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March 7, 2023

Patiño’s Music Profile

Having just acquired his second SL100, the owner of Patiño’s Music talks about his business, his love for Stageline products and some of the fun things his units have led him to work on over the years.

Summary of an interview with Daniel Patiño.

Chicago’s Patiño’s Music is a one-stop shop: not only do they offer PAs and line-array speakers, lighting rigs, video walls, and generators to run the whole show—they also boast two SL100 mobile stages they can deliver fully rigged.

Owner Daniel Patiño says, “These units sell themselves!”

Though Patiño’s Music is based in Chicago and centres their operations in the city and around Illinois, they also work with clients across Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan. Like many staging suppliers, Patiño’s began its career offering platform staging held in place with truss structures.

“That was a lot of work,” Daniel recalls. “We saw a mobile stage go up one day. It was set up by two guys in under an hour. We were like, ‘We need that!’”

Once they bought their first SL100, Patiño’s immediately began to phase out platform staging.

“It’s all mobile staging now,” he says. “There’s the speed, there’s the rigging capacity, and for sure the safety. What’s not to like? It takes two people to set up, it’s got hydraulics. There’s no heavy lifting. You couldn’t really ask for more.”

Daniel and his team like the safety, and so do their clients. Promoters appreciate that SL100s are engineer-certified and mounted by trained techs. While Stageline products cost a little more, Daniel staunchly believes the safety aspect of Stageline products alone is enough to merit the extra investment.

“I’ve had clients tell me a competitor charges less, so I ask them to send pictures of the stage,” Daniel says. “It’ll be a truss stage. I’ll tell them: ‘They don’t have ratings like this stage—wind ratings, for example. This is why we charge what we charge, and it’s worth it. You get a quality product.”

Wind ratings in particular matter a lot to a company based in Chicago, which Daniel stresses is called ‘the Windy City’ for very good reason.

“I’ve had events where we set up on a clear morning and everything looks great,” he laughs. “There’s nothing about cold or wind in the forecast—but out of nowhere it changes and it gets real windy. The SL100 always remains standing. I’ve been at events where all the vendor canopies flip over. They look at our stage and say, ‘We need one of those.’”

The love that Patiño’s Music shows for their hometown is impressive: Daniel says his favourite events are the city’s many community festivals. But as owners of a Stageline, they’ve naturally taken their stages interesting places. Most visibly, the company once mounted an SL100 at the end of Chicago’s historic Navy Pier. Another deployment that springs to Daniel’s mind was the time he backed the SL100 all the way up a one-way road to the top of a steep hill in the middle of a golf course.

“There was one way in and one way out—it wasn’t like we could get up there and make a U-turn,” he laughs. “That was a little iffy! But it was only the driving that was the challenge. The SL100 made it pretty quick, until you went back, looked at it, and thought, ‘We just did that uphill!’”

When Patiño’s Music first considered buying a Stageline unit in 2017, Daniel contacted sales manager Pierre-Olivier Sauvé, before deciding to wait for a newer model. The two crossed paths at the 2019 Live Design Show in Las Vegas, and Daniel was shocked that Pierre-Olivier immediately recognized his name and recalled they’d spoken two years earlier.

“I was amazed!” Daniel recalls. “Ever since, that’s the guy I go to whenever I have questions or need to buy something. I reach out to him and he’s always on top of everything.”

Daniel will be in touch with Pierre-Olivier again soon. Patiño’s Music is planning on buying more Stageline products next year, though they haven’t decided which ones yet. They might buy the SL260, or they might invest in two more SL100s. Or, just maybe, they’ll go for all three.

“We like to provide the best for our clients, and that’s what Stageline represents to us,” Daniel says. “There’s no other way to put it.”

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