Adrian Brooks is one of the industry nice guys - at least in my book - something I put down to the fact that his feet remain firmly on the ground, despite the obvious success of the Litestructures operation.
Although he’d probably be the last to admit it, he is now sitting at the head of an impressive empire which offers the design, installation, sales and hire of a complete range of trussing, display and staging systems. Operating from a central HQ in Wakefield, with satellite offices in Nottingham and London, and an overseas distribution centre in Emsdetten, Germany, the company employs over 80 people across its four operations (including three installation teams, a sales division and two further teams working on the thriving rental side), and turns over in the region of £7million a year.
His growth from one-man band to one of the larger companies in the sector comes from a competitive edge based on three characteristics that underpin the business - an eye for innovation (which has led to some notable product firsts), a highly skilled workforce and an ability to anticipate market trends. Tracking back to that first, and most important, item, on the list - innovation - this has been the constant thread that runs throughout the Litestructures story, as you will see.
Brooks originally trained as a teacher in humanities (a decision he quickly realized wasn’t one of his best, though he did see it through) before joining working platform specialists Access Equipment . . . for no better reason than the job came with a company car. No matter, it proved a good choice, for Brooks could see the wider potential for Access’ developing range of aluminium tower systems - a relatively new concept at the time. It wasn’t long before he was in business for himself, trading under the name Lighting Tower Hire from premises tucked beneath the arches of Leeds’ Railway station.
It was from these arches that a little bit of industry history was made: thanks to a challenge laid down by Mike Roberts, then production manager at Opera North, Brooks and his colleague Stevie Oaks developed the designs for what was effectively one of the first free-standing lighting truss systems. Part of that design process included the development of the first two-way corner joint, swiftly followed by the appearance of a three-way corner joint. Brooks took his new trussing system, by now christened Astralite, to an early ABTT show where Roger Fox (then production director at the Barbican) saw the truss, liked it and immediately spec’d it for the four cinemas in the Barbican complex. Roberts was thus Astralite’s first rental customer and Fox its first buyer. Brooks also struck a deal with Optikinetics to handle the distribution of Astralite.
Interest in the system was immediate and enduring - and imitation, being the sincerest form of flattery - naturally followed. To clarify Astralite’s presence in the marketplace, Brooks decided to handle his own sales and distribution and to that end, developed a dedicated network of distributors, both in the UK and overseas. With competitor systems springing up around him, he applied a simple principle: "When everyone’s making mousetraps, build a better mousetrap."
Thanks to better ‘mousetraps’, the company was soon turning over £100,000 a month, almost exclusively serving the then burgeoning club and disco markets. Its first taster of the opportunities that lay beyond came when it was asked to design and build a stage set for The Tube, just beginning to gain an audience following on Channel 4.
Not only was the company (by now renamed Astralloy) pushing the envelope on the trussing front, it was also involved in the development of one of the first moving yoke lamps - designin
