22 l June 2014
www.psneurope.com
studioreport EUROPE Phil Dudderidge – 25 years in the hot seat
As Focusrite celebrates its 25th anniversary, chairman and founder Phil Dudderidge talks to Sue Sillitoe about what it takes to create a successful company… and what he might have done differently with the benefit of hindsight
PHIL DUDDERIDGE says he has learned a great deal from his experiences as the chairman and founder of Focusrite – but to put those lessons into context, you have to look back at what came before.
“Prior to acquiring Focusrite, I spent 15 years running console manufacturer Soundcraft,” he says. “That company grew like Topsy because we were entering a market which hardly existed when we started in 1973. No one else had live sound mixers so we were there right at the beginning. Of course there were big studio consoles – Rupert Neve was one of the people building those.
Rupert’s consoles were always iconic and in a different league to ours, so it was paradoxical that, after selling Soundcraft in 1988, I got involved in a company he had founded.”
The original Focusrite was started by Rupert Neve in the mid-1980s, and one of its first contracts was building extensions to the Neve consoles at AIR Studios. Soon, other people were asking Rupert Neve to build consoles – and, according to Dudderidge, that’s when things got out of hand.
“These were big projects, and the original Focusrite company wasn’t structured to deal with
them,” he says. “Only two consoles were delivered – one to Master Rock and one to Electric Lady – before the company went into liquidation.”
Dudderidge, who had money in the bank from the sale of Soundcraft, bought the assets from the liquidator.
“When I sold Soundcraft, I was planning to do something completely different,” he says. “However, this opportunity came along and I got drawn into it. I was turning 40 and was too young to retire, plus I was seduced by the idea of big consoles. In hindsight, it wasn’t the best investment
Phil Dudderidge: silver anniversary
decision considering where the market went.”
The demise of the large console market taught
Dudderidge a thing or two about good and bad investments, but buying Focusrite didn’t turn out all bad, and the positive lessons
he learnt have stayed with him to this day.
“Never make the same mistake twice – that’s definitely something I’ve learnt,” he says. “We acquired Focusrite as a big console business, but it was the sale of outboard units that gave us immediate cash-flow. Focusrite never built those units in-house, so we were able to restart the manufacturing process very easily using existing subcontractors. “Looking at this model I realised it was a very good one and decided to stick with it. At Soundcraft, we’d had our own factory and that had always been my Achilles heel. Running a factory was the last thing I wanted to do, so I jumped at the opportunity to operate this new company differently.
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