As a chemist's assistant at a New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company, Gerald Webb spent his days testing the active ingredients in "new" products. By throwing a bunch of ingredients into a pot and observing reactions, he was pursuing his collegiate ambition, while also insuring that an "improved" product was indeed "improved." Among the young alchemist sect, Webb's gig was considered somewhat experimental.
But after a couple years Webb's alchemy pursuit began to lose its potency. "I began to see in corporate structure that there's a lot of waste - almost a lack of common sense," he says. "Some companies get so big, they're like, 'Well, this is the way we do things,' even if it's a backward way of doing things. They made our work so much harder than it really had to be, and they really didn't want to make an effort to change that. So I decided that I wasn't going to allow somebody in a corporate structure, who I didn't even know, determine my destiny. I was working under people who were just going through the motions, in a daze. They weren't unhappy but they weren't happy, either."
Trying to engineer a way out, Webb retrieved from storage - and his childhood - two dusty Technics turntables and an old mixer. He started working for a local DJ company part-time, were he eventually encountered more corporate incompetence - albeit on a much smaller scale.
"The owner was very good at putting his product together," says Webb. "He was a very good salesman, but he was also very phony. He didn't really follow through on things the way he should have. I soon discovered it was all glitz and glamour in the front, but in the back it was all a mess."
But what DJ company doesn't have a mess in the back?
"For example," answers Webb, "I would use his equipment, and every week there would be something else that was broken, and it would take months for things to get fixed. I had an amplifier where one side blew out, and he told me, 'We'll just run off the other side until we get it fixed.' Eight months later, guess what? We're still running off one side of an amp, and I don't even have a back-up. Or, I would show up at a gig and the client would be expecting the owner, and the client would look at the fiancée, or their new husband, and say, 'The DJ didn't show up.' So before I'd even played one song, they were unhappy with the job. As the performer, I'd have to work twice as hard to make that party a success."
By August of 1994, a fed-up Webb told the owner he'd be leaving by winter time, providing Webb ample time to start his own DJ business - a "new" and "improved" version, if you will. "By then, after my experience with the chemist job and the mobile outfit. I knew I couldn't work for anyone else," says Webb.
After coming up with the name Party Time Entertainment and completing a trade-name search, Webb enlisted the services of a graphic artist friend to create business cards and three-fold color brochures. Little did Webb know how quickly his fortunes would change.
Webb capitalized on the vendor relationships he had established. He attended a bridal fair. Still living with his parents, he would dress up and make house calls to consult with clients - "It was either spend a lot of money and take them out to dinner or go to their house."
Then one day he received a tip that the owner of a local catering hall was expanding his one-room facility into a three-room hall. After hearing that it was to be a $2 million project and the owner wanted to install a sound system in each of the rooms, Webb gave him a call.
"I gave him some ideas on how to put a system in there," says Webb, "and he agreed to give me a couple of weddings - he was booking the DJs for his rooms. In addition, he wanted me to do his opening night. So all of a sudden, within four months of opening my company, I had one of the largest accounts in my market. I have a three-room, prestigious account."
But what was the key to convincing the caterer to book Webb?
"He wanted some permanency in terms of a sound system," says Webb. "I told him a lot of people just throw two speakers on a wall and call it a custom sound system. So if you're going to do that, I said you might as well put them on stands and take them down when you don't need them.
"One of the biggest complaints we always got, as DJs, was 'It's too loud,'" continues Webb. "You have two speakers up on stands, and you usually have tables near those speakers. Well guess what? For those two tables, it's usually way too loud, but for the rest of the room, it's fine. So I told him, 'Why don't we design systems where it concentrates the music on the dancefloor? So if you sit at any table in the room you can have a normal conversation.'"
Webb referred an engineer, who speced out the three rooms and told the owner what he should do. Then Webb jumped back in.
"I told [the owner] I'd make a deal. I said, 'You're spending two million dollars on this whole thing, so to finance another $35,000 on a sound system should be no problem. You finance the gear, and from day one I'll purchase it from you - on a monthly payment basis - and we'll be your house entertainment.' We made the deal."
For Webb's company, this impeccable sound system has enhanced the quality of every show. "There are two dual 18-inch subs built into the stage; four 15s, plus a horn hanging on each corner of the dancefloor, angled down at the floor," explains Webb. "So if you're sitting on the left side of the dancefloor, you can't hear the speakers because they're hanging over your head. But you can hear the two speakers across the floor, 25 feet away."
Such a configuration, besides insuring that just about every gig Webb's company performs sounds more like a nightclub than a mobile rig, also affords other advantages. "We don't carry any equipment to our gigs," says Webb. "I have a storage area in-house there, a locked room, I and my staff have keys, the consoles stay there. We're the only ones who use that sound system. Other DJs do play there, but you tell me how their system is going to compare to a system that was built for that room."
Last year, Party Time Entertainment booked nearly 400 gigs, a number that Webb is unconcerned with increasing. "No, I'm not looking to grow the number of jobs," he says. "Rather, I'd like to increase the quality of the shows. I'd love to eventually be the most expensive DJ company in our area."
Anyone can charge the highest price in the area. But how can they justify it? "Training is the key," says Webb, who requires his employees to carry a 160-page training manual to each gig. "In my manual there are scripts on what to say at weddings and how to teach the electric slide. My DJs who have less experience are required every week to come in with a one-on-one training session with me. We have group sessions every week and talk about what's going on out there."
One thing that Webb does to insure quality is enforce a strict paperwork policy. "My guys have to do paperwork at gigs," says Webb. "They fill out an event for, which asks, 'Did you have all the songs you needed? Did you preview them? What time did you arrive at the event? What time did you do set-up? Did you greet the client immediately upon their arrival? What was the response to the oldies - good or bad? What group dances did you do? I have them write down every song they play, with a timeline of when they play it."
But why the draconian measures?
"I got a couple of complaints from clients who said they didn't hear the songs they requested," says Webb. "I got tired of that. So I told my guys to do the paperwork, and if the complaints cease for six months, they won't have to do it anymore. But first time I get a complaint, we start again. If I get a complaint from a client who says, 'One of my guests didn't get one of their requests played,' I can look at the paperwork. If someone requests a song, my guys have to write down the name of the song, the artist, and who requested it. If it's requested by a member of the bridal party, it's marked 'BP'; if it's a client, it's marked 'C', and a family member is 'F'. That's the only way how I can get a really good feel for what went on at an event."