After a rough 18 months, the live entertainment industry is getting back on its feet with Broadway shows opening and more tours getting back out on the road. However, the pandemic has caused shortages of equipment because of manufacturing and shipping disruptions making putting together an event more time consuming and expensive than before. A new platform, Prozaar, aims to smooth out those issues by giving producers direct access to multiple suppliers and tools that will make sourcing easier than before.
Prozaar is the brainchild of Girts Pütelis, who has 17 years’ experience in the industry including stints at LiteCom Group, PRG, and Sweden’s Music and Lights, working on festivals, tours, and fashion and corporate events . Pütelis says, “The business idea was born way before the pandemic because it is very time-consuming to source equipment and crew and manage suppliers for multiple productions at once.” The new B2B trading platform eliminates subcontractors and allows users to post equipment requests that are then seen directly by suppliers, or staffing requests that freelancers and staffing companies can apply for. The Covid shutdown provided Pütelis with the time to work on the project, and Prozaar had a soft launch last October when it was thought that the pandemic was waning. Since then, the industry has been a little more cautious but the platform has grown organically as professionals see it as an opportunity to procure equipment and staff in a time of uncertainty. Pütelis says, “The goal is to save time and costs by directly connecting requestors with suppliers via a digital trading network.”
Prozaar allows members to post requests for multiple types of resources: rental equipment, crew, services, consumables, transport, and even locations. Once the request is finished and has been made public, it is available to all registered suppliers and freelancers (if the request is not restricted to specific suppliers), who can filter requests by category. The platform enables members to create order lists to share with suppliers and track items while maintaining an overview of the budget for the event. There is also a library of default lists to help members stay on track for critical items, from audio to special effects to video production and broadcasting.
The library makes it easy to post requests specifically for each department. For example, lighting suppliers can immediately find requests relevant to them and large rental houses can reply with offers for each department.
For members looking for crew, Prozaar verifies freelancers’ identity, experience, insurance, and any certification. Endorsements for freelancers can only be made by other verified platform members.
It is free to sign up for a Prozaar account and post requests, but there are different levels of membership that enable users to browse requests and submit offers.
Currently, most of the requests are from large production companies in regions where equipment is not easily available, production companies that are willing to work with multiple suppliers for a single production to get what they need, and rental houses looking for hard to find items.
New features in the works include an urgent notification system to send to department- or location-specific suppliers if a tour is on the road and a piece of equipment breaks or needs replacing.. Other features that will be introduced are virtual assistants, group chats to coordinate multiple vendors on one order, a calendar app, and customized notifications, to filter incoming requests.