and virtual components, the company began offering streaming services. It also increased its partnerships with arts organizations.
“We told everyone we were going to come out on the other end of this stronger and better, and that has been true,” Wiese says, noting that business has been booming since 2022. “And that’s the story of all small businesses that survive over time. There are points when you can either throw up your hands or you can find ways to come out ahead.”
Studio Gear’s staff of 22 employees includes both industry veterans and recent college graduates, and the company recently began offering scholarships and on-campus internships to students attending the University of Wisconsin–Platteville, the Wieses’ alma mater.
“We would tell anybody who starts a business that one of the foundations of your success will be education. So if we, as businesses owners who have been around a long time, believe that education is transformational and a foundation of future success, we ought to help young people along the way. That’s just good business.”
CONTACT:
Lana Wiese, Owner
511 E. Chicago St.
Milwaukee, WI 53202
414-225-3777
