Christmas merger forms display giant
Published: 25 January, 2012
Fuzzwire is the new brand created through a merger of LDJ Design & Display and Centre Design, two of the market leaders in Christmas display.
The company will continue to operate from its two design and production sites in Keighley, West Yorkshire and at Prudhoe, Northumberland. It will employ around 130 people.
Ian Stead has been appointed chief executive. He has a strong track record in sales and marketing with major brands, and his brief is to build on the strengths of its two former players to produce exciting, large scale display schemes incorporating techniques such as 3D theatre, animatronics and lighting.
“We believe the business will gain from increased scale and leadership,” he said. “We’re building a new team that doesn’t just come from within the industry.”
LDJ Design & Display is based in Keighley and was founded in 1986. The company was bought by current owner, Trevor Smallwood, in 2002. LDJ is hugely experienced in the production of complex Christmas schemes for its clients, who represent most of the UK’s major retail property owners. It specialises in the use of animatronics, grottos and 3D theatre to create designs to thrill consumers and enhance the shopping experience. LDJ also recently introduced a specialist e-commerce lighting offering.
Centre Design was founded in 1986 by Peter Mason. Based in Prudhoe, the company has been known for its innovative dramatic design style and has created hundreds of large scale Christmas display schemes for major shopping centres, both in the UK and continental Europe. In 2011 CDL undertook its first North American project, beating off competition from both US and European competitors to win the contract to design displays for the Eaton Centre in Toronto, Canada’s premier shopping mall.
Both companies had a wide client base among major shopping centre owners across Europe for the Christmas season but Fuzzwire’s core skills are also ideal for wider applications such as the events and entertainment industries.
Stead, who joined LDJ in Autumn 2011 ahead of the merger, said he is excited about the new venture. “With Fuzzwire we’ve created a vehicle capable of bringing new levels of innovation and quality into our industry,” he says. “We have unrivalled experience and a highly motivated team that’s passionate about delivering creativity to delight both our clients and their customers.
“Both companies have a 25-year pedigree,” he said. “The appeal of integrating them is to use our size to make more options available to our clients and to move into areas we haven’t previously worked in.”
And one of Stead’s targets will be to extend the range of services beyond Christmas. “Our core business will remain providing a 3D Christmas experience, but we’re looking at other opportunities,” he said. “For instance, Halloween has become the biggest retail event outside Christmas. We’ll be using the skills already in the business to apply to other times of the year.”
Stead expects the merger to bring several benefits from the increased scale of the business. “We already have a great design capability with a standalone innovation department,” he said. “Now we’ll be able to invest even more in R&D.”
And he believes that the company’s increased buying power will have an impact on pricing. “We’re the clear market leader as a result of this merger,” he said. “That gives us a responsibility to deliver value.
“We have a design capability that’s second-to-none and we want that to be accessible to a wider marketplace.”
