032 INTERVIEW
“One thing I always preach to my partners is that it’s not you are my distributor, I am your manufacturer, we are in a marriage. If I screw up talk to me, if you screw up I’m taking to you. We will fight. We will have our honeymoon sessions. We will love each other when times are good but there will be bad times, but we have to talk and that’s what a relationship is all about.” A significant milestone in any company is staff changes and Davwinder has witnessed quite a few during his career at Loud. Possibly the most notable is the recent change in CEO. Mark Graham succeeded Rodney Olson to the position in 2010. Davwinder said: “Mark Graham is my mentor. He’s taught me a lot about managing the job, managing people, and generally being human and sane in this job.” During his first visit to Singapore, Mark wanted to meet Davwinder’s wife before they started the business meetings. Davwinder continued: “We all have genuine love for each other and there’s genuine support for each other and it’s amazing how one man can bring this all together.” The ‘new’ Loud, as Davwinder likes to refer to it, has a lot to thank Mark for, he has brought new energy and a new buzz to the Loud team. A major launch for the ‘new’ Loud was the rebirth of the Avalon Series at this year’s Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt. It’s a partnership between club owner and sound designer, John Lyons and Loud. Davwinder is confident the Avalon products will take off in Asia because clubbing remains one of most popular forms of entertainment in the region. Although he is also quick to mention that the new system will only be installed at venues that are approved by the Avalon team - essentially it means the team will design and specify the system for a venue - that will subsequently become Avalon certified. “Club sound is not just about heavy bass and shiny highs or dancing on the dancefloor going deaf. It’s got to be an experience. I’ve never seen so much effort and detail being put in place for something this amazing. It’s an amazing box and it’s a funky, good-looking box. “EAW is coming in with some very exciting, game changing products. Over the next 12 months big things are happening so EAW is one of those brands that is coming back strong. They are doing what Apple does, by the time competition catches up, bang, they come out with the new stuff. There is a renewed energy at EAW.” Loud acquired Martin Audio in 2007 but it continued to operate on a fairly independent level. The introduction of MLA and MLA Compact has gained recognition for the brand and has played an instrumental part in the company’s growth over the past few years. After witnessing Davwinder’s success with other
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“Club sound is not just about heavy bass and shiny highs or dancing on
the dancefloor going deaf. It’s got to be an experience. It’s an amazing box and it’s a funky, good-looking box.”
brands in the APAC region, when Mark came onboard, he asked Davwinder to look after the Martin Audio distributors in Asia too. This decision made Davwinder eligible for promotion to Managing Director of APAC (formerly Director of APAC Sales). It also meant an extension from a one man show to a whole sales team. Colin Quek has stepped into the position of Director of Sales for Martin Audio within the APAC team and they are still in the process of hiring others. Although Davwinder has taken on a more managerial role since his promotion, everything he has implemented over the years remains in place but it’s now largely in the hands of his sales team. He said: “It’s like being a parent, a natural tendency when you know your kid is going to fall, you just want to grab hold of the kid. I try to do that, but I also try not to micro manage because having been through all the struggles, having been verbally and physically abused you want to make sure your boys don’t get that.” Davwinder predicts that he and his team will continue to do well as the APAC region continues to blossom, and with announcement plans already in the pipeline, it sounds as though he’s happy to stay at Loud as long as the company is happy to have him. “Some of my friends laugh, they say, ‘wow you’ve been with Loud that long, you should get a long service award’. In this industry lasting this long in today’s time lasting in an organisation is not easy. There’s so much change happening and you’ve got to change with the times. “Just this morning I was speaking with one of my guys and he said ‘winning is addictive’. And when you get addicted to it you always want to win.”
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