About Us

Gene Dent and the creative staff at SCi 3.2 work year-round to create innovative and original designs for parades and events around the country.  The SCI 3.2 office is located in Portland, Oregon but their work has been enjoyed all over the country from Seattle to Tampa, since 1977 when they first began designing and building commercially sponsored floats.  During those 37 years, millions of parade attendees and TV viewers have enjoyed these delightful, whimsical, playful, amazing, and downright spectacular creations.  SCI 3.2 not only creates the original concepts, they also fabricate, construct, and decorate these rolling wonders.  Over the years, they have delighted fans with dragons and unicorns, dancing crayons, and fairy tale figures, all carefully crafted and decorated in infinite detail.

In addition to the creation of all the Rose Festival Floats, SCI 3.2 is actively engages in stage productions, exhibits, decor, scenery, event props, and festival services.

The SCI 3.2 team includes experienced and professional designers, sculptors, animators, engineers, welders, mechanics and an army of dedicated volunteers all working in synergy to coax magical, fantastic, creations out of mountains of inert material.  It’s like watching a phoenix rising out of the ashes of decay.

The Promise

SCI 3.2’s  guiding principle is simple: Listen to what the client wants, then design and deliver incredibly creative solutions and our clients have been the benefactors of that promise for nearly 4 decades.

Our Specialty

We are proud to serve as the Official Float Builder for the Portland Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade. We also have designed and built award winning floats for the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, the Seattle Seafair, the National Cherry Blossom Parade and many other parades throughout the United States. As one of the largest manufacturers of parade floats in the West, we work with Alaska Airlines, Farmers Insurance, Wells Fargo, NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants), Ford, Bank of America, Cingular, Reser’s Fine Foods, and many other local and national sponsors. Our floats are fabricated, assembled and tested in Portland and then shipped to their final destination for assembly, art treatment, and decoration. SCi 3.2 creates more than sixty float entries each year. In addition, we design, fabricate, and manage several traveling float tours.

The Idea & Process

We invest in our clients from the first meeting, by focusing on their goals and their company’s vision.  Through collaboration, we work to create innovative designs that enhance their ideas by adding our extensive experience to the concept.  Our design staff will develop concept sketches for each client’s project and we exchange ideas and discuss costs and other details. We have learned, over the years, that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts, so we work hard to synergize the client’s ideas with our embellishments and technical expertise.  The end result is generally a stunning presentation that will engage the audience’s senses in every way.  Then this entire process and the outcome of the collaboration is documented in a clear proposal so the client knows exactly what to expect in the finished product.

The Realization

The creation of a dramatic and functional float, production, or exhibit requires the collective efforts of client, designer, artist, engineer, fabricator and many others. It also requires production management capable of working intimately with each member of the team. We enjoy our work and keep an open channel of communicate with our clients to give them every opportunity to participate in the process.

We invite you to be a part of the fun, let your imagination go. Do you see a huge bean stalk being climbed by Jack, or a whale breaching the surface of the ocean with a blast of mist exploding from its blowhole, or maybe you see two bear cubs clinging to their mother as they slid down a snowy slope or a trio of hot air balloons suspended over tiny motorized baskets.  Just imagine….. then let us make your dream a reality!

The list below shows the cities, theatrical presentations, and festivals in which we have participated. Mouse over any of the tabs below to see the full list displayed to the right.