Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Gilliatt.
Hi Eric, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I founded Level One Art Installation at the beginning of 1999 when it didn’t look like I had any other options for gainful employment. I had dropped out of college several years earlier, disillusioned with my education in getting an Industrial Design degree. Ever since I was a teenager I wanted to be a car or product designer, having the skills to draw and paint pretty much anything I laid my eyes on or imagined. But computers were taking over the design industry in the late 90’s and began phasing out analog curriculum for young aspiring artists like myself not interested in adopting the technology. Being a confident (and cocky) young man, I felt I could do it better with my hands and natural abilities. You have to remember that this was still a time of MSDOS, floppy discs and all the clunky Linux programming, not the streamlined computing architecture that exists today.
While in college, to make ends meet I’d been doing custom picture framing at The Frame Maker in San Diego and became trained in the methods and theory of Art Installation, since they offered that as a service to their clients. Over time, as my interest in college began to wane, I focused more and more on getting proficient in my newfound craft. My boss gave me a bit of freedom to run this part of his business and I enjoyed the instant creative input I could have on our clients. It gave me a buzz to see how satisfied they were with someone taking something so personal as their artwork and giving it a place in their home or business.
After several years of running the Installation Dept at TFM I begin building up a client base separate from the picture framing they offered, and clients were looking to hire “me” for my reputation as a reliable talent. However, I wasn’t making a lot of money, seeing what my boss was charging for my labor, and after awhile things came to a head. He gave me a choice, I could either take over that part of the business entirely, with him helping me get on my feet for a year, or I could find another job and figure it out on my own. Either way, he didn’t want to hear any more of my complaining about my wages (to put it nicely). After some negotiations on the split of the start up percentage, my company was born and I became my own boss. It was the most thrilling and scary period of my life. In the exact same timeframe, I met and married my wife, who’s been my biggest supporter and foundation throughout this journey.
Over the next several years, what was becoming apparent to me was that I couldn’t continue to do it alone. I was beginning to experience severe burnout from the physical and mental toll of the job. I had been working continuously as a solo Art Installer for nearly 10 years by the time I was 31, but had no formal business background to lean into to help me figure out how to grow the company and hire people. And I was too prideful at the time to go back to college, after feeling like I’d been done a disservice to my former dream of being an Industrial Designer.
So what did I do? I quit…Sort of.
A client of mine who owned a company that did light commercial construction and interior design offered me a job. It was a step down financially, but for me the draw was to learn a new skill in construction methods in order to become a supervisor. I was hired to do art installation in house for them, bringing my client list with me, and I signed a year contract on the promise of advancement after my internship. Needless to say, it was the most difficult time of my young career to date. I had the direct ear of the owner and thought I was hired to bring a fresh perspective to his company. But I spent the year being told “no” time and time again whenever I had anything outside their normal procedures to suggest. I was broke, angry at myself for this decision and depressed.
When my year was up, it was mutually agreed we would part ways. And after taking some time to reflect, I started my company back up again. I was a much stronger person, having had to fight so hard against a company culture that didn’t align with my core values of saying what your going to do, do it, and stand by it. I also had a new database of construction knowledge that could help me grow my company. To my surprise, nearly all of my clients welcomed me back and immediately wanted to renew ties. That was gratifying, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling of failure, frustration and disappointment in myself for many years after that period. Eventually my wife, who was also struggling with getting her own career in hairstyling off the ground, turned me onto authors like Simon Sinek and Mike Robbins for motivational inspiration. Learning about failure, and being able to contextualize it both personally and professionally in a healthy way, helped me see the value of decisions we make in the moment and how to separate our ego from the story. This path eventually led me to my WHY and finally an outline to give my business, and myself, the purpose they deserved and always there in front of me. I just had to stop and look at it without the lens of judgment.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
To date, running a boutique, white glove, labor-based business in Southern California has been a tremendous challenge. Our company saw intense growth during the boom of the 2000’s before the economic collapse in 2008, and then again in the years just prior to COVID. But both of those events nearly put an end to our company.
When the Great Recession hit, the steady flow of incoming jobs towards the end of 2009 were becoming more scarce. Fortunately, a longtime client and healthcare design consultant came through at the beginning of 2010 with a large scale hospital installation in Dayton, OH. This project, and many others like it that followed, gave us the momentum we needed to slowly find our way back into the black, one job at a time, and into a period of tremendous growth from 2014-2019. In that 5 years we went from myself and just an assistant installer to bringing on 4 full time installers and a project manager. It seemed like there was nowhere to go but higher, but then COVID brought everything to a crashing halt in 2020..
Transitioning into that crisis took a heavy toll on the morale and structure of our company, which has always been reliant on high level person to person interaction for every job. Thankfully we continued to operate, since we were in the middle of several large scale construction projects nearing completion and fell under the “essential work” guidelines. But we had to furlough employees who were understandably reticent of interacting with the public, regardless of the extreme PPE precautions we instituted. Ultimately our installation staff shrunk and turned over several times while we worked through the minefield of COVID regulations and restrictions. Finding talent for the type of work we do with a very diverse skill set is already an immense challenge. So having to do that during the crisis created gaps in our ability to give our clients the level of service they had come to expect and we were accustomed to providing. We were fortunate with our aggressiveness in pursuing and qualifying for both rounds of PPP loans, and that’s literally what kept the lights on. It also enabled us to give our employees some added mental health leave on top of their standard PTO. But in the end, we learned the hard way that we can’t take any jobs or clients for granted, nor the value of employees who share the same vision of service as our company.
Currently, the uncertainty around the present economic climate is putting pressure on our small business in similar ways as the 2008 Financial Crisis. The difference being that there seems to be a lot of work happening around us, but potential clients are looking for the cheapest option to get it done, with the quality of the work or service they get being secondary to the price. The competitive workforce of hiring and retaining dedicated professionals for this niche field is daunting. Overhead costs like insurance, fuel for our Sprinter vans, Workman’s Comp, salaries, health care, 401K’s, storage, etc have all escalated +30% in the past 5 years since COVID. And like countless other small businesses, it forces us to balance how we absorb some of the inflationary pressures and what to charge for our services.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Having been born with natural artistic talent I’ve always had a deep emotional connection with the art that speaks to me. That’s not unique. The way we relate to “Art” in its basic purpose to us as human beings is to reflect and enrich our lives and give it meaning and definition. We use art to decorate our surroundings, be it in the workplace, public spaces or our homes. The artwork a business chooses to install in its office or building can be a reflection of its outlook or mission. Just as the artwork someone chooses to install in their homes can be a reflection of the way they see the world, or would like to see the world or themselves. It’s the one thing (along with politics) we as humans all seem to have an unfiltered opinion about, thereby making it one of the most personal and subjective things in our day to day existence. And because of that personal connection to it, it can be hard for clients to know how to approach how their artwork should be handled or installed for to look its best in their private or public domain.
To some this may sound esoteric, but the theory guiding this company from the outset is one I learned while in college studying the Greek philosophers. Pythagoras discovered in nature that there are repeating geometric patterns across the genus of plants, animals and landscapes that we as humans find naturally beautiful. He even applied a mathematical equation to it, calling it the Golden Ratio. This observation struck me to the core in my early 20s, and has always served as the driving motivation behind Level One Art Installation as a company: That everything has it’s “natural place” in our world, and we know it when we see it and when it feels right. It shows up time and again in our work, when clients tell us “that’s it!! It looks amazing!”
With that in mind, the concept of “hanging a picture” isn’t a particularly difficult task. Pick a location, decide on a height, knock a couple of hooks in the wall. Done. I’t’s not so hard.
Maybe it’s straight. Maybe it’s where you wanted it. Maybe it’ll stay on the wall. Maybe you hired a handyman to hang it, and all of the above is maybe just good enough. Lots of “maybes” but no certainty.
From the outset I wanted the WHY of Level One Art Installation to provide a creative service to its clients that exceeds their expectations, take the Maybes out of the equation and apply that viewpoint of the Golden Ratio to every project we work on.
This is where the dialogue begins at Level One with our clients. Our sole purpose is to remove the uncertainty from the Art Installation process and make it finite. Giving our clients the support and confidence their artwork will be handled and respected in the manner they would most like to see it, and in a way that gives them assurance that they are in capable hands. What we strive for is perfection in our process from the moment a client contacts us right up until we leave the jobsite.
Across our field, from homeowners and Interior Designers, to architects, Art Consultants, corporations and construction supervisors, our goal is to give them the certainty that their project will be handled and completed correctly the first time, every time. That takes experience, a dedication to getting the details right each step of the way, and not letting problems that could arise dictate the narrative.
As your readers could imagine, our portfolio over the past 10-15 years has included some really amazing projects. I’m especially proud of the work we completed for the art programming team at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto in 2018/2019 for their $1.2b expansion. Likewise, since 2022 we have handled a lot of complex display and mission graphics installations for the US Navy and Marines on the West Coast. Most of which we unfortunately can’t post on Social Media, but has been a source of great pride for our team. We have had the pleasure of installing for many high profile celebrities, professional athletes, politicians, and the like over the years. We have continued to work in partnership with the Public Arts Programs for the Cities of Carlsbad, Solana Beach and Encinitas. And we’ve been very fortunate to be entrusted with installing some very large, valuable and technically difficult sculptures throughout Southern California. All of which have presented unique challenges to overcome and add to our database of solutions. We have always enjoyed the projects where clients bring us something seemingly impossible they want installed and we are able to complete it with a sense of effortlessness.
While we are very good at it, what I’d like to advocate to current and potential clients is that our company is much more than putting pretty pictures on the wall. Despite our small size, I’ve always pushed this company to leverage the efficiencies we’ve created to handle large scale and logistically complex art installation projects that companies much bigger than ours would typically would take on. Starting with excellent communication, providing insightful solutions and project coordination, and relying on a wealth of experience from being a leader in this industry for over 25 years.
As a result of this, the attention to detail and great customer service we provide is equally applied to our smaller day to day projects, as they have always been the vital foundation that keeps this company ticking over. And often they are the source of our most loyal repeat clients. We treat each and every project that comes our way with the highest level of commitment, regardless if it’s one piece of art or one hundred.
My favorite truism for our company is “work the problem, don’t let the problem work you”. For that to happen, you have to take your ego out of the process in order to see the opportunities that arise within situations that aren’t going the way you’d planned. This is how we’re different from other companies. Where others would tend to turn away from a project or problem, we lean towards it to find the solution. In everything we strive for at Level One, we are supporting our motto: “The Art of Installation”.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I have always imagined Level One as more than an Art Installation company, and rather as a Problem Solving Company.
From the outset our core principles of standing by our word and not giving excuses has been the foundation of building this business. Give clients realistic timelines, price estimates, and what is possible and what is not possible.
A reputation is reinforced not when things are going well, that’s easy. But when things don’t go as planned or the unexpected happens, that’s the opportunity for your company to lean into the situation and correct the problem. You may gain respect for your actions, you may or may not lose that cleint’s business, but you can move forward knowing you did the right thing regardless, and you’ll hopefully learn to do better the next time a similar situation arises.
Conversely, always saying “yes” is a compelling way to get business, but will you end up successful or just over-leveraged? Being willing and brave enough to say “no” sometimes, and knowing when, is a useful tool that takes wisdom to understand.
We pride ourselves on our honesty and integrity in the way we approach running this company and working with our clients. Sometimes we lose business because of our unwillingness to bullshit people, and that’s ok. We want clients that believe in our message and the services we offer and in the way we execute those services. Not because we have some high moral ground we want to stand on, but because we believe in the long run, relationships that are forged in honesty and good communication have the most staying power.
In my experience, this is how your reputation stays intact. By being the company in your industry, whatever that may be, which is reliable and always follows through. And a company that gives its clients the support they are paying for, by using experience and innovation in finding solutions to the problems they need resolved, will always find their market.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.leveloneartinstallation.com
- Instagram: leveloneartinstallation
- Facebook: leveloneartinstallation
- LinkedIn: Eric Gilliatt, II
