“The Show Will Go On”
By Annabel Ward Owner - FANCY ENTERTAINMENT St Patrick’s Day in the year 2020. I sigh at another successful gig under the belt and giggle with one of my best performers, as he sits next to me dressed in green from head to toe, as a very convincing leprechaun. We chat about upcoming exciting plans, who are cast in what roles on which jobs and how this is sure to be Fancy Entertainment’s most successful year to date. Fast forward a week. Theatre curtains close indefinitely, the phone rings continuously to deliver bad news, the arts, entertainment and leisure sectors are brought to their knees and suddenly I am taken over by one thought. Is Fancy finished? I’m stubborn, ask my family. And what is normally considered to be a flaw of mine comes into it’s own as I refuse to let this pandemic be the reason my business fails. I did what every other company director did on the first day of lockdown which was grab a notebook and pen and scribble a hundred ideas of how to re-invent my business whilst sticking to the new rules in place. Like so many others in this industry, we fell through the cracks with no grants and no support so my desperate bullet pointed list was of a considerable length. I’ve always been a leader and certainly not someone to follow trends which resulted in many funny looks in the school playground during my youth. However, this was the first thing I did. I followed a host of businesses and made the most of our online presence by becoming virtual.
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Our first hurdle came pretty quickly. We have never been and never will be a birthday party company as the market is already saturated with perfectly good princess party suppliers and independent children’s entertainers. It seemed a lost cause to muscle into the line of entertainment companies offering doorstep visits and virtual parties, when it isn’t necessarily our domain. And with the likelihood of any other sort of events happening during lockdown becoming bleaker and bleaker, we had to take a different path. Fancy Entertainment has always been different. I soon realised the only way to get through this crisis was with integrity to the Fancy brand and to not blindly follow the herd. Annabel Ward
