President Bobby Smalheiser has sold the First Edition group of companies that he co-founded in 1973. As a result the group, which had three separate entities—editorial, audio and postproduction/visual effects—has been split into three separate companies with separate owners.
A group of four industry vets bought the editorial shop, long known as First Edition, and now renamed Steel Rose Editorial. The buyout team comprises First Edition editor Tony Siggia; John Monte, formerly an editor at Ruff House Editorial, New York; Mitch Schreiber, previously an editor at Invisible Dog, New York; and Mac West, most recently a consultant at Madison Advertising Management, New York, and before that a producer at BBDO New York.
Splash Design, First Edition’s postproduction and visual effects company, was purchased by Scott Holmgren, president of Splash since its inception in ’96. The firm will continue to be called Splash Design.
The audio post house Aural Fixation was purchased by the Steel Rose group, but is leased to music engineer Todd Miller and run as a totally independent company called Howling Trout Audio. (Miller was not available for comment at press time.)
Opting to take some time to follow personal interests, Smalheiser said it was time to sell the business. (Randy Ilowite, Smalheiser’s co-founder in First Edition, left the firm in ’98, and has since become a founding partner in New York-based The Well.) "I met so many great people, and I would have to say that that has been my biggest pleasure over the years," Smalheiser told SHOOT. "It’s a very young industry and when you have been working in the business for 30-something years, you are not so young anymore," he continued. "A new group of clients came along, and they want to work with people who are their age—people they can relate to. My clients were very familiar to me and very similar in terms of age. As they moved on, I felt it was time to move on as well."
STEEL ROSE
"It was an asset purchase; we bought the place hook, line and sinker," explains Steel Rose president West. The other members of the buyout consortium—Siggia, Schreiber and Monte—will be editors at Steel Rose, along with Matt Lazarus, who was already an editor at First Edition.
Other First Edition staff who have maintained roles in Steel Rose include assistant editor Ray Burris, producer Eva Nimark, CFO Rich Weiner and office manager Larry Leone. Additional hires are assistant producer Nicole Brown, formerly an assistant production coordinator on The Cosby Show; assistant editor Ona Bernini, who has relocated from Los Angeles, where she’d been freelancing; and apprentice Marissa Cadelira.
As a producer at BBDO New York, for 19 years, West had been a long-term client of First Edition. "Bobby had a terrific operation here. I knew that we all had connections we could use to put a terrific company together, and that we could skip a lot of steps by buying the place," explained West. "All in all, we were able to purchase an ideally located company."
West added that during his days as a producer he kept returning to the editors he had met early on in his career. He refers to those people as the seriously competent "old school" editors, and they are the foundation of Steel Rose. While West’s focus will be on getting Steel Rose established, he concedes that in the future the company will expand beyond editorial. One area he is keen to explore is the interactive business.
Repped on the East Coast by Joan Miller, Steel Rose is looking to expand its representation.
SPLASH
When Smalheiser decided to retire from the business, Holmgren, then president of Splash Design and First Edition, helped to broker the deal to sell the group of companies. Holmgren agreed to purchase Splash, which he was instrumental in building when it launched four years ago.
Holmgren said that plans are afoot to implement changes at Splash. "Now that I’ve taken the company over, it is a case of re-staffing and going after a greater outside business," he explained.
Splash Design has already made its first appointment, with Bert Berat joining as senior editor. Berat most recently worked at Post Perfect, New York, where he had been a senior editor for the past 15 years. Berat is responsible for evolving and expanding Splash’s editorial department and for developing new and creative ways to manage commercial projects.
In September, Splash appointed Andy Milkis as visual effects supervisor/designer and Aliciane Smythe as executive producer (SHOOT, 9/29/00, p. 8). Other artists at the firm are Kenneth Alvarez and David Johnson. As executive producer, Smythe handles sales for Splash Design.
