Bluestone Acquires Majority Stake in 11th St. Workshop

Warner Music and SKB Event Shop appear in the project credits of 11th St. Workshop, alongside assignments connected to the Grammys and Tony Awards. Those credits describe different customers commissioning different pieces of a public spectacle. They also reveal the business Bluestone Equity Partners is buying into: turning somebody else's creative brief into a physical environment.

Bluestone announced its majority acquisition on November 12, 2026. Founder Louis Asaro remains CEO and retains an ownership interest, while the company gains its first institutional investor. The stated priorities include national expansion, broader services and stronger project management across locations.

The transaction brings a sports, media and entertainment investor into the workshops serving that economy. For agencies and brands, its commercial significance sits in the connection between securing a commission and delivering a custom build across a wider geography. More access to buyers gives the production operation more to organize.

A majority owner joins a founder-led fabrication business

Louis Asaro founded 11th St. Workshop in 2004. The company serves customers from the New York and Los Angeles areas, with its current website listing facilities in Jersey City, New Jersey, and Sun Valley, California. Its leadership page also identifies Anthony Asaro as EVP and Salvatore Tramuto as COO, placing an established operating team alongside the founder.

Bluestone describes the investment as its first buyout and the 11th investment from an inaugural fund currently identified as $350M. That fund figure describes the investor's vehicle. The official announcement leaves the acquisition price, exact ownership percentage and financing structure undisclosed, so none can be calculated from it.

Private Equity Wire reported an approximately $90M enterprise value, citing Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter. Enterprise value and the price paid for a majority equity stake describe different things; the report supplies context rather than an official consideration figure. The parties also give no separate legal closing date or public account of regulatory approvals.

Louis Asaro's continuing CEO role and retained stake keep his operating judgment inside the ownership arrangement. A founder who knows the production business will still be making decisions as the institutional owner helps set the expansion agenda. The acquisition changes who controls the company while preserving a direct connection to the person who built it.

Project credits explain what the customer is buying

The company's 2026 Grammys project page names Warner Music as the client and brand, with custom fabrication and experiential-event services. Its 2025 Tony Awards red-carpet entry identifies SKB Event Shop and custom fabrication. Neither entry needs to imply that 11th St. Workshop owns an event, controls its production or holds exclusive rights for the assignments to be commercially meaningful.

A project record that identifies the commissioning customer helps explain where the fabricator sits. The organization buying the work may be an agency or production partner, even when the finished environment carries a much larger event's public identity. Understanding that relationship matters when evaluating which introductions an investor can actually make useful.

The target's capabilities extend from production design and 3D modelling to welding, CNC routing, scenic finishes, event logistics and subcontractor management. Those services connect a creative decision to materials, manufacturing and installation. For a customer, buying several of them together can reduce the number of separate handoffs it must coordinate, although the announcement supplies no measured savings or delivery-performance data.

That breadth also gives expansion a practical complication. Another project brings its own design, location and production requirements. A larger business must carry the details of each brief through the workshops serving it, with enough consistency for the agency to know which team is responsible when the plan changes.

Bluestone adds relationships and governance to the growth plan

Bluestone's investment strategy includes services, production support and event infrastructure across sports, media and entertainment. The firm is headquartered in New York City. Its interest in 11th St. Workshop fits that service-business remit, placing capital around work that brands and event producers need to commission before an audience can experience the result.

Founder and managing partner Bobby Sharma's background includes senior roles at IMG and the NBA Development League. The acquisition announcement points specifically to Bluestone's relationships with rights holders, sponsors and producers as a way to develop the target's project pipeline. These are potential commercial routes, with no newly signed customer contracts identified in the release.

The governance connection is more concrete. Bluestone partner Walker Brumskine and SVP Shaaz Khan will serve on 11th St. Workshop's board, according to the announcement. Their roles put the investor's representatives beside management as it chooses which markets and services to prioritize. A sector network becomes operationally useful through those choices, including how much work each location can accept.

The companies also plan to strengthen the systems used to manage projects across locations. That commitment gives the expansion story an administrative dimension that deserves attention alongside the more visible fabrication work. Bringing in another prospective customer can change the demands on scheduling and coordination well before any new installation is photographed.

Expansion reaches the shop before it reaches the audience

11th St. Workshop reports more than 120,000 square feet of production space across its New York and Los Angeles operations. Its Los Angeles expansion has begun, with the company expecting a 300% increase in production capacity there. The projection describes planned capability, leaving actual utilization, delivery volume and financial returns to develop as the expanded operation takes shape.

For customers, the useful questions concern the work they will commission: which services are available, where production happens and how responsibility carries between locations. The announcement gives no rollout calendar for additional markets, pricing commitments or promised turnaround times. Agencies will learn about that broader offering through the projects the company is able to accept and deliver.

Louis Asaro remains in charge of a business whose output is designed around other people's occasions. With Bluestone's board representatives and commercial relationships now part of the arrangement, the expansion agenda will keep returning to those individual briefs: a particular environment, for a particular customer, with a place where it has to be built.