Broadcast equipment hire firm Alias Smith and Singh and media recruitment specialists The Crewing Company will move their corporate headquarters to Hackney Wick in East London next month.
From 1st March 2011 the two firms – both part owned by the DIA Group - will operate from larger, purpose-designed facilities in the burgeoning Queen’s Yard media village where they will be located next door to sister DIA Group company The Bridge Training.
The move will allow the three companies to work closer together on joint DIA Group projects, provide an improved one-stop-shop ‘people, skills and kit’ offering to production companies, agencies and broadcasters and also deliver opportunities for improved internal group communication.
In addition to the physical re-organisation, Alias Smith and Singh and The Crewing Company will also get new visual identities and Alias Smith and Singh will be re-named as Alias Hire.
Stuart Hatton, the joint-Managing Director of The Crewing Company, said of the relocation: “The main driver is to put us in closer proximity to our sister companies. Our services integrate together really well so being in the same physical location will make it much easier for us to provide them jointly to clients. Being able to get up from your desk, walk in to an office next door and thrash out a conversation in a couple of minutes rather than traipse across town to have a meeting is a bit of no-brainer.”
The new head offices, refurbished at a cost of £100,000, will provide Alias Hire and The Crewing Company with additional office space and give Alias Hire increased room for equipment storage and servicing, demos and engineering.
Mike Smith, Managing Director of Alias Hire, said: “Being closer to The Bridge and The Crewing Company will make it much easier for us to jointly provide the one-stop-shop services that many of our producer customers want. It will also allow us continue our investment in new equipment such as the new Sony F3 cameras.”
Triston Wallace, co-owner and founder of The Bridge Training, added: “We’re all dependent on technology so being very close to both The Crewing Company and Alias Hire will help us to be first on the scene when a new bit of kit comes out. If a customer is asking Alias Hire to use the kit or requests an operator from The Crewing Company that can use it, we’ll get to know about that really quickly and can start delivering training courses to service that need.”
Alias Hire and The Crewing Company will continue to service clients from offices in Pinewood Studios and Soho following the move.
At the same time, new corporate visual identities for Alias Hire and The Crewing Company will bring them into line with the branding currently used by The Bridge Training.
Hatton said of the new company look: “It will help to tie the different sets of services together. The logos are similar in style but each company retains it’s own identity under a common strap line that links them together. When a client sees any one of the three logos we hope that they will immediately associate it with all the companies in the group:”
Smith said of Alias Smith and Singh being re-named Alias Hire: “It makes a lot of sense for us as it simplifies our offering to the market.”
Along with the new branding Alias Hire, The Bridge Training and The Crewing Company will also launch new websites and start to do business under the DIA Group strap-line “New ways to be creative.”
