The Pivot Story

Jeremy Fleming and his wife, Tabitha, run Australia’s pre-eminent stage design company, Stagekings. Revered in the arts, fashion, music and television industries for their extravagantly glorious sets (think Australian Ninja Warrior and that gives you a cheeky idea), Stagekings was the go-to stage design company in our fun-loving country.

But then something very un-fun came about to spoil the party: the COVID-19 crisis, and with it came a giant, terrifying tear-down of the arts industry. In a matter of hours, Jeremy and Tabitha were left with the daunting reality that their dream could well be over. 

Festivals were cancelled, stores were slammed shut and TV shows were canned. It wasn’t before long that the husband and wife duo made the tragic decision to let go of their trusted team.

From the rubble came a spark of inspiration…

In our trying times, nothing is more important than resilience: the ability to pick yourself up out of a dirty hole and say, ‘you know what? I’m going to give this a crack regardless of the BS life has thrown at me’.

In the hours following the flurry of cancellations dumped upon Stagekings, Jeremy and Tabitha knew they had to swim or sink, and that they would be doing one or the other very quickly.

Overnight, our Head of Production, the legendary Mick Jessop, came up with a design that has rapidly expanded into the now-expansive and iconic ‘IsoKing’ home furniture range. Flat-pack, fast-to-assemble slot-together designs made from beautiful birchwood ply, with no need for fixings, tools or DIY skills to put them together.

The stunning collection quickly became a favourite of Aussie homeworkers, and IsoKing was able to hire 70 new employees (all out of work event crew), as well as donate $100,000 to Support Act, Australia’s support network for artists in difficult times.

The rise of ISOKING

The IsoKing desk was an instant hit with the Australian public, and we started to receive an onslaught of media attention, who were desperate for a feel-good story in amongst the public despair of COVID-19. More than 200 interviews and podcasts later, and Jeremy is still getting asked to talk about our pivot every week!

In the first year of business, we made nearly 40,000 IsoKing products and sent them across Australia to thousands of new awesome customers. But by far the best bit for us is how the knock-on effect of this success has been helping out our event colleagues at a time when they really need it.

We increased our workforce from twelve to over seventy people working across four states, re-employing our entire staff base and quickly adding to the team with all kinds of highly-skilled event freelancers who found themselves out of work due to COVID-19. 

Twelve months on and after creating the work-from-home IsoKing range, which we’re still super proud of, people are still buying like crazy and which was the perfect product to help solve a very specific problem at particular moment in time (that none of us will forget), we can now take our creativity to the next level and release a truly beautiful and functional range of products for your home.

This new range is a representation of how we feel right now. Inspired, progressive and grateful!