Any idea what that billion dollar industry I’ve referred to in the headline may be? Tick… tick… tick…
If you said the audio visual (AV) industry, you’re correct! In a world where we are faced with more sights and sounds than we can keep track of (surely, I’m not the only one?), it’s hard to believe that the AV industry didn’t even exist 3 decades ago.
Rewind back to the 1980s, one of my favourite decades, and life was all about Aussie rock bands, discos (yes, that’s what we called them back then), large touring public address (PA) systems, par can lights, lighting guys, sound engineers and how could we ever forget those roadies in tight, black jeans? The corporate AV industry didn’t exist and even at its inception, there is no way we could have ever predicted what it was destined to become.
In the ‘80s, companies such as Jands, Revolver, Touring Plant, Slats, J Sound, Sound on Stage and Alpha Lighting were all industry giants. Chances are, as I am typing this today, the majority of people would never have heard of any of these companies.
As for projection, this was done via a Barco projector that cost in excess of $35k – as you can imagine, that automatically meant most were priced out of the game. In my experience, the only clients who could even fathom spending that kind of money on a projector, was the Defence Department in Australia. Oh and it could only be serviced by one specialist engineer at the time.
So, you’re probably asking this question: what changed the industry?
Now it’s time to talk about some household company names. We’re talking about the likes of IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Dell and HP – their introduction into the mass market and their unrivalled growth transformed the world and in a nutshell, created the AV industry. Could we ever have imagined just how much these companies would transform our lives? If I answer honestly, not really.
By 1990, technology companies were opening their doors globally to service the market of the corporate AV industry. We saw the likes of Sony, Panasonic and NEC, manufacturing projectors that levelled the playing field. We blinked and these projectors were available for just $7k and could be easily connected to a laptop via a RGBHV five-wire cable. We buckled up for what we knew was going to be an exciting ride and we weren’t wrong. When Fujitsu and Pioneer launched their 42” plasma screens, at a hefty retail cost of $15k here in Australia (I know what you’re thinking: why would anyone pay that sort of money for a plasma screen?), they changed the industry yet again. While spending $15k on that kind of product may sound outrageous in 2017, audio visual contracting companies sold these plasma screens like hot cakes. To give you an idea of just how popular these projectors were, well over 5,000 units (possibly more) were sold in Australia within a 12-month period.
Despite not knowing how big AV was destined to become (honestly, it’s pretty hard for me to even remember what it was like back in the ‘80s when all of this was emerging), we knew corporate AV wasn’t a flash in the pan: AV was here to stay. Personally, I’m not sure whether it was budgets or ego in terms of clients that drove its popularity initially. Either way, before we knew it, we saw AV products playing integral roles across various industry sectors including hospitality, education, aged care, defence, government, legal, health and so on. Seemingly overnight and definitely by 1995, the AV industry was a billion dollar industry and its potential was endless.
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