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T he Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots had an entire season to prepare for Super Bowl XXXVIII. Not so the folks at SkyDancers International. The Brothers Austin got the call a mere three weeks prior to kickoff. Could they provide dancing inflatables for the field? Chris and Joe Austin of SkyDancers International not only could, but would! Joe Zenas, show director for Bob Best Productions, contracted SkyDancers to provide five custom red, silver and blue metallic dancing tubes. The tubes were designed with small wings on the tube edge. The short notice brought with it some challenges. Said Vice President of Marketing Joe Austin, "To locate the custom material for the dancing tubes, we searched more than 20 fabric suppliers all over California before selecting the final design." The time constraints also required that the final design tubes be hand carried on the airplane. "We brought three employees from the L.A. area, one of our dealers from Mexico, one dealer from Louisiana and four assistants from the Houston area." Just a handful of companies likely would have been up to the Super Bowl challenge, but Chris Austin is a veteran of the inflatable industry. Chris's father, Drake Diamond, owned Tubeworks, which is where Chris learned the inflatable business and rose to the position of president. When Drake retired and closed Tubeworks, Chris and brother, Joe, opened SkyDancers International. Chris also serves as the president of SkyDancers. He oversees operations and design, works with key clients and defines the overall direction of the company. Director of Sales Larry Reeves and Operations Manager Dave Bellows join Chris and Joe. Like Tubeworks, SkyDancers' core business is the creation and development of dancing inflatables. All of the promotional or decorative inflatables manufactured by SkyDancers have an element of motion included. The company builds no static vinyl inflatables, but rather focuses on large-scale animated inflatable displays. SkyDancers' target market is businesses looking to increase sales and attract attention with SkyDancers inflatable tubes or event producers looking to add a unique design element to their production. Perhaps the most startling news from that fateful Sunday was that the Patriots/Panthers matchup actually was the second bowl game of the day for which SkyDancers supplied dancing inflatables. That's right. The Austins provided their new Reality SkyDancers for the first ever Lingerie Bowl. The Lingerie Bowl billed itself as an alternative to the Super Bowl's traditional halftime extravaganza. The pay-per-view Lingerie Bowl featured 26 of the most beautiful, athletic and fiercely competitive models in a seven-on-seven, full-contact "tackle" football game, played entirely in lingerie. The two teams, Team Dream and Team Euphoria, were quarterbacked by models/actresses Angie Everhart and Nikki Ziering, who also lent their famous faces to the custom cheerleader inflatables provided by SkyDancers. Quarterback Nikki Ziering's face was placed onto her "Team Dream" inflatable and Quarterback Angie Everhart's face was placed onto the "Team Euphoria" inflatable. Both inflatables danced throughout the event. While the Patriots beat the Panthers in February at Houston, the SkyDancers team scored a goal of its own with its signature dancing inflatables at two big bowl games! iN What are Reality SkyDancers? Reality SkyDancers are dancing inflatables with realistic faces built directly onto the character. To have any face imprinted onto a SkyDancer, the customer simply provides a color photograph of the face to be scanned. SkyDancer artists then create a mirror image imprint for placement onto the selected SkyDancer model. For a quote based on the size of the requested inflatable and the model (two-legged, single-legged, etc.), contact SkyDancers International at (818) 701-5259. 40 www. INFLATABLE NEWS .com June/July 2004