Shepard Ramps Up Growth of AV Division with Production Associates Acquisition

January 4, 2018

Event production company, Shepard, has made its second buy this winter with the acquisition of Northern Virginia-based Production Associates, a full-service audio-visual management, staging and consulting company that provides services to association, corporate and government events.

“We are excited to welcome Production Associates to our growing Shepard AV family,” said Stuart Danneman, executive vice president of Shepard AV. “They bring to the team a strong service-based culture, innovative technology and a thriving presence in the Virginia, Maryland and DC markets.”

According to Shepard officials, Production Associates brings a wealth of experience and custom-developed, dynamic tools to Shepard, including Speaker Vision, its presentation management platform that was designed and developed in-house and offers a seamless experience loading and managing presentations pre-show, onsite and post-show.

This platform will be integrated into Shepard AV and will be made available to all Shepard AV customers immediately.

“By joining Shepard, we’re expanding our capabilities and bringing more solutions to our customers, which allows us to compete more effectively for future business,” said Michael Loftus, president of Production Associates, which was founded in 2004.

He continued, “Moreover, Production Associates is a great cultural fit with Shepard, sharing the same core values and commitment to a high level of customer service.”

According to Carl Mitchell, executive chairman of Shepard, the acquisition advances the company’s strategic imperatives focused on consistent service, innovative solutions, responsiveness and creating overall successful experiences.

“Over the past 16 months, we have aggressively expanded our portfolio, enabling us to provide our customers an all-inclusive solution to enhance their planning experience,” Mitchell said.

He added, “We see substantial long-term growth opportunities in the audio-visual and event technology space and will continue to invest to meet the demands of the industry.”

The acquisition of Production Associates is Shepard’s second in the last 30 days as the company continues to invest in solutions in response to greater demand for event technology and audio-visual products and services.

In early December, the company acquired McCUNE Audio-Video-Lighting, a California-based staging, lighting and audio visual company.

Production Associates will continue to operate out of its Reston, Virginia-based office as it makes the transition to a Shepard AV company.

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