dimensional innovations’ creations — and growth ......di also added cutting-edge use of oled...

JANUARY 27, 2017

This article appeared in the Kansas City Business Journal on January 27, 2017 on pages 1 & 12-17. It has been reprinted by the Kansas City Business Journal and further reproduction by any other party is strictly prohibited. Copyright ©2017 Kansas City Business Journal, 1100 Main Street, Suite 210, Kansas City MO 64105-5123

KANSAS CITY BUSINESS JOURNAL

DIMENSIONAL INNOVATIONS’ CREATIONS — AND

GROWTH — CHALLENGE THE IMAGINATION. PAGES 12-17

COVER STORY

Between a stretch of Merriam Drive and railroad tracks in northern Overland Park lie the offices of

Dimensional Innovations. With concrete-slab walls studded with docks, it looks like a million other

industrial buildings — until you go inside.

Dimensional Innovations is a magic place where imagination becomes reality. On any given day,

employees might be working on a replica of the Death Star from “Star Wars,” a giant goalie mask or a dinosaur.

Technology adds another dimension to the company’s work. An interactive exhibit for a museum combines

a motorcycle with virtual reality technology to let people experience jumping the bike over buses like Evel

Knievel. For another project, a 360-degree video lets users see what it’s like to skydive without ever leaving the

ground. Dimensional Innovations’ own story is as dream-come-true as some of its projects.

BY JAMES DORNBROOK | [email protected] | 816-777-2215 | @DORNZKCBJ

JANUARY 27, 2017



The company was founded in 1993 as a small sign shop. After landing AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. as a client, Dimensional Innovations let its clients’ imaginations lead it to addi-tional, larger and more varied projects.

Today, DI’s client list includes a lineup of well-known companies, institutions and sports teams from throughout the area and nationwide. Sales have grown 25 percent a year for the past four years, resulting in a com-pany with 218 employees and revenue of $31 million. DI has outgrown its 75,000-square-foot industrial build-ing and is looking for additional space.

The growth is a result of DI’s work — but also of its approach to what it does and how it works with clients.

“(We have a) saying around here that we want clients and not projects,” CEO Tucker Trotter said. “We don’t want to finish a project and then never meet with that client again. What we want to do is get to know a client and their brand and then do work with them for years.

“AMC Entertainment is a good example. They were our very first client, and we still work with them today. We’re very proud of that and

want to find more relationships like that. It takes work, but it’s been a big, foundational piece of our growth.”

Building the team

If you’ve been around Kansas City for long, you’ve probably seen DI’s work. It helped transform the exterior of the Kansas City Public Library’s down-town garage into a giant bookshelf of literary classics and, more recently, helped produce the modern stops for the Kansas City streetcar.

DI’s creativity can be seen in the waiting room and gift shop at Chil-dren’s Mercy, in exhibits at the Nation-al World War I and Prairiefire muse-ums, in the Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Fame and throughout AMC Entertain-ment’s Leawood headquarters.

COO Tom Collins described the company’s growth as a progression. The sign business morphed into design and fabrication of other advertising-related projects and architectural fea-tures. Technological skills based in sign work led to interactive exhibits. Design work opened other doors and kept the fabrication shop humming.

“We’ve gone from starting in the world of architectural signage in the

theater industry 20 years ago to add-ing the sports world with more than 100 professional sports franchise and college clients, to now even moving into health care and corporate head-quarters experiences, as well,” Collins said.

What sets DI apart from compet-itors is its ability to go from idea to drawing to design to fabrication — all in-house. To deliver this end-to-end service, it employs interior designers, industri-al designers, graphic designers, envi-ronmental designers, architects, weld-ers, sculptors, technical specialists, programmers, app developers, web-site developers, audio-visual people, installers, printers, engineers, draft-ers, CNC operators and people from a variety of other trades.

“It is rare that you find a company that can excel in such a wide area of skills,” said Jenny Haag, senior man-ager of stadium partnerships for Min-nesota Vikings Football LLC. “A lot of times you’ll find a company that can excel on the design side and has really big thinkers, but they don’t fabricate or execute well. Then you find com-panies that are really good at fabrica-tion, execution and installation, but maybe they don’t have strength in design. DI is one of the few compa-nies out there that can do it all and do it all very well.”

Scoring with fans

The company’s recent work with the Vikings is a prime example of DI’s methods and capabilities.

When DI officials heard that the Vikings were building a new stadium,

PHOTO BY ANDREW GRUMKE | ILLUSTRATION BY ALICIA KRAMME

Dimensional Innovations COO Tom Collins (left) and CEO Tucker Trotter stand inside a project being fabricated at the company’s Overland Park location.

DIMENSIONAL INNOVATIONSFounded: 1993

Location: 3421 Merriam Drive, Overland Park, KS 66203

Revenue: $31 million

Employees: 218

First client: AMC Entertainment

R CLOSER LOOK

JANUARY 27, 2017



they contacted the team and shared a portfolio of projects done for other sports teams. That elicited an invitation to help the team brainstorm how the Vikings would use space within the stadium and eventually delivered a huge proj-ect for DI.

The Minnesota Vikings project started like all of DI’s projects, with the design team taking time to get to know the client, what was important to the team and what mes-sage it wanted to convey. Discussions brought about a list of words and phrases that epitomized the client’s values and ideals — and guided DI in finding designs and materi-als fitting the imagery those words create.

The Vikings Voyage is a visual and technological tour de force. Fans learn the history of their team through exhibits like a room with 1,004 silver footballs suspended from the ceiling — symbolizing the record number of catches made by Vikings great Chris Carter. Interactive exhibits pit fans against Vikings players and one another in such physical

tests as the shuttle run and stationary high jump. In anoth-er exhibit, fans don virtual reality goggles to see what it’s like to catch a pass on the field.

DI also added cutting-edge use of OLED screen tech-nology, which allows it to put a touch screen on just about any surface. In one Vikings Voyage exhibit, fans can point to parts of a team uniform and pads to see displays detail-ing how the equipment protects players.

Each visitor gets a Vikings-branded RFID bracelet, which lets fans check in at each exhibit to gain points and compete against other fans. The RFID technology also helps DI and the Vikings track which exhibits are most popular.

“It’s just exciting for us to get that kind of feedback to see which interactives were the most effective, which were underutilized and what we could do with the content to make them better in the future,” Trotter said. “It just gives us a huge advantage to be able to track that data, and we can show future clients how that stuff really matters to us.”

ANDREW GRUMKE

Dimensional Innovations started as a small sign shop that soon morphed into design and fabrication of other advertising-related projects and architectural features. Here, an employee wires a section of a sign.

ANDREW GRUMKE

Dimensional Innovations employs several types of designers — everything from graphic to interior to interaction.

GROWING PAINS

MORE PROJECTS, MORE EMPLOYEES

HAVE COMPANY LOOKING FOR A

LARGER HOMEWith its sales growing 25 percent a year, physical space has become a problem for Dimensional Innovations. The company’s 75,000-square-foot building at 3421 Merriam Drive in Overland Park is bursting at the seams.

To relieve a bit of the crunch, Dimensional Innovations is moving 60 to 70 people from its core sign business to a new facility so that operation — and the entire company — has room to keep growing.

“When you visit here, you see that there is no space and nowhere to park,” CEO Tucker Trotter said. “So we’re just trying to find a bit of room to grow. We’re looking at this as a fairly short-term thing because ideally we’d like to get the groups back together in the future. But we’re also excited to see how the two groups work independently of each other.”

Trotter said that along with the move, the company will invest in new trucks and production equipment to ensure that workers in both facilities have the best, most state-of-the-art equipment.

This isn’t the first time DI has had to deal with a lack of space. In 2015, it moved out a spinoff solid

surface business called Shield Casework, freeing up 20,000 square feet. DI used that space to hire more designers, build out an interactive exhibits department, create a laboratory for research and development of new technology and house a new spinoff video business called RockBox.

The long-term plan is to find a new facility where DI can bring everyone under the same roof again because one of the company’s strengths is the teamwork it has in-house from design through fabrication. Trotter said that finding space is a challenge, though, because DI needs a building that has a lot of offices for its design teams and plenty of production space for its fabrication, interactive and technology-based operations.

“We’ve been looking at the market and starting to understand what a complex puzzle that is,” he said. “What makes us unique is the building type we have has a lot of offices and a lot of production space. It’s hard to find existing buildings out there that are big enough. So we’ve got some big decisions to make in our near future.”– James Dornbrook

JANUARY 27, 2017



A LARGER-THAN-LIFE PORTFOLIOYou need not look far for examples of Dimensional Innovations’ projects in Kansas City.

Here are some highlights of recent area projects.

PHOTOS CONTRIBUTED BY DIMENSIONAL INNOVATIONS

Dimensional Innovations value-engineered and fabricated the 13 shelters along the Kansas City streetcar route.

Dimensional Innovations had a hand in many of the exhibits at the Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame, including this ash wood wall. The wall is engraved with area newspaper headlines dating to 1884.

COVER STORY

Dimensional Innovations created interactive exhibits for the Museum at Prairiefire in Overland Park.

DI CEO Tucker Trotter describes working on the Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball locker room as a “dream job.”

Creating a space that would wow recruits was key to DI’s vision for the Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball locker room.

The streetcar route’s 16 marker signs are Dimensional Innovations creations.

DI made this Royals Hall of Fame feature out of 3,154 major league baseballs, representing each of George Brett’s hits.

DI engineered and fabricated the ceiling elements — white suspended fins lit by programmable, changing LEDs — in the new Children’s Mercy hospital gift shop.

JANUARY 27, 2017



DIMENSIONAL INNOVATIONS

This room at the Minnesota Vikings’ stadium features 1,004 silver footballs suspended from the ceiling — symbolizing the record number of catches made by Vikings great Chris Carter.


DI incorporates OLED screen technology in this uniform display at the Vikings’ fan experience space..


An interactive exhibit challenges Vikings fans with a high-jump test.

dimensional innovations’ creations — and growth ......di also added cutting-edge use of oled...

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