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How Do I Choose the Right Event Production Company for My Corporate Event?
- Michal Orlowski
- May 16
- 11 min read
Written by Michal Orlowski, Co-Founder, Studio Cube Published: 1 May 2025 Last updated: 1 May 2025 Reading time: 10 minutes
Michal Orlowski is co-founder of Studio Cube, a London-based event production company established in 2014. Before founding Studio Cube, Michal spent ten years managing events on the day for other companies, which gave him a unique perspective on what happens when planning goes wrong and production teams are not properly aligned. That experience is the foundation of everything Studio Cube does. Over the past decade, Michal has overseen the production of more than 500 events across London and internationally for clients including Christian Dior, Club Monaco and Dr. Barbara Sturm.
Most corporate clients who come to us for the first time have already made at least one mistake in how they have approached finding an event production company. Not because they are not smart or experienced. But because nobody ever told them what to actually look for.
This post is my attempt to fix that. It is based on ten years of producing events in London, thousands of client conversations and a very clear picture of what separates the events that work from the ones that do not.
It is also honest in a way that most event company content is not. Because I think you deserve a straight answer.
START WITH CLARITY BEFORE YOU START LOOKING
The mistake most corporate clients make before they even start looking.
The single biggest mistake I see corporate clients make when looking for an event production company is arriving at the conversation without a clear brief.
Not a detailed brief. Not a fully costed plan. Just a clear sense of three things. What you want to achieve with the event. Who is going to be there. And roughly what budget you have to work with.
Some clients arrive with none of these things properly defined. They have a vague idea of the kind of event they want. They have no clear objective beyond holding an event. And they have no realistic sense of what their budget will actually buy them. The result is a guesswork brief that produces guesswork quotes and ultimately an event that does not quite achieve what anyone hoped it would.
Organising an event is very easy once you know what you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to achieve just an event for the sake of holding an event, it becomes very difficult to produce anything genuinely good. We have too many ideas, too many directions and no clear filter for deciding which ones are right.
Before you approach a single event production company, sit down and answer these three questions as honestly as you can. What is this event for? What do I want the people in the room to feel, do or think differently after attending it? And what is my realistic budget? The answers do not need to be precise. But they need to exist.
WHAT A GREAT EVENT PRODUCTION COMPANY ACTUALLY DOES
What people think event production involves versus what it actually involves.
People seem to think that organising an event is straightforward. You find a venue. You find a caterer. You get a cheap quote for lighting. And everything magically comes together on the day.
The reality is very different.
What a production company does for you is give you peace of mind. They are not there simply to find you a caterer or a venue or an AV supplier. They are there to make sure that all of those companies are reputable, that all the suppliers are talking to each other and that every element of the production is working towards the same outcome.
Here is the thing that most people never realise. It is very hard to see what an event production company does if the event goes well. Because when everything works flawlessly, you do not see the grit, the experience, the hard work, the chaos behind the scenes and the crisis management that went into making it look effortless. You just see a great event.
That invisibility is not a sign that nothing happened. It is a sign that the right people were in the right place doing the right things at the right time.
Before I started Studio Cube I spent ten years managing events on the day for other companies. I had no input into the planning. I just turned up and ran them. And I saw very clearly what happens when planning is not right, when suppliers are not properly briefed and when not enough effort goes into the stage before the event. Things that looked great on paper fell apart in reality. I once walked into a room that the floor plan showed had plenty of space, only to discover that once the tables and chairs were inside there was no room to swing a cat. The plan said one thing. Reality said something completely different.
That is why planning matters. Not hoping for the best. Actually planning. Plan A in place. Plan B in place. And the experience to know when to switch between them.
THE RIGHT COMPANY ASKS MORE QUESTIONS THAN YOU DO
The single best way to identify a great event production company.
Here is something that most articles about choosing an event production company will never tell you. The questions should be asked by the event company, not by you.
When you sit down with a production company for the first time, the quality of the questions they ask you tells you everything about whether they actually know what they are doing. A great event company will ask you what you are trying to achieve. They will ask what the big dream is. They will ask how you want your guests to feel when they leave. They will ask questions you had not even thought about when you started putting the event together.
A mediocre event company will send you an impersonal quote that does not reflect anything specific about your brief, your audience or your objectives.
When I am assessing whether a client is the right fit for Studio Cube, I love it when they have a vision. The vision can be vague. It can be as simple as a feeling they want their guests to have. As long as there is an objective, I can work with it. What I cannot work with is an event for the sake of an event with no clear sense of what it needs to achieve.
But the same applies in reverse. When you are assessing whether an event production company is right for you, the ones worth hiring are the ones who ask you the questions that help them understand your objective. Not the ones who just take your headcount and your date and send you a quote.
HOW TO COMPARE COMPANIES WHEN THE QUOTES ALL LOOK SIMILAR
How to choose between three event production companies when all the quotes look equally good.
This is one of the hardest decisions in the process and one that most clients find genuinely difficult. All three quotes may look great on paper. All three companies may have equally impressive case studies. All three may promise the same things in broadly similar language.
My advice is to go with your gut feeling.
Who did you have the easiest conversation with? Who seemed to be on the same wavelength? Who genuinely cared about your event rather than just about winning the contract? Who asked you questions that made you think harder about what you were trying to achieve?
The event production company you choose is going to be very close to you for the weeks or months leading up to your event. You are going to be in regular contact with them. You are going to rely on them to solve problems you have not anticipated yet. You are going to trust them with something that reflects on your professional reputation.
The technical quality of the quote matters. The experience matters. The case studies matter. But so does the feeling you get from the people who are going to be running your event. Do not dismiss that feeling. In my experience it is one of the most reliable indicators of how the relationship will work.
WHAT SEPARATES GREAT FROM MEDIOCRE
What actually separates a great event production company from a mediocre one.
Event management is crisis management.
That is not a dramatic statement. It is just the reality of working with humans, suppliers, venues and live events. Things go wrong. A supplier gets a date wrong and the glassware that should be there today is apparently arriving next week because of a mix-up in the paperwork. Equipment hire companies make mistakes. Caterers miscommunicate with kitchen teams. Venue managers change the briefing between your site visit and event day.
What a great event production company does in those moments is resolve the problem before you know it exists. We have the personal connections with suppliers that mean when something goes wrong, they will sort it for us quickly because of the relationship we have built with them over years. We have the experience to know what the backup option is before we need it. And we have the operational instinct to make the right call in the moment without having to escalate it to the client.
The difference between a great production company and a mediocre one is not that the great one never faces problems. It is that when problems happen the great one solves them invisibly and the mediocre one calls you in a panic.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE BEEN BURNED BEFORE
If a previous event production company let you down, here is what to do differently.
If you have worked with an event production company before and it did not go well, the most useful thing you can do before choosing the next one is understand why.
Was it because the company did not have enough experience? Did they not have the supplier contacts to deliver what they promised? Did they ask you enough questions at the start? Did they really understand what you were trying to achieve?
Whatever the reason, the thing to do differently next time is be very specific about your objectives from the very first conversation and ask the company not just what they are going to build but how they are going to get there.
Producing an event is like building a house. You want to know what the end product will look like before the first brick is laid. A good event production company should be able to show you, in detail, how they are going to get from your brief to your event. The concept, the suppliers, the timeline, the contingency planning, the on-site management. Not just the finished picture but the process that produces it.
If a company cannot tell you clearly how they will get there, the chances are they do not fully know yet. And that is a risk worth taking seriously before you sign a contract.
BE HONEST ABOUT YOUR BUDGET
The single piece of advice that would make every corporate event better.
Be honest about your budget. That is it. That is the advice. It sounds obvious. Almost nobody does it.
Clients routinely understate their budget because they are worried the event company will spend up to whatever number they give. And event companies routinely produce proposals that do not reflect realistic costs because they do not know what the client actually has to work with.
The result is a first proposal that misses the mark, a second round of conversations that wastes everyone's time and a final brief that is produced under time pressure with less creative thinking than it deserved.
When you tell an event production company your real budget, they can tell you honestly what is achievable within it and where the trade-offs are. You might not be able to have everything you want. But you will get the best possible version of what your budget will buy. And you will get there much faster.
The equivalent of expecting a Ferrari on a Fabia budget exists in events just as it does in every other industry. A good production company will tell you this directly rather than taking your brief, producing a proposal and then managing your expectations downwards when the quote comes back. Honesty at the start of the process saves everyone a significant amount of time, money and frustration.
THE PLANNING IS EVERYTHING
Why the planning stage is the most important part of any corporate event.
Before I founded Studio Cube I spent ten years running events on the day for other companies. I was very good at it. I knew how to hit the ground running from load-in. I knew how to manage a team, keep suppliers on track and solve the problems that inevitably arose during the day.
But I had no input into the planning. And what those ten years showed me, repeatedly and clearly, was what happens when the planning is not right.
A room with plenty of space on the floor plan and no room to swing a cat once the furniture went in. Suppliers who had been given different information and arrived on the day working towards different outcomes. Timelines that looked realistic on paper and collapsed in practice the moment the first thing ran slightly late.
You cannot just hope for the best when you are producing an event. You have to actually plan. Properly. With enough time, enough experience and enough attention to the details that are easy to overlook when you are looking at a spreadsheet rather than standing in the room.
Plan A needs to be right. Plan B needs to exist. And the person running the event on the day needs to have been part of the planning from the start, not handed a brief the week before and expected to deliver it from scratch.
That is why I built Studio Cube the way I did. Because I had seen too many times what the gap between planning and production looks like when it is not properly closed.
A FINAL THOUGHT ON STANDARDS
What standards actually mean in event production.
In the events industry we always strive for high standards. But different budgets produce different outcomes and it is worth being honest about that.
You would not expect a Ferrari if your budget is a Fabia. The same is true in events. The budget determines what is achievable. What should not change regardless of budget is the rigour of the planning, the quality of the communication, the honesty of the relationship and the commitment of the team running the event on the day.
The difference between luxury brand events and standard corporate events is often not the production values. It is the degree to which the client cares about the experience their audience has. Luxury brands tend to focus more on the feeling of the event, on the sensory experience, on the details that make a guest feel a certain way. Some corporate clients just want a good party where food, drink and fun are the objective. Neither is wrong. They are just different briefs that call for different approaches.
What makes a great event production company great is the ability to understand which brief they are working on and to deliver the right version of excellent for that specific client, that specific audience and that specific objective.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
About Michal Orlowski
Michal Orlowski is co-founder of Studio Cube, a London-based event production company established in 2014. Before founding Studio Cube, Michal spent ten years managing events on the day for other companies, which gave him a unique and honest perspective on what happens when planning, production and staffing are not properly aligned. Over the past decade, Michal has overseen the production of more than 500 events across London and internationally for clients including Christian Dior, Club Monaco and Dr. Barbara Sturm.
ABOUT STUDIO CUBE
About Studio Cube
Studio Cube is a full-service event production company based in London, established in 2014. We produce corporate events, product launches, brand activations, conferences, award ceremonies, gala dinners and in-store events for corporate brands and marketing teams across London and the UK. Our services cover creative design, technical production, event management, venue sourcing, catering and event staffing, all managed in-house from brief to close-down.
Studio Cube is based at the Old Biscuit Factory, 100 Clements Road, London SE16 4DG.
Website: www.studiocubeevents.com
Email: hello@studiocubeevents.com
Phone: 0203 488 3386
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