Knowledge management

Over several years and through the numerous international tournaments South Africa has hosted, Prosound has developed a reputation as a stadium specialist. But while it is happy to have this tag, the company is about much more than just this niche sector.

Origins

The roots of the company date back to the mid 1970s when it was established by managing director Terry Acres. ‘I used to look after bands, part sound-wise and part managing them, and one of the leading musicians in the country came to me and said “Terry, what you’re doing is going to be an industry”. He told me to get into it and we setup a small business back in 1974,’ recalls Mr Acres. ‘Our early history was in touring, one-off events and small festivals. We largely worked in the black townships during the height of apartheid, so at one level I would be doing the concert halls in Johannesburg, and then I would be out every Sunday in the townships doing the real interesting music that was around then.’

The major advantage that working in these two different environments provided the company in its early days was an understanding of the different knowledge levels it would find in various audiences. This could range from a total lack of understanding at one-day cricket matches to highly tuned ears at jazz concerts where members of the audience would suggest improvements to get the best out of the system.

The timing of the establishment of the company was fortunate for Mr Acres. ‘Pro audio went through a period of fundamental growth in the 1970s. We started with what were basically adaptions of cinema systems and because the speakers were very low-powered we had to concentrate largely on efficiency in the enclosures. Speakers and cabling had to be optimised and cabinet placement was essential. Your fundamental knowledge of how the things worked had to be good,’ he explains. ‘It was also a really exciting time then because you largely had horn-loaded speakers to try to get the SPLs up and you didn’t have powerful enough speakers for straightforward front-loading, people would discuss the various merits of different types of speaker and compressor, and styles for different applications. When you’re brought up with that kind of thing it makes applying the products a lot easier.’

Mr Acres believes this initial grounding has given the company a good level of understanding for the systems it builds and the environments it works in. ‘We can usually walk into an environment and get a bit of a feel for it acoustically, understand what you need to achieve and virtually know what you need to put in immediately.’

This grounding in system knowledge is also one thing that has brought in a number of the key members of the Prosound team. The likes of technical director Mark Malherbe, head systems engineer Grant Scott and systems engineer Charles Markotter have all been brought up on the same philosophy of a fundamental understanding of the boxes and the control chain.

As a result of this knowledge the company is also frequently drawn into the design of systems it is bidding for. ‘We don’t necessarily get a financial return on the design, but we get a return with the contracting and the sale.’ It also provides a benefit when it comes to working on projects all across sub-Saharan Africa. ‘Because of the extent of our knowledge and expertise, where ever there are interesting developments we can usually be a major supplier.

‘We were mainly a touring and concert organisation, but because of the standard of work we were doing the pressure was put on us to help with installations and that’s why we went in that direction,’ says Mr Acres. As the company looked for the best value products for the installs, it also started to be approached about distribution agreements. ‘Suppliers and manufacturers tended to find us more than we found them; I believe we’ve introduced every major amp manufacturer into the country.’

Prosound today

As the company has grown and developed it has matured into a full service pro audio and lighting company. The day-to-day business is fixed install projects and live events, but there is also the distribution side as well as rental and retail outlets to sell direct to the public. The contracting side of the business is looked after by Grant Scott and Mark Malherbe, with Mr Malherbe also taking care of the rental side and Mr Scott promoting the retail aspect. The company now boasts offices around South Africa. It has its HQ in Johannesburg, but also has offices in Cape Town and Durban as well as dealers in all the other territories.

The retail side of the business developed as a result of the various MI chains importing equipment directly. Obviously this made it impossible to sell to them so Prosound decided to open ‘Prosound the Shop’ to sell kit directly to the public. ‘People had the impression that we didn’t sell to the public and we only did large installs – which was never the case,’ says Mr Scott. ‘Prosound the Shop gave us a demo space and it gave us an area where people could come and buy the product. In the last few years we’ve taken on a lot of products, such as TC Electronic, and we’re finding this is opening those doors into MI shops that are importers of loudspeakers. Hopefully we’ll be able to start working with these guys and moving more products.’

The retail side of the business is certainly growing and is something Prosound is proud of, but it’s the contracting side that it is best known for. ‘With the history of the company and all the work we’ve done, all the major consultants know who we are, so a lot of the time we find ourselves specifying jobs for consultants because we have that vast knowledge of the venues and how they work from doing so many of them,’ says Mr Scott. ‘Sitting down and doing the design for a venue is all well and good, but the guys who actually do that end up walking away from the job. Whereas we’re always involved and working through the problems with the client. There’s a huge knowledge base there of the pitfalls and we’ll try to overcome those in the initial design just to make it easier for the clients to run the venues.’

One area where Prosound is heavily involved is theatre. On the live performance side this has come about due to the reputation Mr Malherbe has earned as an award-winning sound designer, but on the install side it is partly due to the company’s relationship with Meyer Sound. ‘Because of the history of Meyer and Broadway, a lot of our Meyer sales go into theatres. When a show comes in, it normally specifies Meyer, so most of the theatres have Meyer installs,’ explains Mr Scott.

While the install market is very price-driven Mr Scott likes to give the brands Prosound represents the best chance of being selected for projects. ‘There are some brands, such as Electro-Voice, that we have an extremely long history with but we’ll always give everybody a fair shot. If we are doing a theatre install and it hasn’t specifically asked for Meyer, we will go in with RCF, Electro-Voice and Meyer line arrays and say “there are your three different systems, they are at different price points, what would you like?” and let them decide what is best for them and their budget.’

The contracting market in South Africa is comparatively small with only a handful of players. For Mr Scott this means that customers get a very good deal. ‘Because all the competitors know each other and roughly what price we will come in at with our various products this drives the price down as we each try to win the deal.’

It would be impossible to talk about the install side of Prosound without discussing the World Cup. Prosound won the contracts for nine out of 10 of the venues and installing these systems has been a focus for the company for some time. ‘It’s quite a feat doing nine stadia, but luckily enough they were all nicely staggered so we managed to allocate resources.’

The World Cup has also provided Mr Scott with one of his favourite projects to work on. ‘The stadium down in Bloemfontein stands out for me. We had a really good sub-contractor there, we put the design together, we had a really good relationship with the consultant and it all just came together. We built the kit and sent it to Bloemfontein and the next thing we know we were commissioning and handing over, it was seamless. The easy ones are very nice and stand out from ones like Port Elizabeth, where for three months I was trying to work out how we were going to physically mount the speakers in the roof.’

The stadium install aspect has been a recent highlight, but is not core to the business because, as Mr Scott points out, ‘a country doesn’t build stadia all the time’. One of the reasons Prosound won the contracts for so many of the World Cup stadia was because it had done the original installs for a lot of the sites. ‘There’s a lot of history, and that goes across most of the work we do. The projects we work on all go in phases: A few years ago there was a stage of casino building, so we worked on a lot of those, then they started bolting theatres onto them so we went through that stage and recently there was the stadium stage. Now we are into the next phase.’

The rental side of the business also benefitted from the World Cup. ‘We rented equipment out for three of the fan parks, as well as the Host Broadcasting Service and helping out with the opening and closing ceremonies,’ recalls Mr Scott. ‘There was a huge stack of business on the rental side.’

While the World Cup provided a focus for the A/V industry in South Africa, there has now been a return to business as normal. ‘We’ve all been a little bit worried about what would happen after the World Cup, but in the last couple of months things have started to gear up again. There’s the normal university and church business, everything seems to be carrying on which is a very good sign going forward.’

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