Medialease recently celebrated twenty years in business, what a milestone!
The business, based in Daventry, is a specialist asset finance broker for the media, broadcast and live events industries.
Managing Director Paul Robson completed Medialease’s first ever agreement in December 2001. Their first official customer was Grand Central Sound Studios, and they are still a customer to this day.
Before setting up Medialease Paul originally got into the leasing industry by arranging asset finance on huge excavators for open cast coal miners in Scotland and the North (who couldn’t pay £5million for the required excavators and dump trucks). While not passionate about that industry this was an excellent introduction to the benefits of leasing and Paul felt a draw to this role of helping customers find finance for investment in kit.
After a few years Paul moved companies to work within an industry he did have a real passion for – music recording. When Paul decided to branch out on his own and created Medialease he expanded his business to incorporate Broadcast, Post-Production and then the live sector – and thus was born Medialease. Whilst they have branched out further over the years these core sectors still feature heavily, and they remain really passionate about working with industry professionals and helping industry causes such as BackUp – The Technical Entertainment Charity (of which Paul is a trustee).
Twenty years of business has seen much change in the technology demands of the Broadcast, Post and Live Events industries (not to mention the huge changes seen during the Covid lockdowns). They’ve seen huge progression in the sheer scale of productions deployed in gigs and concert touring, which has led to much greater investment in technology. Furthermore, the Broadcast market has moved on hugely too with the rise of XR virtual studios. Technology demand advances with time but the need to fund those demands doesn’t change!
At the end of 2021, following a period of exceptional growth Medialease had their best three quarters ever which seemed very fitting for their twentieth year. When the business first started it was just the MD Paul on his own, now the team has grown to ten. Last year the team grew further, and Paul brought in Paul Donkin as Business Development Director to support their increased growth and meet the growing ambitions of the business.
Here’s to another twenty years!
