In 2018, George Birnbaum, CEO and Founder of Gemstone Media, visited the SBDC at UNF. He met with business consultant Cathy Hagan to develop a transition plan to buy out his business partner. Cathy provided George with a preliminary business valuation and armed him with information on how to move forward once his partner was ready to exit. Fast forward to 2020, implementing the plan made it possible to pivot when the pandemic added a new twist to the business model. Gemstone is a full-service media/television production company with deep creative and technical capabilities. They create video to help their customers share their message through storytelling. The sports and entertainment industry had been the primary market for video production – from the NFL to major league baseball, the Jacksonville Iceman to Monster Trucks, the ESPN to the SEC – all of which came to a grinding halt in March 2020.
Like most businesses during this time, Gemstone started working from home to minimize contact with people. In the meantime, they lost close to $250K in a two-day span with the sports and entertainment industry. Fortunately, business in the first quarter of 2020 was very good so when cancellations started in March 2020, the company survived. George realized he needed to pivot to continue to succeed, so he decided to bring on an idea he had over three years ago - live streaming funerals. The company has been doing live streaming for almost ten years so an obvious addition. Attendance at funerals and memorial services has been impacted by the restrictions on travel and the requirement of social distancing due to the virus.
Gemstone contacted a local funeral home that’s affiliated with one of the largest funeral service providers in the country. They struck a deal to facilitate services in Jacksonville, Orlando and West Palm Beach. They recently added Tallahassee, the Panhandle, Tampa and Miami locations. Since launching this service, Gemstone has done over 250 funerals, streaming four to five funerals every week. As a result, George has been able to keep his staff and small team of freelancers busy – and add lost revenues to the bottom line. In addition to funerals, Gemstone has been providing other virtual events including weddings, a Jaguars tailgating event for UNF alumni that included a backstage tour and the annual oyster roast for the Riverkeepers.
They have signed on with USF to cover all their sporting events (except football) and are getting ready to stream games for the Jacksonville Iceman. Gemstone has also worked with the SBDC at UNF to video client success stories. Actually, Gemstone was one of these stories, including a video of George talking with Cathy via Zoom at https://vimeo.com/427882530 . From this video, the State FSBDC shared with media and CNBC did another video highlighting Gemstone’s “pivot” at https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/07/09/entrepreneur-shifts-from-broadcasting-live-sports-to-streaming-funerals.html
“Cathy and the SBDC helped me make a lot of decisions about much needed changes to our business. including the dissolution of a partnership,” said George. “This was an important part of our plans for growth. And as it turned out, a plan to create a strategy to survive – and thrive – during the impact of COVID.”
