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Company History
David Fitch came to stage lighting in the most usual route i.e. as an amateur starting at the tender age of 5 working with his father on the “school show”. Later at the age of 16 he lit his first show called “asses' ears” (and managed to loose money on it, rarely repeated!). Later after leaving school he spent 6 years in the family engineering business with 4 years at college studying engineering and management, took over the running of the business just as the 1980 recession took hold and due to no work had to close almost immediately. However, there are still many examples of our work still standing today, despite many motorists trying to demolish the pedestrian guard railing on much of our road network. It was then the choice of unemployment or seeing if the hobby could become a business.
Starting with 6 lights and a dimmer board known laughably as portable, working from the garden shed, he made inroads into the school and amateur market locally and acquiring second-hand lanterns as quickly as possible build up a stock of some 40 lanterns in the first year.
After ten years and a garden shed of some 200 square feet, the time had come to move into larger industrial premises (1200 square feet) moving to Northend road in Erith. The company had now grown to 3 staff and over 120 lanterns, still serving mainly the school market and some amateurs, more professional theatres starting to use our projection equipment and some of the special items for hire.
Another ten years on with some 300 lanterns (all new) and our new range of very large mirror balls often seen on television the company has expanded into another unit adjacent to the first to give us enough room to work, now some 3500 square feet. New additions to the stock are flambeaux effects, which will be seen on television and in film shortly.
The company is now 3 full time staff and 3 part time staff allowing us to be open six and a half days a week to provide service to our customers from schools, amateur theatre, professional theatre, television, concert, film, marquee and wedding services and the general public for whom we light gardens for bar-b-ques and parties.
In 2002 we celebrated our 20th anniversary and David's 40th of lighting! And we are looking forward to many more years of quality service to our customers. In 2003 David Fitch Services became a limited company – David Fitch Services Ltd. What next – PLC?
Click here for a downloadable document "Our History"