TEXTILES.ORG
By Jill C. Lafferty
Main Attractions bills itself as a one-stop shop for special event rental and fabrication services. A recent project that involved a VIP concert by Bon Jovi really showed that off.
“We utilized just about every aspect of our graphics, production, wood shop and metal fabrication departments,” says David Fekety, creative director for the Edison, N.J.-based company. “We provided our client with everything from custom graphic banners, fabric drapes, custom bar stool covers and graphic bike rack covers to custom light panels wrapped around the bars, graphic facades and all the metal fabricated support structures to hold everything in place.”
Main Attractions added digital printing as an in-house service with a hybrid digital direct-to-board/direct-to-fabric wide format UV printer, and recently added a 104-inch-wide, direct-to-fabric solvent printer. The company’s additional capabilities include a full-service 8,000-square-foot production facility for cutting, sewing, RF welding, grommeting and laminating, and a 9,000-square-foot wood shop and metal fabrication facility for designing and building custom displays and support systems for fabric graphics.
“One of the biggest challenges that we found in the first two-and-a-half years of digital printing was that the graphics that our customers were requesting were becoming wider and wider,” Feteky says. “Although our on-site production facility allowed us to seam panels to the desired size, that process involved additional time and labor. With the addition of our new solvent printer, we are now able to provide our customers with seamless graphics up to 8½ feet wide.”
Most of the company’s clients are either event producers or key players on a team of companies responsible for an event.
“We alleviate the hassles of our clients having to source multiple vendors for each individual aspect of their event and provide them with the ability to have one company handle the majority of their event needs, from design and production through to installation,” Fekety says.
Main Attractions has about 45 employees, with six dedicated to the graphics and production departments. About 60 percent of the company’s graphics business involves fabric.
“The addition of our new solvent printer has not only increased our ability to print on wider fabrics, it has also increased the range of fabrics that we are able to print to,” Feteky says. “With that increased ability we are looking to grow the fabric graphics portion of our business by approximately 15 percent over the next two to three years.”