Boxoffice Pro Q1 2021

Theater INDUSTRY INSIDERS
Right: Telescopic
Seating Systems
premium seating Imax
installation
PREMIUM
SEATING
PROS
Fred and Denise Jacobs
Keep It All in the Family at
Telescopic Seating Systems
BY REBECCA PAHLE
“Jacobs” might not be in the name—but
Telescopic Seating Systems counts itself
among the many family-run businesses
that keep the exhibition sector moving.
Married for over 40 years, Fred and
Denise Jacobs have come up through
multiple industries together, landing in
the seating world—along with their son,
TSS’s engineering manager, and daughterin-law,
its CPA—as the couple behind
Telescopic Seating Systems.
Born in Flint, Michigan, Fred and
Denise began their respective careers
in the automotive industry. Fred found
his niche in automotive interiors, while
Denise—needing “a little more challenge”
than her job at General Motors afforded—
went back to college at the University of
Michigan. She had two children in four
years while earning her bachelor’s in
physics, then joined Fred at the AC Spark
Plug Division of General Motors as a
manufacturing engineer.
“We thought we were going to be
Flint lifers,” Denise recalls—but a job
opportunity took them to Holland,
Michigan, where Telescopic Seating
Systems is based today. There, Fred
helped manage an automotive seating
company. This was the 1990s, when a
boom in multiplex construction sent
demand for seating through the roof. Ford
Motor Company decided it wanted in on
the action; Fred recalls that he “went in
to make a presentation on seats for their
Mustangs and walked out with a contract
to make movie theater seats instead.” From
there, Fred ran what he calls the “stealth
movie theater seat company,” Visteon,
which from 1998 to 2003 operated as a
division of Ford. “We were making 40,000
to 60,000 seats a year. … Going to all the
trade shows. But people didn’t really know
that the same people that made seats
for their Cadillacs and their Buicks were
making their movie theater seats.”
In 2003, Ford’s six-year experiment
in movie theater seating came to an end
when Visteon was spun off into its own
entity. Fred became a minority partner in
Track Seating, which bid unsuccessfully
for Visteon’s movie theater seat business.
Track Seating continued to make seats
for Buicks and Cadillacs while expanding
into the non-automotive arena, buying
a company called American Desk. While
Denise continued in the automotive
interiors business, Fred expanded
into other facets of the seating world,
manufacturing seats for universities
“People didn’t really know
that the same people
that made seats for their
Cadillacs and their Buicks
were making their movie
theater seats.”
70 Q1 2021
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