The Show Goes On

The Feld sisters work for a place that sells smiles — the circus — and it shows.

“We are fortunate to go to work in a place where people are happy to see us,” says Nicole Feld.

Her younger sister, Alana Feld, agrees, and adds that the ability to provide instant gratification to customers, especially children and families, is motivation to constantly improve the product. The Felds, plus Juliette Feld, the youngest sister, all hold the titles of executive vice president at Feld Entertainment Inc. The firm owns Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Disney on Ice and Monster Jam, among other shows.

“We are in the business of making people happy,” says Alana Feld. “People come to us to escape and create memories.”

The sisters, along with their father, Chairman and CEO Kenneth Feld, and several hundred other employees, hope to create some long-lasting memories for the business in 2013. A key parcel to the strategy behind that effort turns 1 year old this month: The Vienna, Va.-based company announced in January 2012 it will build a new production headquarters in Ellenton, on the north edge of the Manatee River in northeastern Manatee County. The announcement was a major local economic development coup.

The $20 million Feld headquarters transition project, like the circus, contains several tentacles. The arms include:
• Feld bought two buildings on a 47-acre site for $8.35 million in a deal that closed last spring. One building is a 100,000-square-foot office complex, while the other is 450,000 square feet of manufacturing and production space. The building was previously a wind turbine production facility for Siemens, and later, General Electric;
• Feld will consolidate facilities from Virginia, North Carolina and Palmetto, also in north Manatee County, into the new complex. It will spend at least $10 million on the renovation and move. There will be a display center for a century's worth of circus memorabilia and there will also be studios for rehearsals, training and set design;
• The project includes $3.3 million in state and county performance-based incentives, including $1.17 million from the Florida Qualified Targeted Industry fund and $1.5 million from Manatee County;
• The company projects it will add 235 jobs within five years, on top of the 148 employees it already has in Manatee County.
Some phases of the project could be completed by the summer, says Feld Entertainment spokesman Stephen Payne. “Things are going very well,” says Payne. “A move like this can be a lot, but there have been surprisingly few hiccups.”

Model behavior
While the business of building a new headquarters rolls along, the Feld sisters help run the business of the circus — a unique entertainment challenge. That's because a circus, like the name suggests, is a spectacle to put together. Costly, too. Most Feld Entertainment shows, says Alana Feld, run well into the millions of dollars to produce.

“The nature of live entertainment is always challenging,” says Alana Feld. “The logistics of it can't be compared to anything.”

One way the company deals with that is through intricate modeling. In fact, before every show hits the road, a team of Feld employees builds out every aspect of the show in a series of 1-inch miniature models. The leaders for each part of the show then go through the performance for the entire staff, from singers to ticket sales. The approach goes a long way toward avoiding mistakes, says Alana Feld. It also builds camaraderie with employees. “We get to know a lot of issues ahead of time,” she adds.

Outside forces also play a role in the company's strategy. Feld Entertainment's shows regularly go up against other entities that seek consumers' discretionary income, from cable TV to sporting events. The battle for those customers, says Alana Feld, is then squeezed by worries like gas prices, and globally, the value of the Euro. Says Feld: “We are competing against anything and everything.”

The company wins many of those battles. Around 30 million people attend one of Feld's 5,000 live entertainment shows every year. The company performs in more than 70 countries on six continents. A 2010 Washington Post story estimated Feld's revenues at $900 million a year, though executives decline to elaborate on specific sales.

Alana Feld says the company's biggest opportunity in the years ahead is global. For example, the 2008 acquisition of Live Nation motorsport's unit, including the popular Monster Jam, was partly done to build a new fan base in non-circus shows overseas. The acquisition also grew the overall business by a third.

'Proud transparency'
Another hurdle the company regularly faces is regulation — so much, in some respects, that the firm's survival stories trump what many other Gulf Coast businesses have gone through.

For instance, the national traveling circus the company produced last year was inspected more than 80 times by at least 15 government agencies and animal rights groups. The company has been accused of mistreating animals, especially elephants.

Feld executives and animal trainers, however, have long maintained they've always done more for animal care than the industry standard. The company, to that point, built the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation in Polk County in 1995. The $5 million facility, on 200 acres, is for conservation, breeding and education.

“We are very transparent about what we do,” says Payne, Feld's vice president of corporate communications. “But we are also very proud of what we do.”

The company, further, recently garnered national attention when it reached a $9.3 million settlement in a federal racketeering lawsuit with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The Dec. 28 agreement stems from a 2009 trial, when a judge ruled accusations of unfair animal treatment against Feld Entertainment were “manufactured litigation.” Feld attorneys successfully argued that activist groups paid a witness in the case, a onetime Feld employee. ASPCA, in the settlement, denied any wrongdoing.

Several other similar cases continue against a list of organizations that includes the Humane Society of the United States, the Fund for Animals and the Animal Welfare Institute. Feld executives are confident they will win out there, but the cost is steep: Payne says the decade-long litigation against ASPCA cost the company more than $20 million.

Kenneth Feld, in a statement, acknowledges principle also plays a role in the litigation. “These defendants attempted to destroy our family-owned business with a hired plaintiff who made statements that the court did not believe,” Feld says. “Animal activists have been attacking our family, our company, and our employees for decades because they oppose animals in circuses. This settlement is a vindication not just for the company but also for the dedicated men and women who spend their lives working and caring for all the animals with Ringling Bros. in the face of such targeted, malicious rhetoric.”

Sisterly love
Kenneth Feld, 64, has honed his circus passion over a lifetime of being in the family entertainment business. Feld's father, Irvin Feld, a prominent music concert promoter in the 1950s, bought Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey from the Ringling family in 1967. The younger Feld began to work for the business in 1970 and he took it over in 1984, when Irvin Feld died.

The three Feld sisters have worked in the business, officially, for several years, but have been around it since they were kids. Nicole Feld, 34, worked in the research and photography department at People Magazine before the lure of the circus grew too strong. She was an apprentice for her father before she went into her executive role, and now she concentrates on the artistic side of shows.

Alana Feld, meanwhile, focuses on the day-to-day business aspects of the company and Juliette Feld works on strategy. Alana Feld is 31, and Juliette Feld is 28.

The sisters are being groomed to take over the company someday, though Nicole Feld says her father still works fulltime, with few signs of slowing down. When he does, the sisters plan to plunge deeper into circus leadership.

“Everything about this business is exciting,” says Nicole Feld. “There is no such thing as a normal day.”