Feature
Issue No. 38 - December/January 07/08
Novatech boys success sounds good
Leko and Milenko Novakovic grew up in Elizabeth and Leko believes they could easily have “gone down the wrong path”. Instead, both became involved in DJ-ing and worked at Derringers Music in formative years before moving on to manage in-house production work at Adelaide’s Heaven nightclub.
The genesis of their now-booming event production business Novatech was when they started taking external jobs, hiring the equipment needed.
“We also maintained equipment at different venues, which provided steady income and we were able to save up to buy our own. We hired lockup storage and bluffed our way through on the quality of our work - clients believed we were a much bigger company,” Leko says.
These ‘garage band’ days ended six years ago, when Novatech moved into a shopfront. Now the enterprise has outgrown its second premises, in Mile End, and is looking for a new home for its 22 staff and $4million equipment suite.
Novatech provides the technical equipment and solutions for large events, public and private, in corporate, entertainment and sports sectors. Contracts have included Carols By Candlelight, the Festival Fringe, cricket Tests, Adelaide United soccer and notably the World Police and Fire Games, where the local firm beat the Sydney Olympics contract winners to win the job.
“It was a point of difference that we provided all services,” Leko says. “When we started there were lighting firms and sound firms but nobody who provided a whole solution.
In the past six years a lot more competition has come up but we did it first.”
Novatech has six or seven competitors for corporate work, three competitors (and the venues themselves) for entertainment jobs. Interstate firms will bid on work for as few as 800 people if the price is right. “They know what the dollars are,” Leko says.
Some organisers of big touring acts still need to convinced of Novatech’s capabilities, but many of the...
