Henric Larsson
"My mum was an assistant at a small stock brokering firm, she asked them if I could work there during my summer vacation, which I did and continued on because they needed help. I was sorting papers and doing this and that for a very long time. In the end what I helped them with was company analysis, they trained me on different models when I was 16 and then I managed to get about 50 companies on the Stockholm exchange to follow. Every week we would do a simple evaluation model which allowed clients to see if something was under or over valued."
"Working in the stock brokering industry and seeing the good times and the decline it was really like the movie American Psycho with the character Patrick Bateman, everybody was that kind of profile! So I just felt like, is this adding any value to the world at all? They thought they were the kings of the world but they are just parasites I felt after a while, the world would be better without them. They don't add any value to the world at all. I felt I needed a big change, so that is why I went into working with handicapped people. It was not like I wanted to do that from a young age, it was more like I wanted to get away from something more than I wanted to get to something."
"So after I left the stock brokering firm I started working with handicapped people. For 2 years after I worked as a personal assistant with handicapped people in the south of Stockholm. That was a great job. After 2 years there I left because I could not stand my colleagues, 38 year old women smoking and always complaining!"
The 2 years that Henric spent working with handicapped people allowed him to reevaluate what was important to him and ultimately what he wanted to do with his life long term. After an opportunity in the post production industry presented itself through a friend, Henric grabbed it with both hands and created Chimney.
"We opened Chimney in July 1996, the first time I went home to my partner was around christmas because we had to pay off our massive debt in 6 months! Which we actually managed to do, and still to this day I do not understand how we did it. So it was all paid off and we celebrated by ordering another Flame one day before christmas! Back then we were just 6 people in Stockholm and we were only doing commercials and pop videos. There was a lot of local geographical markets which had no local options of any quality and clients where still travelling to London to complete the post, so we managed to get a lot of clients from Norway and Poland to fly to Stockholm. Then we realised where this was heading, if we did not offer anything in those local areas we would loose that client base. So we then decided 2 years after we opened in 1998 that we opened up in Norway and in Warsaw."
With Henric's hands on approach and his dedication to both the creative output and also the running of a profitable company has enabled Chimney to succeed and expand. In 2008 Henric re-structured the business to allow for his company to be completely integrated across all sites, this enabled Henric to re-package Chimney's services and utilise the companies resources no matter the location.
"People want to work for a company that is profitable not just a company that makes the coolest VFX work. So in 2008 we got everybody on board and re-structured things, this re-structure meant 2008 was the best year ever for us since we started and 2009 was even better, 2010 even better, same with 2011 and the year (2012) is looking great. We have done this while everybody else has been hurting, that is why we get all staff to sign up to the systems."
"Even though I am the CEO and the founder I don't have an office, I sit in the kitchen area here where 40-50 clients have lunch every day and I also meet them by the coffee machine 5 times a day whilst there here working, and also my staff. I am still extremely involved in production. I still supervise on set, because I think it is very important to have close contact with the clients because you need to know what their challenges are, not just solve the problems but also for the opportunities that you can fulfil for them if you are a really good partner."
"I want to run a profitable company because its a challenge, its the whole competition thing, did you mange to build a big and profitable company through these tough times? That is what drives me not the cash."
"In Stockholm at 9.30 in the morning all of the directors, DOPs and producers come in to have breakfast and the sit in during all the sessions, in the Flame, in the grading and in the offline. So they attend every single hour of the sessions and that is very different to all of our other markets. That keeps us in very close contacts with the clients"
"Out of all of our business, long standing contract clients account for about 20%, so this means that every job we do we have to deliver exceptional service for clients to come back. Every job is a pitch, the last job delivery is the pitch for the next job. I think that is the success factor, we really do care a lot about every single project."
"We are not a VFX shop, we are a complete post shop, we do everything, we do scanning, conform, film out, grading, sound design, online, vfx and sound, we are really a full service house, we have everything in house. We need to keep focusing and find more ways of adding more value to the projects and be more of a partner to our clients and not just looking at executing stuff."
"We never settle down, even in the good times we always strive to be better. We always try to offer new services and package these in a new way."
Since 1996 Henric and Chimney have enjoyed success after success, what has stayed at the forefront of Henric's vision has always been creative output and client satisfaction. This is clearly evident in the quality of the projects that the Chimney Group undertakes and the repeat business that is enjoyed. After all these years Henric is still highly motivated and focused on providing quality service for both the local and international markets, coupled with his vision of Chimney becoming the leading post group in the world you can be assured that Henric and his team will continue to provide a quality full service post experience for all of their clients.