028 INTERVIEW
L - R: Marc Kocks, Managing Director of TM Audio, Holland, Francis, George Douglas, Vice President International Development AVISPL Inc, and Oleg Ivanov, who works with Francis in Moscow
fine. But it’s a huge area for one person to cover. So if you offer specialist support - especially in slightly farther flung peripheries like Eastern Europe or Africa - it’s a very attractive solution. There are probably more people doing this than you think, especially in America. “If you work for one manufacturer, your knowledge of places like Russia or the Ukraine, or anywhere, all comes exclusively from your distributor there. When issues arise, you don’t have the breadth of references to see the big picture. It may be a distributor problem; it may be local market conditions; it may be brand perception; or more likely it’s a combination of all those things. But if you’re tied to one brand you can’t make the same kind of value judgement. In our position at WMA we can tell the difference between various strengths and weaknesses, and supply our clients with an impartial interpretation of any situation. It may not always be what they want to hear, but at least they can rely on our increased perspective - which has its own unique value. In this role, you can be one of the best-informed groups in the whole industry, including an honest reading of where we can be successful and where we simply cannot. We’re not arrogant enough to assume we can crack any market, so our insight is to take a view on which ones to pursue and which ones to ignore - and when. All that comes from our multiple sources of information.”
BRAND EQUITY In theory WMA is at liberty to represent anyone, anywhere, but in practice respects the same kind of constraints that most distributors do. “We’re frequently offered competitive brands,” Williams says, “but I have to turn them down because I know
it wouldn’t meet with the approval of our established clients. Conflicts do arise, and it can get difficult when brands change and become repositioned where you weren’t expecting them. Take Symetrix, for instance, which has changed a lot over the years from studio to broadcast, to installation, to DSP and DJ. When Crest brought out consoles, in territories like Holland you’d find that the distributor TM Audio suddenly had a conflict with Allen & Heath. That’s when they have to go somewhere else and find a different business model. “We always try to be intelligent about it. We’ve been approached by a few loudspeaker manufacturers, but with Nexo so successful for us we don’t want to dilute that brand loyalty. We’ve had to refine our model over the years and become much more careful and choosy about what we do. We turned down a potential million-dollar turnover brand for Europe at the last PLASA, not least because the return wouldn’t have justified the investment and effort, and more recently refused a multi-million dollar account purely through conflict of interest. I guess you get more politically savvy as you get older. With brands such as Furman, Omnimount, Rane, Point Source and t&m, our market spread is just about right, anyway.” The business diversifies in other ways. There is real estate in Scotland and The Bahamas, the organic skincare venture... and something called MoonEstates. This was the subject of that TV documentary, and plenty of other media coverage besides, because of its audacity but also because the personality of Williams carries the story so convincingly. Basically, he sells plots of land on The Moon. “A sharp cookie in the US called Dennis Hope spotted two things: a loophole in the Moon Treaty of 1979; and that the 1862 Homestead Act was still on the statute book and had never been repealed. The Moon Treaty specifies that no country
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