032 INTERVIEW
“The team of people here just
captured me and John Stadius is a very infectious person.”
difficult and more expensive, as it was starting to turn into a service industry in the south east so there weren’t the people available. The factory in Glenrothes has evolved a lot since that time and where necessary we are able to sub-contract out to a number of local companies.” In fact they recently opened a new production facility which virtually doubles their capacity. If DiGiCo went off like a cluster bomb following its launch in 2002, the pivotal year was unquestionably 2007. The subsequent five years have been crucial and one senses that the fingerprints of Bob Doyle are no longer all over the company in the way they used to be. The ‘Doyler & Webby’ era, which blazed such a trail through the first phase, has gently been shepherded out (although the latter remains a crucial influence in the company’s marketing). There is certainly less Killepitsch being dispensed from their stand at tradeshows since Gordon made his play. Although possibly less of a rock n roll maverick than the behemoth he succeeds, James was the obvious heir. In fact Bob had acknowledged that from the very beginning in 2002, with James occupying the role of Soundtracs’ Director of International Sales, the incipient DiGiCo was starting to look like “a fucking great business” after the new company had purchased the IP and assets of Soundtracs, backed by American funding. Under James’ stewardship, with support from the redoubtable inner sanctum of John Stadius, David ‘Webby’ Webster and Helen Culleton, they have been able to grow turnover from £8 million in 2007 to £22 million in 2011. How had the transition been managed, and how had the market reacted? “Bob wanted to take on a more ambassadorial role and slow down,” muses James. “I think he realised that the world had become a different place. He took the final decision around January 2007 and on 7/7/07 we did the deal with Matrix, allowing the original shareholders to liquidate their holdings. Bob had made some jokes about me taking over but it was never set in stone. “He was definitely one of the pioneers from an age before it became ultra corporate - sucking in a lot of businessmen who were not industry bred. But now we are seeing the industry reverting to people who perhaps are industry bred but have a bit more business acumen and are less rock ‘n’ roll. “I think we are fairly unique in that we got into this industry because we were passionate about it. It’s that passion that keeps us motivated to take on new challenges, and it certainly gets me out of bed in the morning.” Even the 2007 Matrix investment had a whiff of non-conformity about it. “We
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didn’t really want to go the normal route. Private equity companies generally like a three-to-five year term but Matrix never applied pressure to us or pushed us. They are a small to mid-size operation and are now happy to work with ISIS, who represent the next level up. “It was important to be able to fund the growth for the next five years - ISIS could see that we are not a commodities industry but do something kinda cool. By keeping Matrix around, with a retained interest in the business, and at the same time start a new relationship is a really nice situation.” But if 2007 had been the pivotal year in DiGiCo’s big leap forward, then it certainly wasn’t risk averse. Around that time they started to really reap the rewards of the D5 and then D1, launched in 2004, which had racked up incredible sales. But it was the technology that made that period so defining. “We were about to develop FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), a huge mass of gates and very fast processing which would give us a massive technology lead,” says James. “It was either all going to work or make us look stupid.” In typical DiGiCo fashion they decided to launch it at PLASA Show in 2007 as a ‘concept’ console. And the next day there was Kylie Minogue’s Sound Engineer, Chris Pyne mixing on it. Far from being a D5 engine, in fact it was the start of their Stealth Digital Processing and the new SD7 console. And in the maelstrom of 2007 James also celebrated the birth of his first son. When shipping began in January 2008, with Stealth Digital Processing, DiGiCo knew they were onto another winner. A further key element in DiGiCo’s success over the years has been the loyal network of distribution partners around the world. Of the early distributors, Apex in Belgium was one, as were TM Audio in Holland and Team 108 in Asia, with Atlantic Audio in Germany, Group One in the US and Group Technologies in Australia racing up behind, and more recently Rightway Audio Consultants in China. But the team back at base in Chessington is equally crucial - notably for pushing technology boundaries. This includes John Stadius and his R&D team and Roger Wood with his software development department, while Helen Culleton is described by Matrix as the glue that holds the enterprise together. “She’s the solid anchor,” agrees James. “I have worked with Helen since 1996 and she is really the boss, I’m just the front man.” With Maria Fiorellino ‘holding up’ Webby, they are unquestionably the femmes formidables of DiGiCo. In these straitened times, the professional sound and light industry seems to
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