Air Dimensional Design Inc.


Year Founded:

1986

Core Business:

Manufacturing and selling air tubes and inflatable figures

Revenues in 1996:

$2 million

Revenues in 2000:

$4 million

Revenues in 2001:

$5 million (projected)

Employees in 1996:

9

Employees in 2001:

21

Goal:

To create and sell the world’s most unique promotional tools and special events backdrops

Driving Force:

Demand from businesses and events producers for a cost-efficient advertising tool or eye-catching backdrop that unlike lasers, spotlights and fireworks can be used in daylight

Company takes simple balloon designs and turns them into marketing tools for special events and sales promotions

If more parents realized that their child’s idle distraction, like twisting balloons, could turn into a $5 million business, perhaps they’d be more encouraging.

Doron Gazit, founder of Air Dimensional Design Inc., was one of those young art students who had the vision to see that a sideline he had taken on to pay his way through school could burgeon into something greater.

Gazit’s patented, fan-propelled 60-foot-tall Dynamic Inflatables narrow open-ended conceptions that create a swaying motion when air is blown through them by industrial fans have grown in popularity as cost-efficient backdrops for performances and ceremonies and to draw attention to product sales areas.

“What we invented here was not just a new product,” said Gazit. “It was a new concept in advertising. We didn’t try to break into a market. We created a market. We created a whole new industry with these inflatables.”

By building a customer list that includes producers of such events as the Super Bowl, the Emmys, Country Music Awards, Olympics Games and World Cup (as well as shows at Disneyland and Universal Studios), Gazit’s revenues have more than doubled in the last five years from $2 million in 1996 to a projected $5 million this year.

He has achieved that growth partially by taking business away from special events businesses that rely on fireworks, neon signs, lasers and spotlights to draw attention.

The vision for his company was formulated when he was putting himself through the Bezalel Art and Design Academy in Jerusalem, twisting balloons in the shapes of people, objects and animals and selling them on the streets to children.

Even before he earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial design in 1981, Gazit had already drawn upon his fascination with harnessing nature’s wind patterns and using the earth as a canvas, on which he would lay the air tubes as a new form of sculpture.

Hard lessons

His first attempt at gaining international exposure did not fly, however. Although Gazit was one of 10 contestants selected from 500 artists to create art pieces under the theme “The Rivers of the World” for the New Orleans World Expo in 1984, the event went bankrupt before his creation could be displayed. It was his first lesson on the business side of the art world.

“They didn’t have the money to pay us,” Gazit recalled. “It was one big fiasco. For me, coming from a small village in Israel, to work in the big city was overwhelming. But I didn’t know anything about business. Looking back on it, I realize how na & #271;ve I was.”

Word spread about his creations, however, and he was soon offered $110,000 to create air tube displays for nine venues at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. This time, he received 50 percent in advance and a priceless amount of publicity.

“That of course was great exposure,” Gazit said. “All of a sudden I had great contacts all over the country and in many other countries. I started to get invitations to do work all over the world. I saw the potential of Los Angeles (as) a great city to continue to develop the concept of the air tubes and start a new company. There’s a lot of industry here.”

Having designed his plastic tubes for the 1984 Olympics out of his one-bedroom apartment in Westwood, he opened up his first office in Venice in 1986. A move to a larger space in Culver City followed in 1994, enabling Gazit and his small staff to conduct on-site research and development, as well as perform the custom work. He recently moved his entire operation into a new space in Van Nuys.

And his product line gradually evolved from plastic air tubes, which resemble large-scale balloons, to Dynamic Inflatables swaying nylon vertical tubes and human-like figures. The company keeps some 20 Dynamic Inflatables in stock, with the “Fly Guy,” which approximates the human form, the most popular model.

“Try to imagine an inflatable figure that shoots up to 60 feet in three seconds and then will move and dance all day long,” said Gazit.

Revenues inflate

The new Van Nuys facility has plenty of space for assembling the Dynamic Inflatables, about 70 percent of which are custom designed, with enough space left over to store the mass-produced models, which have Velcro strips on their torsos to attach promotional banners.

The figures cost up to $5,000 each, depending on the size and extent of custom design, plus $2,800 for two 24-inch-in-diameter industrial fans, which the company purchases from an East Coast manufacturer. As an alternative, customers can rent the products for $100 to $1,500, fans included, per day.

Chuck Gayton, an independent events producer based in Los Angeles, has used Gazit’s creations for six of his large-scale shows, including the opening and closing ceremonies of the Paralympics, the contests for disabled individuals that followed the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta; the opening of the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas a couple of years ago; and the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame Opening Night Gala last year.

Artistry in Motion Entertainment Inc., a Van Nuys company specializing in blasting confetti out of cannons, has found a common ground with Gazit’s use of air. And the two companies have combined their talents on numerous occasions.