INTERVIEW: MIKE WALKER, MARTIN PROFESSIONAL Design for video
Paddy Baker talks to the lighting company’s UK sales director about the growth of video, product strategy and the quality of LED components
There was a massive change to Martin’s EMEA operations in 2009. Can you recap on those, and bring us up to date with the UK operation? In 2009, all the country wholly owned subsidiaries of Martin were closed down and an EMEA sales region was created with back office support taking place in Denmark. All the local territories, including the UK, were just left with a sales and service team. Since I joined Martin two and
a half years ago to run the UK operation we’ve been selling and promoting our range of products through our distribution network; maintaining a dealer network through rental companies; running an entertainment sales operation which is directly to rental companies and distributors; and also the projects division which is directly to architects, installers and end-users of architectural lighting, which is a main area of growth for us.
What’s the biggest development that’s happened during your time at Martin? I’d say probably the advent of video – we are the only lighting company that manufactures video products. That’s important as our customers are generally lighting designers that are called in at the very beginning of an event or a tour. If the LD’s going to design a show that’s got a logo light on
it and then turn up at the first gig six months later with two black holes where the video screens are going to go, and then he meets the video crew and they do their thing – which is how it used to work – you’re not going to get a coherent design. To be able to place video tools in the hands of the lighting designer who is the first point of contact when the design gets discussed means he has some control over the entire look of that show.
Does that ethos transfer to fixed installs as well? If you are running a corporate HQ and you’ve got a lighting design, the building needs to tell its own story, have its own style and presence. These days that’s usually done with the design of the building but also the way that it’s lit. Also media facades, particularly on the continent, are a huge growing market. Corporate HQs will include video as part of the design package. Coming back to the idea of a lighting company with a video product that places it into the hands of a designer – that’s where we’re getting some advantage in the market. You can take a customer’s lighting and their video, and the elements that they want to have control over and stick it into an iPad app, so they can walk round… and the app can talk to one of our control consoles that is out of the way somewhere.
Comparing Martin with big names in the display market, where is the differentiation? If you’re controlling lights and video from one point, then we’ve got a superb argument and a great range of products that fulfils that requirement. If you’re just looking for a video screen then we’re competing with everyone else who’s just got a video screen.
Is the architectural market a growth area for Martin? Very much so, and video’s an important part of that. We’re focused on exterior lighting and LED. We’ve been very successful and pioneering in LED so, particularly for exterior colour-changing dynamic LED, we are the market leaders. It’s a niche area, but it’s one where we excel – as well as the media facades. A lot of companies involved in
media facades come at it from a DMX perspective. We can do DMX, and we can do video into the screen. If you’re just running a video-based system it’s a more elegant solution and a lot less hard work and cabling.
Soundcraft has just produced an audio mixing desk with integrated DMX, for venues with one person operating the audio and the lighting. Does that strike you as a good idea? I think you’re going to see consoles that are able to drive everything, whether it’s lighting, video or audio – no
Mike Walker - a brief biography
Mike Walker was appointed sales director of Martin Professional’s UK operation in May 2010
Previously he ran his own independent audiovisual consultancy in the entertainment and live events market
From 1993 to 2007 he was sales director at Creative Technology London, a video equipment rental company serving the live event, TV, concert touring and theatre industries
question. Convergence in the control domain is a reality already – it’s only going to grow. But I think it’s early days to see where the big winners are going to be, and whether a desk that controls lighting and audio on a 50-50 basis is going to justify investment, or whether it’s a combination of other types of media. It’s something we’re deeply involved in at the moment.
How does Martin go about selecting the LED emitters in its products? You go to the best producers
of LEDs. When you put a load of LEDs together and they’ve got to reproduce an exact colour to a very high tolerance because there are another thousand of them next door doing exactly the same thing, then those LEDs have got to be of the very highest quality. The best LEDs you can buy are widely regarded to be Nichia – they’re batched into different grades, and within a batch there’s a certain tolerance. That tolerance is acceptable for most applications, but not for video and for lighting. So we take the highest-quality
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www.mode-al.com 20 October 2012
www.installation-international.com
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