Sister Act

Lisa Carpenter and Gail Crowe have been dubbed The Dynamic Duo. The sisters live and breathe events and love creating bespoke experiences and team building events which delight their clients.

With a background in sales, office and event management, and hospitality, Bedfordshire-based Lisa, and Gail – who has a degree in travel and tourism and experience in conferencing, customer services, event management, and coordination – often wonder why they didn’t join forces sooner.

It wasn’t until June 2016, with Lisa joking that she was “getting on a bit” that the siblings finally decided it was time to combine their skillsets and passions and create their own company: “It was now or never,” laughs Lisa.

Over four years, Magnifisense built a reputation for excellence, specialising in venue finding, conferencing, team building, incentive and loyalty programmes, and in-house workshops, both nationwide and overseas.

The company’s unique and fun team building and bonding events were particularly well received, offering everything from land-sea-air treasure hunts, wellbeing retreats – even an Apprentice-style workshop and a good old-fashioned It’s A Knockout.

With the company poised to celebrate 2020 as its best year financially, COVID came as a terrible blow. “Shock, tears, frustration and fear were just a few of the emotions we felt at the time,” admits Lisa. “And then came the calls, the emails and then subsequently, the cancellations.”

Determined not to give up without a fight, Lisa and Gail dusted themselves down and learnt about Zoom, hybrid and virtual events, and hampers.

“We did a Richard Branson and said ‘yes’ to new things and worried about them later,” smiles Lisa.

“We’ve always been agile, creative and not afraid of hard work, so this kept us going and focused, as did a bounce back loan that we thought we wouldn’t use but did as time went on. We had to dig deep and make cutbacks, but we are proud that we didn’t give up. It’s been tough, but we are getting there, and our fire and drive is more evident than ever.”

Lisa admits that some of the working practices Magnifisense and other agencies learned during the pandemic still have a place to play in the events industry: “Hybrid is still essential, more for global businesses than European, and quarterly sales meetings have remained hybrid where long distance and sustainability is a factor. Whereas initially it was more of a tick box quest, this has now proven to be essential for many corporates. It’s also a fall back should there be a pandemic situation again.”