By DANIEL TAUB
Staff Reporter
Sitting in front of a computer at a sprawling, industrial-style office building in Santa Monica, animator Brumby Boylston is tinkering with a digitized version of Motorola’s distinctive “M” logo.
“I’ve got to make this thing fly like a bird, and I’ve only got a few minutes,” Boylston says, as a dog lounges behind his chair.
Sitting a few yards away is another animator, busily working on a flaming, Olympic-style gold medal a sequence to be used during ESPN’s “X-Games.” Around the corner, other workers are taking a break to play with another pooch. “It’s dog time,” one worker explains.
These are the decidedly offbeat offices of Fuel.
In just four years, the Santa Monica company has become a fast-growing producer of television commercials and opening sequences for TV shows. Fuel has made commercials for Intel Corp., Nissan North America Inc., Skechers USA Inc. and others, and it has designed the opening sequences for the television shows “Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane” on The WB and ABC’s now-canceled “Cupid.”
As Fuel’s client roster has grown, so have its revenues $5.5 million in 1998, up from less than $400,000 just three years earlier. In 1999, the company expects more than $11 million.
“We’re growing rapidly, there’s no question about it,” said Seth Epstein, the company’s 31-year-old founder. “Our strategy has been to grow very organically with demand. I just have never taken investors on, never taken outside capital. I’ve generated capital through business, basically.”
With an increasing number of cable networks starting up driving the need for both graphics and commercials Epstein says “the growth is going to become even more dramatic as time goes on.”
“Whatever we asked them to do, they pretty much figured it out,” said Lynn Cary, a producer at San Francisco ad agency Goldberg Moser O’Neill who has worked with Fuel on commercials for Dell Computer Corp. and others. “Whether it was a quick or normal time schedule, they were really willing to help us out. In a couple cases, they did three weeks worth of work in one week.”
Cary added that because Fuel is able to do everything in-house from design to taping live actors to post production the company saved her agency money. For one commercial, “they were able to package a deal for production and post production and a couple of minor, little special effects for us, and we saved a lot of money,” she said. “I think we probably saved at least $50,000 for the whole package.”
Darryal Dashiell, a broadcast producer with New York ad firm Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG, speaks of Fuel’s ability to do everything in-house, as well as its creativity.
“We thought Fuel just had tremendous capabilities in coming up with and executing design that is really fresh and invigorating. That’s really what sold us on them,” said Dashiell, who hired the company to produce a series of commercials for Madison, N.J.-based pharmaceuticals giant Schering-Plough Corp.
Fuel has focused on keeping its culture relaxed and fun. There’s a billiard table around one corner and a ping-pong table and regulation-height basketball hoop around another.
Then there are the dogs. Sometimes, up to six dogs are walking around the office at once, said Lisett M. Torres, head of public relations and image development.
“We work 24 hours here. We need a place that felt homey,” she said, walking by a disheveled couch. “We sleep on this couch a lot. As you can see, someone probably slept here last night.”
Most employees are under 30 and many participate in the kind of extreme sports featured on ESPN, one of Fuel’s biggest clients. Several employees, including Epstein, occasionally take time to walk a few blocks to the beach and catch some waves. (A rack of surfboards decorates one room.) Last Christmas, the company bought snowboards for all of its employees and paid for a five-day trip to teach everyone how to use them.
Matthew Marquis, executive producer and second-in-command, said that in order to attract the type of creative, in-demand people that have made the company successful, Fuel needs to keep the work environment fun. Being relatively small makes that possible.
“It’s hard to work at 3M and say, ‘Let’s get 2,000 of you and head out to the snow,’ ” Marquis said.
The field is not without competition, including the much larger Pittard Sullivan in Culver City. But with more television networks being started and with the growing importance of the Internet, which Fuel is starting to do design work for Marquis says there is more than enough business to go around.
In fact, Fuel is starting to outgrow its 8,200 square feet of offices once home to software company Quarterdeck Corp. Officials plan to take their live-action commercial production division, known as Tonga, and move it to a separate office by the end of the year. The number of directors working in the Tonga division will also be boosted from two to four or five in the next several months, he said.
“One of the big challenges,” Marquis said, “is keeping up with all the growth.”
Spotlight
Fuel
Year Founded: 1995
Core Business: Designing and producing network television graphics and TV commercials
Revenues in 1996: $1.4 million
Revenues in 1998: $5.5 million
Employees in 1996: 10
Employees in 1999: 25
Goal: To do world-class design and branding for clients and become one of the best in the industry
Driving Force: A widening range of media outlets, and a growing number of companies looking to develop their brand identities
