034 INTERVIEW
“Peter had been one of the giants who changed the lighting industry,” stated Giorgio Radice. “There is so much emotion in lighting that I was convinced this was his real home.”
wind power industry, combining the expertise acquired by the Danish wind industry with the cost-competitive advantage of Thailand’s skilled labour force. But how had he wound up in Thailand in the first place, and set up the Martin Industrial Group? Although this was never on his roadmap, in 2009 Peter was encouraged to check out the lie of the land by a former employee from the boat industry. He quickly sensed the potential, the loyalty of the workforce, the excellence of the craftsmanship and how price competitive it seemed compared with China. This became the new source of his windmill blades. Then came the pursuit by SGM’s Commercial Director. “Peter had been one of the giants who changed the lighting industry,” stated Giorgio Radice. “There is so much emotion in lighting that I was convinced this was his real home.” And so it has proved.
THE FUTURE OF SGM Can Peter turn SGM into an industry leader? Peter is in no doubt, and his conviction has the full backing of Arturo Vicari. “It can become a major brand and I want to turn this company into the number one.” At the same time he remains unapologetic for his general criticism of Chinese production standards. “There are still a lot of low quality copies but for the manufacture of moving heads you need a deep amount of knowledge which only a handful of Chinese manufacturers have. You need to ask what is going to happen when you have used the fixture for a large number of hours? “In China many of the individual components may be fine but the end solution can be totally wrong
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because the mentality and understanding of the product is not right. In Thailand quality is not sacrificed for cost savings. If you give an instruction it is followed rigidly, and that same outcome isn’t always in evidence in China. However, we will continue to buy components from China where appropriate.” And so SGM will begin to manufacture in Thailand for two fundamental reasons. “Firstly, the problem with Europe is basically that salaries are too high so financially it’s not an option. Secondly, our product assembly expense in Thailand is relatively low and we can have more people dedicated to QC than assembly personnel, because we can afford to. Reliability is everything when products are going out on major tours.” Meanwhile, the mission to revolutionise the LED market has carried into the next generation of Johansens. Peter’s son Mikkel, who originally joined SGM on a two-month work experience is now Head Software Developer. “After two months I was ready to throw him out but all the other R&D guys begged me to let him stay,” declared Peter. How does Peter foresee the immediate future of LED? “The trick is to get away from dots or lenses; the future will be a single compact unit with uniform beam and colour mixing. We also expect to be making our own [LED] light engines. Aside from global warming issues there will be no more discharge lamps from me. I’ve been there, done that.” With most of its new generation products IP65-rated, SGM will also be focusing its marketing on the architectural sector, which will require close attention to the Color Rendering Index (CRI) governing colour reproduction uniformity. “When you are using so many LEDs, as we do in the Q-7, it can be relatively difficult to retain the same quality and at a later stage you might not be able to match the colour exactly. So we ensure that every lamp is correctly calibrated, we will just send out the colour coordinates to the lamp and it will automatically adjust.” Thus mondo*dr concluded a highly-entertaining interview by asking whether, for all his extraordinary accomplishments, there remained any unfulfilled dreams. “My biggest ambition was to win the World Dragon Boat Racing Championship but that’s never going to happen,” he smiled ruefully. “We’ve been close but there’s only one winner.” And winning is the only thing to Peter. “From a personal point of view I just want to prove I can do it all again with SGM. One of the main reasons I am so excited to be back is that I realise nothing much has happened since I’ve been away. I just want to prove to my wife that it was not an accident first time around.”
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