Meet Luis Martinez | Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Luis Martinez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Luis, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
I believe the most important factor behind our success is building relationships and nurturing those relationships with everyone in the industry. We love people and we love to be of service to them and it’s a practice of ours to make sure we go above and beyond to make sure that event runs smoothly. This is an industry that you have to care for each other and have each others back, with what we do we are hired by everyone in the industry and at times uncontrollable things happen and we love to make sure that we there to extend a hand to help. I truly believe that our can do attitude, sense of humor, and work ethic has created a name for Strike Crew that people know when they hire us that they are in good hands and we care about what we are doing and we love who we work for even more. So the relationships that we have built are not just working relationships they are relationships that will last a lifetime and that people will always know they can count on us to go above and beyond to get the job done right.

What should our readers know about your business?
We are a fairly new company est. in Aug of 2018, we went from 4 employees and a handful of events that year, in 2019 we did 365 events with a staff of 43 employees!! What sets us apart is that we love to do the work that not a lot of people like to do. Strikes are late at night, and it comes after along day of work most times. We do it with a smile on our face, we have fun with it and most importantly we take pride in what we do. There are not to many companies out there that do what we do so we have had to learn a lot along the way. Now we have plenty of experience of how this industry works. Our experiences good and bad nave been our biggest asset to growth in this industry. Its allowed us to grow and adapt to the changes that always happen. The mistakes that we have made, we have learned from and it has made us stronger and also allowed us to grow as a company. It has allowed to become professionals at what we do. This has not been an easy journey because we had to start from scratch with no experience, so we are still learning daily on how to better our craft and make things run smoother. So its a constant for us to adapt and grow, we love it! One thing that is special about the Strike Crew is that I am 13 years clean and sober and I have had some rough times in my life and understand what it feels like to be given a second chance, so most of y staff is in recovery or on parole and looking to turn their life around. I do background checks and make sure my staff is safe and monitored but I do give those a second chance that are looking for one!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
There are several beautiful places to visit in Colorado right here in our own backyard! So that’s a tough one, first start with breakfast at an eatery in the highlands area, just love the vibe down there. Then we head out to the mountains to do some atv riding at one of the outfits (Leadville has some of the best), then you can head into Breckenridge and do some horseback riding or hiking. Stay the night in Beaver Creek and eat at one of the restaurants in town. Wake up the next day and go visit the farmers market in Vail, spend the day there and then hit Central City on the way back into town. After that you could head out to Steamboat Springs and do some fishing for a couple of days, finished off with a trip back through Estes Park. They have an outdoor chapel at the YMCA that is probably my favorite spot on this earth to go and give thanks and get quiet for a bit. Just a bit of an odd trip but thats what comes to mind when I think of entertaining a friend for a week.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
As you all know that you can’t do this alone, my wife Shannon Martinez is a florist in the Wedding and Event industry and I could not have done this without her. There is story behind how the Strike Crew idea was born, i’ll share a small part of it. I used to go help her “Strike” her weddings when she first started her business a over 6 years ago and when I used to go with her I noticed two things: 1 – they serve cake at events and when I went with her I would get cake lol!! 2 – that there was a huge need for a crew of employees to come in and help clean up after the event was done. Plus she is my rock and my sounding board that has been my biggest supporter. Now I have an amazing Crew Lead By Gary T aka “Garbear” and Dan C, these men are absolutely amazing and lead an amazing crew that last year we managed to do over 350 events with a crew of 40 people. I absolutely could not do this without them, they are the backbone to Strike Crew! Last but not least are all the amazing florist and Planners that we work for, with there knowledge that they have passed on to us from event to event and trusting us to help with their masterpiece and giving us constructive feedback has allowed us to grow and and learn this industry, so I thank all of them!

Website: www.strikecrew.net
Instagram: @thestrikecrew
Facebook: @thestrikecrew

Image Credits
Gary Thormodsgarrd, Dan Claborn, Gary Sanchez, Keven Grove, Tawny Daniels, Brent Raney, Jerry Barbilion