New BlueHive SVP seeks different client services
Leonard Metcalf, senior vice president of BlueHive Strategic Environments, Worcester
Leonard Metcalf has worked on and off for Paul Hanlon – president and CEO of Worcester display firm BlueHive Strategic Environments – since 1985. Metcalf first started at Hanlon’s Folio Exhibits when he was 28 and eventually became the company’s warehouse manager and logistics director. After Folio was sold in 2001, Hanlon and Metcalf went their separate ways until 2005 when Hanlon decided to found BlueHive and brought Metcalf on as his account director with an eye toward making him the general manager. In its first year, BlueHive did $3 million in sales. Now, the company has $30 million in annual revenues and 90 employees. In May, Hanlon promoted Metcalf to senior vice president.
How did you learn about the promotion?
The new title came about on the 13th or 14th of May. The truth about it is that I had no idea it was coming. Paul Hanlon sent an email to the entire company that morning saying, “As of today, Len’s title is senior vice president. Please congratulate him. It is well deserved.” That is how I found out I was becoming senior vice president.
I called him and said, “What is this?” He said, “First off, you deserve it. Second of all, you already are doing the job and you just have a different title. Third, I want you to get the respect in the building. Not that you aren’t already getting respect, but I want people to know who to talk to when they aren’t talking to me.”
BlueHive started by designing and building trade show exhibits and then added creating permanent displays for companie made possible by your in-house architectural millwork facility. How has that changed what you offer?
On the exhibit side, it doesn’t really impact anything, but what we have been able to do is say, “If you want to brand your facility, your environment, we can do that now and be competitive. We can brand your facility like an exhibit.” It is a different way of building things.
Has this created more demand for BlueHive’s products?
We have been busy for about two years. We have not been slow. We have been overtime busy. We are on overtime right now.
That is a good problem to have.
It is, but it is tough to manage. People need to have lives, too. When you work 50 hours a week, 60 hours a week, it gets tough on the carpenters and on the builders.
What are clients asking for now?
They are always chasing the new thing. That is the one thing BlueHive has been able to do.
What is the new thing for BlueHive?
We are just starting BlueHive Media Management, which is going to connect our clients with what they are doing at trade shows. If we are going to build an exhibit for a client for a specific trade show or they are targeting a specific trade show, what we want to do is offer more services on top of the exhibit. If they are going to spend $200,000 to build this exhibit, that is a big investment right off the top.
What we want to do is say, “You are going to build this exhibit, and it going to be a create exhibit. It is going to build your brand, and we are going to help you sell within it. Also, we are going take the external side of it and promote it through social media, through branding, through marketing.”
Why does BlueHive add these services?
It separates us from the competition. What Paul likes to say is, “This is a piece of wood, and this is laminate that anyone can buy. Really, anyone can do that.” If you are looking for a firm that can give you all the other assets that we just talk about, that is really what BlueHive is all about.
Video
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments