When opportunity knocks, Bryan Perl has a track record of answering.
Perl’s a serial entrepreneur with experience in hospitality, real estate and manufacturing.
“It’s always about a need,” he says. “When somebody can’t find something, I’m like, ‘Alright, there’s another business.’”
So when he received a call from a friend in the entertainment and live events industry, Perl answered yet again.
“They said this company is looking to buy a bunch of stuff, but they can’t find anybody to manufacture it,” Perl says. “It was just a spark of an idea and we ran with it.”
Spark Ops Metalworks, a full-service metal fabrication and metal manufacturing company in Fond du Lac, was formed in 2022 to answer the need for a truss component used in broadcast staging at sporting events and for major television networks such as NFL Network, FOX Sports, ESPN and UFC.
Owned by Bryan’s wife, Maria Perl, Spark Ops engineered a steel and aluminum truss component that provided vital support to the broadcast set at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas and the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix.
“The product bolts together in different configurations,” Perl explains. “It’s literally like a giant LEGO system.”
In April, the truss component received an official patent, representing the company’s first original product.
“We’re the two-by-fours of the entertainment industry,” Perl says. “You never see the internal wood structure of a house once it’s finished, and that’s typically what happens to our stuff. A lot of times people don’t even know that our stuff is being used in these structures.”
But that behind-the-scenes success is important to the Spark Ops team of 22 employees, Perl says.
“For our guys in the shop to know that what we’re working on is going to be in Vegas for the Super Bowl, it gets people excited.”
