ASL Intercom Company Profile

 While budding student Eric de Bruyn was studying civil engineering at Delft University (Holland) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he inadvertently stumbled across rock and roll – and he we wasn’t alone. Six fellow students pressed the pause button on their studies so that they could make their fortunes as the rock band Alquinm with Eric de Bruyn as their manager. For seven years, they toured Europe and recorded albums at some of the most prestigious studios, including Rockfield and Ridge Farm in the UK. However, when the band members decided to resume their studies, Eric de Bruyn bought the band’s Martin Audio PA system and set off on a different career path.

 Whether this was an easy decision to make at the time is open to interpretation. However, it certainly proved to be the correct one with the advantage of hindsight. The company Eric de Bruyn established in 1979, Ampco Pro Rent, is today one of the largest PA rental companies in Europe, and huge serving the likes of the Womad and North Sea Jazz festivals.

 For every performer on a stage, there is an army of working technicians and staff working tirelessly backstage and elsewhere to ensure that the show goes on. From the outset Eric de Bruyn was well aware that good intercoms were a keystone in the success of any performance: ‘I scoured the market for a good supplier but came up with nothing,’ he recalls. ‘Ultimately, I decided that if a job was worth doing, it was best doing it oneself.’ As a result, Ampco grew an extra wing in the form of Ampco Sound Lab and with it ASL came of age.

 Having designed analogue intercom solutions for a number of esteemed Dutch and overseas rental companies and theatres, Mr de Bruyn decided to launch ASL Intercoms as a separate company in 1985. Its immediate goal was to build intercoms suited to the extreme demands of live entertainment and broadcast production in both portable and installed systems, with the IS210 and IS211 master stations quickly rolled out to critical acclaim as ASL’s first products. The ASL intercom line was extended over the years with the introduction of the Basic and Pro Series of single and multichannel systems. A team of four technicians and staff was responsible for designing and working on the intercom master stations, belt-packs and speaker stations, which rapidly found their way onto the export market. German, French and UK distribution was confirmed in the early days, but this network was extended beyond Western Europe to India and Central America when Ampco’s productions took them to more distant shores. Manufacturing has consistently been outsourced to companies within the Netherlands, allowing the team to concentrate on sales, marketing, research and development. ASL’s early brand values were based on reliability, ruggedness and value for money, and this legacy has been continued with the development of the Wireless Series intercoms and the Theatre Series cue light system.

Indeed, the analogue intercoms have proved to be so successful over the years that few of the original series have been removed from the product catalogue. ASL has gained consistent increases in market share over the years because, Mr de Bruyn believes, it has designed and built intercoms for the needs of their customers rather than following their competitors: ‘It’s why we devised the ISM system,’ he stresses. ‘When the Amsterdam Opera House put out a tender for a new intercom system, Wil Stam was technical manager at the time and was quite candid as to how she wanted the intercom to work, so we designed ISM, a modular system that could adapted to other theatres around the world.

The Dutch broadcaster NOB acquired Ampco in 1996, retaining Mr de Bruyn to handle the day-to-day management, and in 2002 he and five other shareholders bought Ampco back from NOB and also acquired lighting company Flashlight. The outcome was the formation of the Ampco-Flashlight Group, with 250 personnel away from the intercoms side of the business – which was not part of the package acquired by NOB and remains a private concern today. Appearances at trade shows such as Frankfurt Pro Light & Sound assisted ASL Intercom’s market research, allowing it to add features and new designs to a growing family of intercoms, as well as engaging new distributors in emerging markets. ‘The Wireless Series resulted from many discussions that we had with end-users in theatre and live sound sets,’ Eric de Bruyn says. ‘However, the idea for the call buzzer tone came from a trip with Ampco to Nicaragua. While we were setting up, tropical birds sometimes stopped us from anything when it started calling – it was such a harsh noise. So we recorded it, and used it as a buzzer, as we knew that sound would get everyone’s attention in a production.’

In 2006, Eric de Bruyn left his position as the CEO of the Ampco Flashlight Group, allowing him to head the ASL Intercom BV on a full-time basis. Having familiarised herself with the company’s products while working for the German distributor Peter Wolff Enterprises, Susan McLohon had become sales and marketing director four years prior to that. ‘Sales doubled in the years after Susan joined the company,’ acknowledges Eric de Bruyn. ‘The team we have at ASL is like a big family unit and works as one to get the job done. Product manager Ronald de Kruif has been here 21 years, while manufacturing manager Mischa van Elteren has been here for 12. I’d left Ampco and we had everything in place, so it made perfect sense to take up the digital challenge.’

The gestation period of the digital products certainly took longer than initially anticipated in 2006, however. ‘We wanted to provide our customers with the reliability of our analogue products, but with enhanced ease of use features made possible by integrating digital technology. We envisaged the route to digital would be very different and that there would be some obstacles in our path, but I don’t think we fully appreciated how different this would be,’ confesses Mr de Bruyn. Together with Susan McLohon, he provided the design team with the blueprints for the final system’s core components. This conceptualisation is refreshing as it means that ASL has not followed the tracks of its competitors. Instead, it has logged ideas in a manual that is internally referred to as ‘the bible’.

‘We didn’t want our digital protocol to be Windows-based, for example, as too many users tell us they that don’t like the interface. We want to look at a programme that is self-explanatory, so Susan and myself provided a lot of ergonomic details, and what we drew up three years ago is what you see today. It’s designed with many unique and complex features, but above all, it’s so easy to use. A user is assigned a three-digit ID code and, once punched in, is able to talk to any other colleague on the network. There’s no need to connect to a particular user station to place you in the matrix and configuring is extremely easy,’

Advanced Intercom Matrixing – or AIM – is central to ASL’s new digital technology. The ConfigurIT software suite allowing the configuration of the system for particular applications in addition to multiple configuration presets for different types of productions in rotation. This software may be operated or edited either off- or on-line, such as during an active event. The software allows unique user IDs to be assigned to a person, a job title or a location. Each user is then assigned a station type such as a two-channel beltpack, or an eight-, or 16-, or 24- , or 32-, or 36-channel speaker station and from this users can be assigned to user groups for different applications and productions. These can then be saved as presets, allowing instant system reconfiguration for different productions.

The networks can be established using star, daisy chain or line topologies, with each 1U-high matrix unit serving up to 40 users, and up to six units able to be linked via copper or fibre-optic cable to a capacity of 240 users. Direct person-to-person communication is possible from any user station to any other without tying up a channel, and there is even a text messaging facility from keypad stations, which was devised following feedback of missed calls when an operator was temporarily away. In terms of ergonomics, the signal lights are easy to recognise and offer adjustable brightness, while controls are large and clearly labelled. Should there be a loss of power, an auto-restore function maintains all the operational settings. ASL has clearly hung onto each and every word offered by customers in arriving at a unique digital solution, resulting in a robust and exceptionally flexible intercom system.

ASL Intercom recently relocated to Zonnebaan 42, an industrial unit on the outskirts of Utrecht. For Eric de Bruyn, the business has come full circle in terms of geography, as it was situated here some 15 years previously, when still under the Ampco Pro Rent umbrella. ASL occupied a tiny section of this large office space. Extensive renovations have taken place in the interim, and ASL has invested extensively in the worki environment.

Having recently appointed Dai Kyung Vascom as Korean distributor and Setron Private for India, Susan McLohon has set the company’s sights on consolidating and expanding its Asa-Pacific and Middle East sales networks. ‘We’re very well established in Europe, but we see enormous potential in Asia right now. In Europe, many users refer to generic intercoms as ASLs, and one day we hope that this will be the case in the rest of the world.’

ASL is poised like a lion ready to pounce as Eric de Bruyn announces that his five-year plan is about to be put into action. This is a private company that clearly doesn’t lurch from quarter to quarter, in which individuals are allowed to develop their skills and are encouraged to be open. ‘Our best times are ahead of us,’ he concludes. ‘We know that we are on the right track, and I am confident that our market share is going to grow enormously having broken through into the digital domain. I take pride in the team we have here, which has worked tirelessly to devise the solution we now offer. Having placed ourselves in the body of the user, we have developed the technology around its members, so that it can be used properly rather than stopping them from getting on with their jobs.’

ASL Intercom, The Netherlands: +31 30 241 19 01

www.asl-inter.com

Published in PAA January-February 2010