We thought it was time we caught up with one of our longer standing customers, LFX Events, who are now based at our Merchants House site. Here’s what Luke, founder and head honcho told me…..
‘LFX Events began originally as LFX Consultancy, and as that name suggests, it was designed to translate my experience managing event venues across the UK into a consultancy service for similar businesses and Students’ Unions, my speciality at the time. Helping them create amazing experiences for their guests was the goal and reason d’etre.
After a few successful years in business doing just that it was time to diversify. From event venue support to event management seemed a logical progression to me. Having transitioned into the complete events business we operate today, we’ve added an event safety service and now provide a fully integrated one stop shop for all things ‘events’ – so that’s Event Planning, Production and Event Safety Management services available globally.
There have been lots of proud moments along the way, however probably my proudest was producing our first stadium concert at Elland Road in Leeds. Marking the centenary of Leeds United AFC we were booked to provide our complete service on the day – site, production and event management with a headline concert from Leeds favourites Kaiser Chiefs. It was a special show, so we created a unique B-Stage, a small, secondary stage above the audience which Ricky Wilson (the lead singer if you didn’t know) passed through the crowd to perform from, it was brilliant.
Being based in Stockport I understand this example won’t exactly be well received by some… However, I was born in Leeds so as a home-grown events professional it possibly marks the pinnacle of what I can achieve in the city of my birth… and the concert was incredible as well!
SBIC has been an essential and much appreciated stepping-stone between where we started and where we are now. Using their facilities, primarily the Virtual Office service for many years has facilitated the creation of LFX Events as a local brand that can be trusted. Also, as we were predominantly all out and about on site it helped grow the business as we were able to keep costs down without the overheads of a long-term office rental.
Our move to Merchants House is the next step on our journey, it’s very exciting, it is the perfect base for our business now.
As we expand our staff numbers, we needed an office and gathering point with a central location, good transport links and great connectivity, but also with value for money rent and flexible terms.
Merchant House delivers on all these things PLUS puts us in the heart of the ‘Soho of the North’ with easy access to Foodie Fridays to boot which makes me very happy!
It’s fair to say that the pandemic hit the events sector hard however we have weathered that storm and the last two years we have accelerated our growth plans to the position we find ourselves in today. We have had to be agile as a business, a large part of that has involved the expansion of our Event Safety division, where we had a large team deployed to the FIFA World Cup and have increased our presence at Formula One races to a team of over ten in 2023.
The 2023 summer season had us continuing to expand, with more events booked than ever before. I was delighted that we were shortlisted in the ‘Best Health & Safety’ category at the UK Festival Supplier Awards 2024 in January, a cracking start to this year. I was even more delighted when we won!!!!’
