At Olea, family isn’t just part of our history. It’s also part of our wiring. Maybe it’s the years of family members working shoulder to shoulder. Maybe it’s the way customers end up at Thanksgiving dinner. Whatever the reason, it’s a great example of how family culture shapes company values as it has always felt more like community than corporation.
The roots of Olea stretch back to Fernando “Ferd” Olea, a woodworking craftsman who opened a small shop in Downey, California. His children—Rene’ and Mark—joined him in those early years, taking on odd woodworking projects and eventually custom-building trade show exhibits. What began in a converted RV garage slowly grew into a business with a reputation for creativity, reliability, and hard work. And through it all, family was always nearby.
The Cousins from Salinas
Every summer, especially in the early years, cousins from up north in Salinas would make their way down to Southern California to work in the shop. Sometimes it was part of a summer adventure. Other times, it was more of a sentence.
“I think they got in trouble at home,” Frank Olea recalls, laughing. “They were told, ‘You’re going to work for your Uncle Ferd all summer. You’re getting up early and working hard.'” It became a rite of passage.
For young Frank, that meant showing up after school and unexpectedly running into a cousin already elbows deep in sawdust or helping on the floor. It created a memory that lasted. Even today, he’ll run into cousins at family reunions who say, “Remember when I worked at the shop that summer?”
Some cousins stayed longer than others. John worked at Olea for more than a decade and was instrumental in developing one of the company’s early audio switching systems. He worked closely with outside engineers and taught himself to wire and assemble display fixtures. Eventually, a teenage Frank joined him, learning the ropes. “Back then I was about fifteen or sixteen,” Frank says. “That was one of my first real jobs.”
Billy, John’s brother-in-law, also worked at Olea, often traveling to set up trade show booths. He and John both held Class A licenses and drove the company’s diesel trucks across the country to events. “We had two diesel trucks and six trailers back then,” Frank says. “They drove them all.” Both men went on to stay in the trade show industry, careers that began in that little shop in Downey.
Shauna Olea: The Original CX Team
Among all the family members who shaped Olea, few had an impact as profound or lasting as Shauna.
She started by doing whatever needed to be done, including cleaning the bathroom in the shop. But her contribution quickly grew. As the company began building more trade show exhibits, she began handling logistics, managing paperwork, and making sure everything ran smoothly. Over time, she became what we’d now call Olea’s first customer experience lead. Back then, she simply got things done.
She filled out endless stacks of show paperwork. Coordinated booth shipping. Managed freight schedules. Worked with customers. Solved problems. She did it all.
And more than anything, she cared.
During the busy CES season, many of Olea’s clients—new to California and far from home—found themselves stuck in town over the holidays. They had no family nearby and no easy way to travel. That didn’t sit well with her. So she invited them over for Thanksgiving. For Christmas. For dinner.
“It wasn’t until later I realized how much that mattered,” Frank says. “For a lot of those people, it was the only time they felt like they were home.”
One of Olea’s longest-standing customer relationships, Pioneer Electronics, had some of the first plasma TVs delivered to Olea’s building—not to their own. Olea unboxed and tested them right there in the shop, prepping for CES. The relationship went beyond business. They were part of the family.
Today, the customer experience team at Olea carries on that tradition. Their approach—responsive, personal, detail-oriented—is a direct reflection of Shauna and the culture she created. “They’re modeled after her,” he says. “Everything they do comes from how she treated our customers back then.”
When Family Means Showing Up
At Olea, the family culture isn’t just about warm memories. It shows up in how people are treated when things get tough. When an employee’s child had to undergo surgery out of town, the company made sure he continued to be paid while he was away, telling him to focus on what mattered most. In other cases, Olea has helped employees handle unexpected hardships—whether it’s the cost of a funeral for a family member in Mexico or supporting someone going through a personal crisis.
That willingness to show up, to step in, is something Ferd instilled in the business from the beginning. When he started Olea, his goal was simple: work with his sons and give them a future. As more family joined, it became a place for them to find stability, grow, and contribute. And as the company grew beyond family, that same spirit extended to employees and customers alike.
The Artist Behind the Machines
Ferd wasn’t just a builder. He was an artist, an engineer, and a visionary. He painted, sculpted, and played music. And when the business demanded more efficiency, he taught himself to write code—at age 60—and developed internal programs to help manage production workflows. He even engineered the company’s two-story trade show structures, performing load testing and structural design himself before sending it off for certification.
If something needed to be made, he figured out how to make it—often by designing the machines himself.
Frank may not claim all his grandfather’s talents, but he’s carried forward that same mix of creativity and hands-on expertise. And in that way, the company remains rooted in Ferd’s blend of craftsmanship and innovation.
A Culture That Doesn’t Quit
Even as Olea has grown and evolved, the foundation of family hasn’t faded. Many employees have been with the company for twenty years or more. Birthdays, weddings, and baby showers aren’t just water cooler conversations, they’re often shared moments. It’s not uncommon for coworkers to attend each other’s events, spend time with their families, and stay close long after someone moves on.
The same goes for clients. Saying goodbye to Pioneer Electronics after more than two decades of partnership wasn’t just a business loss. It was personal. “It hurt,” Frank says. “We’d spent Christmas with them. We shared so much history. When they left, it really felt like a breakup.”
A Business Built Like a Family
Today, Olea is a professional, modern corporation—but the old ways haven’t been forgotten. Frank still remembers what his dad told him when he first came on the payroll at sixteen: “Everyone will think you have this job because of me. So you need to work twice as hard as everyone else to prove you belong here.”
It’s a sentiment that stuck. And it’s that same sense of accountability, pride, and respect that defines how Olea works with its people and its clients.
From cousins building car stereo displays to customers around the dinner table at Christmas, Olea has always been more than a company. It’s a community. A legacy. A family. And that spirit is what continues to power the company forward—one relationship at a time.
