Riding high: thinkwell's founders left Universal to start their own design shop. After a rough start, they're entering sectors beyond the theme parks.

CRAIG Hanna, Cliff Warner and Francois Bergeron were in Spain four years ago, designing a theme park ride when their bosses at Universal Studios called to tell them their offices were being consolidated to Orlando, Fla.

Instead of moving from Los Angeles, the trio left Universal to form their own company, Thinkwell Design & Production. After six months of lining up projects and getting all the paperwork set up, they finally opened their doors.

The date was Monday, Sept. 10, 2001.

The next day, of course, the world turned upside down.

"All of the projects that we had lined up to launch our company either disappeared or were put on indefinite hold," said Hanna, the team's creative director.

For months, the partners kept their fledgling company afloat, helped by some residual work from Universal. They delayed plans to lease office space and operated out of a garage; generous severance checks from Universal helped them subsist with virtually no other income.

Then in early 2002, they caught a break. A huge project that had been put on the back burner--an educational attraction in Japan based on the "Jurassic Park" films--re-materialized.

The multi-year project promised a secure revenue stream in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and allowed the company to move into its own space in South Pasadena.

But the episode also taught the partners a lesson: branch out into other areas so they would not be so reliant on theme parks. They brought a fourth partner on board, former Universal colleague Joe Zenas, and Thinkwell has since begun doing work for museums, casinos and even corporate customers. As a result, the company has grown at a time when others in the industry are shrinking.

"In a paradoxical way, 9/11 actually helped us," Hanna said. "Other companies in our business had huge overheads and had to slash like crazy. Many didn't survive. But for us, there was no place to go but up."

Growth surge

After the shaky start, Thinkwell's revenues rose to $1.8 million in 2003, then to $3 million in 2004. The company is on track to top $6 million this year and has just moved from South Pasadena to larger quarters in Burbank.

Thinkwell specializes in designing entertainment attractions, including rides at studio theme parks like "Earthquake" at Universal Studios Florida and the "Ice Age Adventure" attraction at Movie Park in Germany.

The company also designs traveling and permanent exhibits for museums, other nonprofit institutions and companies. It designs themed backdrops for live extravaganzas, as well.

One of the museum exhibits, a traveling interactive exhibit on the body and health aimed at children and organized by the Sesame Workshop (the non-profit behind "Sesame Street"), opens this month at the Arizona Science Center. It features characters from "Sesame Street" talking about the functions of various organs in the body and dispensing health tips for children.

"This is the first time we've ever gone into the museum world in such a comprehensive way, and we were looking for a design team that could combine entertainment value with educational value," said Anna Housley Juster, director of content for Sesame Workshop. "We went out and got the education content and they worked it into the design of the exhibit."

Once Thinkwell designers come up with finely tuned concepts, they farm out the actual construction of sets and props to specialty shops. When that work is completed, Thinkwell helps put the entertainment attractions together and often stays on board to make any mid-course improvements.

Some of the live show projects take a couple of months to put together, while more intricate rides and exhibits can take years of work. The Sesame Workshop project in Arizona took more than 18 months to bring to fruition.

Industry turbulence

Thinkwell's growth came during generally hard times for builders and designers of entertainment attractions. Throughout the 1990s, dozens of design shops sprung up, chasing a seemingly endless stream of work as studios and other companies built entertainment-oriented parks around the world.

"In the late 1990s, it was all about huge projects at theme parks," said Jim Benedick, partner at Tustin-based Management Resources, which does consulting and design work for theme-based entertainment attractions. "Then, after the downturn and the terrorist attacks, that work dried up, especially in the U.S. What little activity was left was overseas."

In this country, Benedick said, the work shifted to the nonprofit world, especially museums that were losing government subsidies and seeing their philanthropic contributions tail off. To compete in an increasingly market-driven environment, many museums and non-profits were forced to turn to jazzed-up exhibits, providing an opportunity for Thinkwell and dozens of other companies like it.

"Those companies that were able to make the shift survived. But many didn't," Benedick said.

Thinkwell made that shift by developing concepts for "edutainment" exhibits, such as two attractions it is working on at the new Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

Thinkwell has also branched out into the corporate world, designing "corporate branding" exhibits for companies like Nike Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. More recently, Thinkwell ventured into the rapidly growing world of casinos.

Now the challenge is to handle the increased work while remaining a small, tightly controlled company.

"We want to make sure that (the four senior partners) have some direct involvement in the design of each project Thinkwell works on," Hanna said. "If that requires saying 'no' to some projects so that the company doesn't grow too quickly, so be it."

PROFILE

Thinkwell Design & Production

Year Founded: 2001

Core Business: Design of entertainment-based attractions for theme parks, museums and companies

Revenues in 2003:$1.8 million

Revenues in 2004:$3 million

Employees in 2003:9

Employees in 2004:12

Goal: To expand range of clients while still remaining a small company

Driving Force: Need for theme parks, museums and other attractions to stand out