July 14, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode of jumbleThink, host Michael Woodward sits down with TJ Smith, President of @EAWVideo (Eastern Acoustic Works), for a behind-the-scenes look at the rebirth of one of the most iconic names in pro audio. From their pioneering days to the challenges of a venture capital buyout, EAW’s journey has been anything but ordinary. TJ shares how the company navigated its toughest seasons and what it took to rebuild a legacy brand in a rapidly evolving industry.
We dive deep into the cutting-edge innovations now redefining EAW’s product line—including their revolutionary Adaptive Systems like the Anna, Otto, and AC6 series, as well as the sleek and powerful NT206L. These aren’t just incremental upgrades; they’re part of a broader strategy to put EAW back at the forefront of audio excellence for touring, installed sound, and worship venues. TJ offers insight into how the team balances heritage with bold forward-thinking to deliver next-gen audio solutions.
TJ also opens up about his own journey into the audio world and what drew him to this work. His passion for the craft, combined with a strategic vision for the future, offers a compelling look at what it means to lead a company through reinvention. Whether you're an audio professional, entrepreneur, or creative visionary, this conversation is packed with lessons on innovation, leadership, and the power of staying true to your roots while building toward what's next.
Learn more about EAW at https://eaw.com/
We dive deep into the cutting-edge innovations now redefining EAW’s product line—including their revolutionary Adaptive Systems like the Anna, Otto, and AC6 series, as well as the sleek and powerful NT206L. These aren’t just incremental upgrades; they’re part of a broader strategy to put EAW back at the forefront of audio excellence for touring, installed sound, and worship venues. TJ offers insight into how the team balances heritage with bold forward-thinking to deliver next-gen audio solutions.
TJ also opens up about his own journey into the audio world and what drew him to this work. His passion for the craft, combined with a strategic vision for the future, offers a compelling look at what it means to lead a company through reinvention. Whether you're an audio professional, entrepreneur, or creative visionary, this conversation is packed with lessons on innovation, leadership, and the power of staying true to your roots while building toward what's next.
Learn more about EAW at https://eaw.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome to jumble Think. My name is Michael Woodward.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I am the host here and we have a killer
conversation for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Been looking forward to this chat for a while now.
Our guest is TJ. Smith.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
TJ is the president of a company called Eastern Acoustic
Works better known as EAW.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
They're based up in Massachusetts. Now.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In the nineties, they were the premier builder of speakers
for concerts and tours, and through acquisitions and changes of ownership,
some of that DNA was lost. But TJ joined the
team a few years ago and he's been bringing back
the brand to being one of the top providers of
speakers in the country and for that matter, in the world.
(00:44):
They've been doing this through looking at new ways to
build technology, new infrastructure and products, and bringing manufacturing back
to the US. It's a fascinating conversation and so I'm
looking forward to today's conversation with TJ.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Smith. Let's jump on in.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
On.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
TJ. Thanks so much for joining today.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, lots going on in your world. We were just
talking before we hit record. Your dad, I'm a dad.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Fun adventures with kids always a great time.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Absolutely that's the reward right. They've certainly been in for
the adventure throughout my entire career and just been a
good ride.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Now you have.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
We're going to talk a lot about some new products,
some technology that EAW is developing. We're going to talk
about the partnership and relationship between RCF and EAW. A
lot of stuff we're going to talk about, but I
wanted to start off with just talking about how in
the world did.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You end up in the audio space.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I don't think it's all that unique. I mean, I
was twelve thirteen years old and going to a contemporary
church with a band, and it was early nineties. There
was a sound system and they needed somebody to stand
back there and and run it. And I was very
happy to be part of that. I just liked being
(02:15):
kind of part of what was happening without having to
be on the stage. And the worship minister at the
time kind of took me under his wing. He bought
me a book, Yamaha Sound Reinforcement for Worship, and then
he had this. It was a binder throwing binder full
of the EVP, a Bible like hand drum. It's a classic,
(02:37):
and I just absorbed them any brochure I could get
from any audio and manufact I read the thing, try
to understand. So I just yeah, I just glombed onto
it from there, And that's the impetus for my career. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Mine.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Actually, I have a lot of background in audio with church,
with churches. I did some touring stuff for a while
on my early twenties and is really a lot of
fun stuff. But it was showing up at the church
with my dad sitting behind a sound console and going, well,
if I'm going to be here early, I might as
well learn it too, right. It's so interesting how many
(03:12):
people that's how they got into the space, which I
think just shows the testament of like the power of
discipleship in a way, whether it's in the church or
whether it's in the marketplace, we're raising up leaders all
the time.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, that's that's one of the ways. You know, I
look back on that and the people that have you know,
given into my life. Right, So that worship Minister Lee Anderson, right,
he was a big part of that, And there was
the other guys in the church that just let me
try then do things that you know, because they saw
that de propensity that interested me that the career and
(03:49):
you know, blossom from there. So I really appreciate that
and I'm always looking like, how can I sort of
repeat that and give that back out to another generation.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I mentioned, you know, early in the two thousands, was
working as a worship pastor and we had an eaw
kf like six fifties which were great point source boxes,
loud and just really great boxes. Of course you got
the seven fifties, eight fifties which were the staple of touring.
(04:20):
That and Turbo sound, floodlight and flashlight. I remember in
the nineties I worked a festival and my first Big
Boys sound sound system. Of course, a lot of JBL
stuff and everything like that, but Turbo Sound at a
Christian festival, was working monitors and just went, oh, this
is a different level. And then I was introduced to
(04:41):
EAW and it was like, oh, these two, these are
the rock stars of the industry in the nineties, just
killing it out of the park.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, that was certainly, you know, a high point for
this brand for EAW. By the mid nineties, I say
it was it was the number one professional aw speaker
brand and in the world. Yeah and yeah, so a
lot of the innovation that you see today actually was
one of the things I learned as I started here,
came out of that period. So when you look at
(05:12):
the current catalog, the adaptive products, the leadership, the ownership,
which was there were founders, you know, Ken and Kenton
saw you know, here's where we think the industry is
going and started investing in technology at that point that
we didn't really even have the hardware the support. So
it's really interesting the trajectory of the brand that way.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I think of like the seven thirty Slams, the
really one of the first leaders and what's now been
the revolution of line arrays.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, of course, yeah, there was, Yeah, there were a
few of those products there early on in early two
thousands as that that technology sort of took off, but
we under the surface there were investing in where we
saw it going next. And that's why in twenty twelve,
as their team, you started seeing Anya and the adaptive
(06:06):
wine sources coming in.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Now EW's gone through some changes over the years. Loud technology,
which originally was Mackie and now is Loud Sound.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
There was a season where brought.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Under that that venture capital fund, and that really changed
the trajectory of EAW and now you're in a season
where you're coming back under our RCF and really reinventing
the brand towards the future again.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
So you were.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Brought in originally to help Loud Technology in the process
of figuring out what happens with eaws?
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah? More or less? And that was a surprise to me.
That was as a harmon at the time, and someone
I had worked with their approached me with the job
and actually didn't tell me what the job was, just
having Seattle to interview, and I was like, you know,
I had a list of the four companies they owned
at the time, like which one do I want? Where
do I want to move next. I was very surprised
(07:08):
and pleased to hear that ew was where they wanted
me and the goal the brief was we want to
sell it and they felt like I was someone that
could help them do that. And I always laugh that
I had never imagined in my wildest dreams that I
would be someone that people would reach out to it
you can help us sell a company, TJ. That just
wasn't part of how I saw myself, But indeed that
(07:31):
that worked out.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, And I love that you've chosen not to do.
So many people when they come in for those transitions,
they come in for the brand. They help the transition,
they position it, the brand is offloaded into another VC
or a different brand, or sometimes are bought back by
the original team. And so you know, it would have been
(07:53):
easy for you to go, Okay, I can do my
job and then go on to the next thing. I mean, harmon,
we're talking JBL, We're talking in was a Crown Amps,
We're talking a lot of Soundcraft is under their Brown brand,
and so a lot of great brands there.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
You could have.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Used that as a stepping stone, but instead you you
seem to really have an affinity with the EAW brand
and staying for the long haul. You've been there for
getting close to ten years now, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
That's true. Yeah, I mean there's the if any from
growing up in the industry in the nineties and watching
EAW and it's heyday. You know, I told you I
had an EW bumper sticker on one of my textbooks
in high school. Was bad devoted, And then yeah, having
a chance to come in actually be part of the
brand that got us to move out to Boston from
(08:44):
we're actually in Utah at the time. We're Midwest origin,
but we were in Utah. I got us out here.
But what really got me to stay was what the
new ownership, what RCF wanted and as they wanted to
rebuild the brand, and what I've I've realized about myself.
I was just talking to Michelle, my wife, about it,
you know, the other day. It turned forty eight. A
(09:05):
few weeks ago. I'm a forty eight and I finally
understand what makes me ticket is I like to build
things right. I like that energy around, you know, a
problem and steps and processes and people and bringing that
all together and rebuilding EAW from where it was and
when I started in twenty sixteen to where we're going.
It's just it's very intrinsically motivating for me. And just
(09:29):
enjoyed it immensely. So I'm glad I'm here.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Super cool now.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I had the opportunity years ago a friend of mine,
a guy named Leo Gunther, He was an integrator in
northern California, and I had the opportunity to go and
experience at the time EW in Washington at Woodinville.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Is that right or is that that was it? Yeah?
And got to go to the.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Corporate offices, got to tour the warehouses, and I remember
we had an EAW rig at our church, a pretty
nice right center, left center, right set up, and so
it just sounded amazing in that room. And I just
remember seeing AW just go through that hard time of
(10:11):
outsourcing manufacturing, of moving to China, some of the roadblocks
along the way. AAW had actually designed a forerunner of
the modern digital console in many ways, had to buy
them all back and everything like that.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
But you eaw's.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Doing some really cool stuff. One of the few manufacturers
bringing manufacturing back to the US, bringing R and D
fully back to the US. Talk to us about that
transition as you're re establishing AAW as America's top brand.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, okay, so you know we'll start at the point
of the sale.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
In twenty eighteen, you know, we were sort of set
free from that corporate structure. And I joked with the
people we used to work with when they were kind
of like ungrateful children, where we're suddenly on our own
and we're like, wait, where are all these bills coming from?
What are you talking about? And all the work that
they were doing for us, we suddenly had to do
but it gave us, uh, the ability to create the
(11:10):
company that we wanted. And so from the very bottom
to the top, you know, we got to create the
customer support functions, you know, how how we interact with
our SAP system and how our customers do the portals. Uh.
That took a long time. That was that was a
good four years of just focused effort that you know,
(11:32):
we were in in the nuts and bolts there because
I we we said early on, in order to be
that number one brand, we have to do that a
foundation of customer service. Yeah, deliver on that basic promise.
No one's going to trust you beyond that. And so
that was our first thing and the whole company was
involved in that. That was through COVID. There were eight
(11:52):
people in the building. Uh, that was the distance between
us and that that point. I was the one entering
orders that we were at that point. But again, very
thankful for that experience because it allowed us to create
the company that we wanted to create. So that from there,
our next step was looking at our production footprint. Because again,
you can't say you're the number one American brand if
(12:14):
everything is made overseas. That doesn't make any sense. So
we've started the process of building assembling some of our
products here in this new facility we're in. Now about
half of our skew lists by quantity, is assembled here
in the US, and with the current changes in the environment,
(12:36):
we're working to bring more and more of that back here.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Super cool.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And that's in Franklin, Massachusetts. So EW has returned to
its New England roots, if you will, It's hometown in
many ways.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, this is I think the third location we've been
in in our forty six year history, and we've only
been in it for a year, so it's pretty new
to us.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Super cool.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Now, you had mentioned some of the technology, and we're
we're big fans of innovation strategies to getting new products
to market, the process of ideation and and there's there's
a lot of stuff going on in the R and
D at EW. Of course, there's the adaptive technologies, which
is your ANYA ANYA and auto some of the other
(13:21):
technologies that you have.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
You have.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
A column array I think in that family that's a
little bit of a smaller footprint. Yeah, And and that
was such a departure because at that point when you
started developing that, that was when line arrays really were
getting their footing, and you you all had a really
(13:45):
big staple, a stable of line array.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
But you make this departure.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Tell us a little bit about what adaptive audio is
and how these speaker arrays are really setting a new
tone for how we approach audio and how we maybe
think of installations are touring.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Okay, well, to say it's a new idea is actually
not entirely accurate. Okay, what EAW did with adaptive and
we're always accused of you know this is it's a
marketing term, right, It's it's just beamforming, and we say
it's not being forming. We actually say say no to
beam forming because you know, when you're looking at a
(14:23):
performance system, you're trying to do music reproduction, you make
sacrifice for sacrifices in doing beamforming that will harm the
performance of the music. So what adaptive does. It goes
back to the original nineteen forties handbook on creating liner arrays, okay,
and it's it's using sources that are physically small and
(14:44):
close together. So we say there's two rules to adapt
The first one is create a single acoustic source. The
second one is defined coverage. Beamforming skips The first one
they do not create a single acoustic source because do
that you have to have a transducer or a speaker
that is small relative the wavelength you're trying to produce.
So in physics, right, the higher frequency the sound, the
(15:06):
smaller the wavelength. So we're using one inch sources, which
gives us in the math. I'm not the acoustician, but
it gives us a gives us that the response out
to about thirteen point five kill Hurtz, so just a
little shy of the edge of our ability to hear
as humans. And then we place them directly next to
each other, so there's no space between those drivers. And
(15:28):
when you do that, you're creating a pattern because of
interaction that is narrowed down right to a straightforward polar plot.
Then we put an amplifier and processor on every one
of those transducers, so in an ANYA there's twenty two
amplifiers and processing blocks. So by changing the interaction or
(15:49):
the timing between those transducers, we can create whatever polar
plot you want from the bottom edge of the responsive
speaker to the upper edge, and it's all it's all
in phase. So that's the difference. You know, we spend
a lot of time this past year trying to educate
the market on how that is and how it works,
but is fundamentally different than what anybody else is is
(16:12):
doing on the market right now.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
So you know, in the market we see a lot
of manual rays where you're actually doing displays the spacing
between speakers and the angles manually. There's also a DSP
processing that's going into to sometimes modify what a speaker
is doing. D and B Technologies does a lot of
that within their arrays and structures.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
How is this?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Is this a hardware solution, a software solution, something that's
in between that marries all this together to make it work?
How like, what's the magic saws that There's a lot
of things that have to work for this to work right.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
No, as a great question, and I had this conversation
with Jefferies, artically acoustician, director of engineering. Most of what
you see in Adaptive is mechanical. We created a single
acoustic source. It's the genius. And if you look at
the pattern, there's really two things in the patent. One
is how did we create that single acoustic source mechanically?
(17:10):
And the second is how do we make it all
work together? So it's not complicated. There's twenty two transducers
in an Anya took a lot would be twelve twenty four. Yeah,
if you've got to manage that all, I mean, it's impossible. Right.
We could talk about where I think the touring market
is going and why that would be counter where the
touring market is going, but that that is the special sauces.
(17:31):
You know, we spent the you know, the herd acoustic
work pays off. We say we did the heart acoustic work.
Now the DSP is actually really simple. Everybody's like, oh,
I got this new algorithm, Like our algorithms not that complicated.
We you know, that's not even even what we patented.
And you know we don't beat the acoustics to death
with the DSP. We actually let the acoustics do what
(17:53):
they want to do. Like that, that's built into the
mechanics of the platform.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
I have a friend that's mixed Anya and and I
have not. I wish maybe one of these days I'll
get that opportunity. But he talks about like the steerability
of the speakers, which is a little bit different. I mean,
you can do that in some line ray of technologies
that are out there. But when I think of these
(18:19):
boxes and what I know of them. When I think
about these, they're not true. They're not a linerary. They're
almost like a line point source in a way.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Is that a good analogy on that?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I would
tease that apart. I mean, in some ways that are
more of a linerary than anything else, because if you
go back again to that original paper or what is
a linerary, the adaptive products conformed to that formula. So
what happened in the early or late nineties and early
two thousands when we were starting to see lineries come out,
(18:53):
we said, well, we don't have small enough transducers. They're
not lightweight enough if we if we actually do that
in our lineries, they'll be enormous and difficult to work with.
You don't have electronics, like let's let's find a compromise.
And so all acoustics primarily I think, came out with
that isophasic waveguide and that's what made that product work,
where they're taking one relatively large transducer and converting it
(19:16):
to a planar wavefront output, and it works. We hear
it all the time. There are limitations, right, You've basically
in that you kind of set it a minute ago.
You've created a line source that in the high frequencies
is actually a point source because you have to point
it at what you want to hit, or the high
frequencies don't don't go there. So you know, if you
(19:38):
need a large vertical coverage, you have to have a
really long line to hit the bottom of the you know,
the coverage of the people closest to the speakers. So
you're gonna have something hanging down into screens in front
of lights cause some issues there. Or if you're trying
to shoot up like in stadiums, you see this where
display you know it's got that sort of reverse a thing. Yeah, yeah,
(20:01):
you're having huge problems that long throw distance in the
non overlap of the high frequencies in that range. And
those problems don't exist with adaptive because we do not
require any sort of display angles.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So do you see.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You know, different companies are taking different approaches in the
speaker manufacturing, Some like Danley really doubling down on cardioid,
single box Jericho, things like that. DNB is doing a
hybrid with line source with cardioid and some other technologies.
(20:38):
Of course, most companies have at least some kind of
offering in point source. Do you see adaptive for eaw
as being the future of where you develop? And then
how does that change your product offering as you develop
out for both small scale to large scale events.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, so we continue to develop Adaptive. It's a it's
a little hard to see because those loudspeakers are acoustics platforms.
So we got the mechanics right, So anything you you
know that's going on is kind of happening in the
interface or yeah, the the user interface electronically or the
physical interface how you're hooking it up, because that's where
(21:18):
you know, where we see you know, the biggest opportunities
for products like Adaptive. You know, there's you know, additional
accessories that we haven't development ones hanging you know, just
on the other side of this wall here as we
work out the kinks. So we continue to develop in
that space. But you know, we we're also aware that
(21:39):
there's a heart of the market right where people are
buying products every day, and if we want to finance
further development and that leading edge technology, you know, we
have to hit that hit that space. And so that's
why you know, you see us developing products in the
NT line, but we're doing in a uniquely e AW
way that addresses where we see the market going.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Overall super cool.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Now we think things like the sphere, which is kind
of nuts. I was hoping to see you too. Maybe
they'll come back and I'll get to see them there.
But one of the buzzwords in the industry, I know
all acoustics is it's one of their big buzz is
immersive audio.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Is this something that eew's working towards.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
And how does the product lines that you're developing fit
into this immersive experience in a live environment?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Oh yeah, So you know, we bring it into two pieces.
So there's the content creation, so that's an engine connect
to the console essentially the stems, and then there's the delivery.
Right now, we don't have that, you know, engine that
allows you to create stems. That's not part of our portfolio.
Where we have focused is in that delivery and this
(22:51):
is where we think Adaptive actually has a tremendous advantage
in delivering that content because of its short a ray length.
You know, we've done a couple of churches now in
particular where a traditional lin array would have had to
be so long in order to create that immersive experience
throughout the room that it was impractical. Or you know
(23:13):
a lot of houses worship there they're shallow and wide
doesn't work for that, right, you can do outfills, but
then you you've got issues with that. And Adaptive because
it hangs straight, they're designed to go right up against
each other. You can expand horizontal coverage at will. Probably
the best example for us with immersive is a faith
community church in Arizona. We did a study on that.
(23:36):
They did it with AC six so it's a low
ceiling wide, really shallow, and they wanted immersive. Linerarray was
not going to work point source in that environment, was
not going to create an immersive experience in the entire room,
and and Adapted did that in spades.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
That's super cool.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
One of the things that's happening is that you have
some new products that are coming to the mar market
the NT series you mentioned there.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
You've got the NT two O six L which has
a new.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Horn technology that for free aw and how you're approaching
that research and development done in Massachusetts and then you
are making that one of the first man big manufacturing
pushes back in in in the US.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Right, Is that right?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
It's actually made in Mexico. We have a fully owned
plant into cat Mexico and this is the first product
that's that's being built there.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
So talk to us a little bit about this project
because I kind of got excited about it thinking about
applications for myself, I'll be honest, a little greedy there,
thinking of our church, thinking of other things that we're
part of. And I looked at this and I went, Okay,
is this like a comparable with a different horn component
(24:53):
to like maybe an all acoustics Kiva or something like that.
Tell us about this project, the process that got it
to market, and then why this project at this time?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
This why this product for the market today?
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yeah? Okay, Wow, a lot in there. So you know,
we start with kind of why why would we do this?
And and I call it the mid thirties watershed, So
above mid thirties. I talk to people and they want
to talk about KFA fifties and that golden era of
(25:28):
v AW which is great under thirty five thirty six,
and it moves up every year. We won't talk about that,
but the young.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And feel that pain. I'm in that bracket where it
becomes more painful every year.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Right, more more often than not, the people in the
younger generations go, well, what's you? You know they and
what's that symbol in front of your your your your
logo there? And so you know, we knew we had
to do some things to sort of hit the heart
of that belchurve, right, the heart of the market I
mentioned earlier. And the NT is is that the anti series,
(26:03):
anti line is is that that effort, But we wanted
to do it any uniquely E A W. A. We're
not trying to go in the music store. Uh you know,
hit all the DJs that I don't I don't think
that I'm saying we wouldn't do anything DJ. It's just
it's not like the people don't look at E A
W and say that. Like they look at E A W.
They want to see it in stadiums and arenas and
(26:24):
tours and the we knew that a dual six inch duel,
but you know two by small we were calling it initially,
would do that. But we know that the touring market
is trending towards less space in the truck less space
on the stage. Higher are our customers seeing higher labor costs,
(26:45):
So things that are easier to move around, that take
up less space. And so that's why we created the lightest, loudest,
best sounding dual six inch LAUD speaker that is available
on the market. So with an amplifier embedded in the
product made out of wood, it is lighter and louder
than the competition you mentioned earlier, which is externally power amplified.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
And you know, when you're focusing so heavily on new
technology like the adoptive space, this box seems very old school,
not a lot of DSP. It's very Hey, you want
to change the width of the horn, here's how you
do it.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
You just you do it manually.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Why that decision at this time when you're investing so
much towards adaptive to go, Hey, we still think old
school has a place in our portfolio.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah, it's about giving people experiences with the aw Ken
what I alluded to earlier, Right, I mean some people
when they look at the Dante and the networking and
the DSP, it's a little much, right, It's a little intimidating,
and it's kind of a sales preventter in a lot
of ways. And so we wanted to go and make
it the simplest one we can. Now, I'll say, in
(28:02):
the roadmap we've considered. You know, is there a networking solution?
I think there is. Is it a typical TCP IP solution.
I don't think so. I don't know that that part
of the market really wants to deal with switches and
IP addresses and subnets. So that's why we started work.
It's a side note. We have grown our engineering team
(28:24):
by seventy five percent in the past year. Wow, tremendous investment,
all right, and so we have enough people now to
work on those products, and in parallel more people working
on expanding the state of the art with the higher end.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Stuff that's super cool.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Now.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I was talking to a friend of mine.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
He's in his sixties and amazing acoustics guy eaw Dealer.
He's been working with the ADW for a long time
and we were joking just about the change of technology.
You know, he was doing stuff back in the seventies,
so he's he's had a wide birth of experience and
(29:05):
he just goes. I didn't think I needed a degree
in it to be able to saying as speaker when
I started, like never on the horizon. So much has
changed in the audio pro audio space. You know, early
two thousand, you're still talking analog consoles. That's twenty twenty
five years ago, still dealing with analog technologies, speaker configurations.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
So much has changed.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
When you think of EAW as a brand, we talk
about the golden years, which I'm always the golden years
should be ahead of you, not behind, And I think
that that's what you're building towards with EAW. You know,
it used to be in the nineties, AW, Turbersound, Martin Audio,
JBL were kind of like the heavyweights, and then you
(29:52):
fast forward to now you've got ell Acoustics Meyer, which,
oh my goodness, the price point on those boxes. Yeah,
and d NBA Audio Technic. Where do you see AW,
What is the trajectory you want this brand, this company
to be at. Where do you see the market taking you,
(30:12):
guys when it comes to touring install Like, what is
the heart that you have for this brand and where
you're leading it as the president of the company.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Yeah. So you know, the mantra we have internally is
the number one North American professional loudspeaker brand. And that
doesn't mean that we're just the number one in North America.
It means that when people think of loudspeaker brands from
this part of the world, that EAW is the leader
in that space. I think the vision can go far
beyond that. I think we have the gas in the tank.
(30:42):
You know, people want to see AW successful in the
you know, around the world, you know, and that big
sense like it was in the nineties. But that is
I think a direction that we can take that is
very achievable in a reasonable period of time, and we
see ourselves back in the live touring space. I mean,
that's that's really what we're saying when we say that
(31:04):
is and we're back on riders, We're back out with
a list artists, you know. From the outside, I think
one day we'll people will wake come and go, Wow,
they're they're back here. They are. Internally, we you know,
we're taking bites of that elephant every day, you know.
I know, we're pretty close and looking forward to the
day when we you know, we're we're on those riders
(31:25):
again and we're able to talk about all the big
tours we're supporting.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
That's super cool, and I think.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
There were many people who were heartbroken to see kind
of the transformation under loud, but coming out of that,
I one of the reasons I wanted to chat with
you was simply for the place that what you guys
are starting to do is getting exciting again. It doesn't
feel like you're just going, hey, we're holding on. It
feels like, no, we're going to take some ground here.
(31:56):
We're going to really reinvent some spaces. We're going to
look and say, hey, how do we how do we
make this the best brand from the US again?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (32:07):
And so for you, that partnership of r CF is
a critical part of it.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
So talk to us a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
That relationship and and how it's setting e a w
up for the success for the future.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah. So when they bought it, they they came in
and it was a surprise, right we when I came in,
it was another venture capital is going to buy this
into your CJU and your family can move back to
the Midwest and close out this big round in the
world tour you've had, you know, moving around for your career.
But what r CF came, it wasn't It was another
(32:39):
founder is what I help people. And mister Facari in particular,
who is the primary owner, wanted to return e A
W two that that space it wasn't in the mid nineties,
and he's point blanks at at then, TJ, I think
you're the person to help me do that. So I
was all about that. If it had turned into, hey,
you know, we're just gonna milk it and get our
(33:01):
money out of it, and I don't think I would
have been interested in doing that. And as long as
they keep supporting us, I'm fully in and put a
finer point on it. I mean, we you know, we
had just had a board meeting here last week. They
flew over and we sat down talked about the state
of the business. And it wasn't a hey, TJ, you're
not doing enough. Het TJ. Get you know, grow faster.
(33:23):
It was what do you need? What else you need?
I'm like, you're sitting in in fifty six thousand square
foot building that we just moved into. Uh, we were
still figuring out where all the light switches are. You know.
It's just it's an amazing amount of support that they have,
you know, very high expectation, right, they want big things
out of it, but they understand the industry, and so
(33:43):
I don't you know, it's not like I've got some
some MBA that's never seen a loudspeaker or can't tell
the difference between two, you know, giving me advice or
trying to help us solve problems. It's it's somebody industry
that's incredibly supportive and they keep showing that support by
writing checks. And I couldn't ask for anything more. It's great. Now.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Is there a synergy between RCF and EAW and I
think dB Technology. There's several brands under the RCF family.
Is there collaboration or are you guys going, hey, we're
staying in our lane. We have a mission and a
vision of where we're going, and we're doing our things,
they're doing their things. And then that relational equity from
(34:26):
across all of these brands then helps with marketability product placement.
I was up at full Compass a year and a
half ago for a big demo with E and W
and dB Technologies and a bunch of other brands were there.
And so how does that work in the relational space
(34:46):
of what you guys are doing and how you're developing
the future?
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, I mean, as a general rule, all the companies
are fiercely independent from a sales and marketing perspective, there's
no there's no attempt to combine sales channels and things
like that, right, we will allow that are we've operate
independently that way. On the other side, you know, we're
talking about research and development technology. Mister Vacari. His mantra
(35:12):
is don't reinvent hot water. So you know, we look
at it and go, okay, So you've got an amplifier
platform at this amount of power it does these things.
We know it's reliable because you you know, our CF
is building tens of thousands of these things. Get economies
of scale and quality. Uh, you're gonna have to have
a really good reason to say I can't use that, right,
(35:35):
and so we're sharing. You know, things like that run
into the surface. So we're constantly, particularly between E A
W and r CF, kind of having that conversation about
where where the technology is going in platforms and trying
to leverage that to help each other.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Super cool.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Now, as we kind of move towards the end of
the conversation today, I think of you as a person
who straddles the world of business and creativity, and I
think sometimes people forget that engineering, research and development, that
product development. It seems sometimes especially in something that's so
(36:11):
mechanical as just numbers and information, but it is a
creative endeavor. How do you balance the You have big
ideas and vision, but then you have some realities that
you have to cross.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
That bridge as you go.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
How are you making those decisions as a corporate leader
to know this is how fast we can move, this
is how quickly we can get to the idea, this
is how we can invest better. How are you looking
at those strategies?
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Oh wow, that's a good one, you know, And that's
one of the challenges you know you have, especially in
growth mode, is what is a realistic target? And I
think if you would have asked me this question five
years ago, four years ago, I would have had one answer.
You know. Being in this position now, it all happens
(37:02):
slower than you want. And the organization as it gets bigger,
it just needs more focus and more autonomy at the
same time to be able to operate outside of your
direct everyday control. And so the tools I've used are
those big picture ideas. Right. So, if you're working in
the warehouse, the thing you know that I think is
(37:25):
important is that every shipment shows up looking like a
million dollars because whoever bought it, when that truck door
rolls up and they see it to them, they probably
spend like a million bucks, right, and they're going to
want to use this for the next ten years. They
don't want to make this decision again. And so they
understand that. And then as we go through the organization
(37:46):
into order entry, you know, we sort of have these
sayings that we put out there that everybody very simple.
They all know what their goal is and their job is,
so that it can operate without somebody having come into
my office and say, hey, what do I do about this?
You know, we shipped the wrong thing to this customer.
Should we ship the right Yes, ship them the right
(38:07):
thing right and take it on the chin and whatever,
you know, whatever expense kind of thing. And everybody just
knows that now.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
So yeah, that's super cool.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
And for me, I think of recently we upgraded our
consul at our church, and we're not a big church,
we're not a small church, but we're somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I remember they dropped off a new island.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
In heath Avantis and there's a picture of all the
people that were on the volunteer team just around it
like glowing. It's an emotional day where whether you're a
big company that's going, hey, we're upgrading our speaker portfolio
for our clients, or you're a small church upgrading your
(38:50):
sound system for the first time in thirty five years.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
And I know some of those churches.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Anyway, when you think of that, it is in a
way much more than just getting a product. It's about
the vision that you're able to help them fulfill in
what they can do, having that asset, that tool in
place for their organization. And so to hear that was
one of the things with you know, fulfilling orders. EAW
(39:19):
struggled with that in early two thousands just because of
the changes with loud and some other things. And to
hear that coming back to the brand, it feels like
the heartbeats coming back again.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
And it has been for a long time.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
It's not like this is an overnight thing, but it
feels like the heart's coming back to EAW where it
just it's growing stronger and stronger every year.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, we just hired a new sales VP. As I
allude to earlier, you know, as we kind of grew,
I put myself in different seats in the company, so
order entry for a while, and as we grew a
little bit of marketing and then most recently in sales,
I just took the sales role. It's like, I want
to understand all of this. I'm going to travel a
ton and just get get my arms around it. And
(40:05):
that came to an end here about six months ago.
Uh a new sales vice president. And the thing he
came in and one of the first things he said
is he was shocked, astonished at how much everybody in
the organization. Everybody knew about every order. Yeah, you know,
we put it, we have a monthly meeting. You know,
we look at Okay, here's what's coming up, Here's what
we got to do, and nobody was, you know, confused
(40:27):
about what that customer needed or what we had to
do to get it to him. Is as an organization
pointed that customer's success and that's really what it's all about.
I'm kind of a Donald Miller fan. I don't know
if you've read any Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, Blue Like Jazz, love his stuff.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Blue Like Jazz was a good book. But he's a
whole marketing consultant. Yeah, But but the real the core
of it is your Your customers are coming to you
because they have an unmet need and they want to
know something very quickly. Can you help Can you help
me solve this problem that I have? And so we're
pointing a w at here's how we help you solve
(41:01):
this problem you have. Yes, we're a seventy you know,
we started nineteen seventy eight, we're forty six years old.
That's not going to help you. But what will help
you is smaller, lighter, louder, easier to deploy. You know,
we just put a six year warranty out there. Yeah,
you know, communicating the faith of the product that this
is an operational asset is going to last for a
very long time and we stand behind it.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
I know, for us, we're not the typical pro audio news.
We're not the typical audio So this is a little
bit of a different conversation than you're probably having with
a lot of technical But a lot of the people
that listen to the show, they might be going, hey,
I have a small little venue. Hey I have a
restaurant that has you know, we put on monthly shows
(41:47):
and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Oh, I'm a pastor at a church.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
I'm in charge of a nonprofit and we have I
have some friends that are in a pro audio space
that listen to this podcast too. If you were to say, hey,
if you're new to the EAW brand, or maybe it's
been a long time that you've listened to it, that
you've checked out this equipment, what would you tell them
about how you can serve their specific needs. I know
(42:13):
that's a broad question, but how you can help solve
their pain point. Just like you said with Don Miller
there like that. If you can solve a pain point,
that's like the number one thing to sales is like
can you make this not hurt? So, how can EAW
come into whether it's a church that might be going, hey,
what do we do next, whether it's that restaurant, whether
(42:34):
it's that maybe even a regional touring company or something
like that, how can you help them?
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah? Good. So. One of the easiest things you can
do if you go to the website on the upright
hand corner is a request to design. So you click
on that. There's a pretty simple form you can attackt pictures, drawings,
whatever it is and say, hey, what would EAW do?
This is a free service. We will create that design
for you, give it to you and then work with
(43:02):
local you know, dealers and reps to quote that out.
So that's one way that you know, it could be
I think very intimidating to have that need and not
who do I call, Like what's what's the bat phone
on sound system? So it's a bit of that. You know,
our rep network is really complete, and you know, one
of the hallmarks of our rep force is they have
(43:23):
to have technical people on staff that can answer technical questions,
are not just you know, broad salesman. So you know,
definitely reaching out to them them can help. But we
have a product line that that spans a broad range.
You know, our mantras take control of your sound. We
do that through acoustics. We also do that by giving
(43:43):
tools to designers that you know, go from you know,
passive points sources in the cafe or the restaurant, up
to stadiums, up to tours. You know, it's it's a
it's a bit difficult to maintain that product line as
a manufacturer, but it's an important thing, you know, as
we look at support all of those needs that people
have in.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Sound systems and that website's eaw dot com correctdaw dot
com and we'll put that in the episode note. So
whether you're watching or listening, super easy, just click on
the link and go over there.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Lots to read, lots of good stuff going on.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
It's really exciting to go back and regularly see these
news updates, which means there's a lot going on. Whether
it's TEC you won some awards there, whether it's some
other showcases where you've gotten nominated for some great awards there,
there's a lot happening and people are taking notice.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Awesome, Thanks Michael, it's been good.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Wow A, what a fun conversation with TJ today. I
hope that you'll go check out what they're doing and
how they're innovating in the pro audio space. You can
head on over to EAW dot com or find the
links in the episode notes wherever you're watching or listening.
On our next conversation, I'm sitting down with director Jonathan
Bowen to talk about his new movie called.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
The Comic Shop.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
We learn a little bit about what it's like to
write and manage a film production. It's a cool conversation
where you get to learn the behind the scenes, both
the pain and the joy of creating these films that
we so often like to watch, So make sure to
join us for our next conversation. And while you wait,
(45:20):
I want to encourage you to make sure you get
out there, that you're dreaming, that you're chasing those dreams,
that you take those ideas.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
That you're in in your head and make them into reality.
So until next time, dream big and change the world
around you.
Hey, welcome to jumble Think. My name is Michael Woodward.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I am the host here and we have a killer
conversation for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Been looking forward to this chat for a while now.
Our guest is TJ. Smith.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
TJ is the president of a company called Eastern Acoustic
Works better known as EAW.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
They're based up in Massachusetts. Now.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In the nineties, they were the premier builder of speakers
for concerts and tours, and through acquisitions and changes of ownership,
some of that DNA was lost. But TJ joined the
team a few years ago and he's been bringing back
the brand to being one of the top providers of
speakers in the country and for that matter, in the world.
(00:44):
They've been doing this through looking at new ways to
build technology, new infrastructure and products, and bringing manufacturing back
to the US. It's a fascinating conversation and so I'm
looking forward to today's conversation with TJ.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Smith. Let's jump on in.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
On.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
TJ. Thanks so much for joining today.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, lots going on in your world. We were just
talking before we hit record. Your dad, I'm a dad.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Fun adventures with kids always a great time.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Absolutely that's the reward right. They've certainly been in for
the adventure throughout my entire career and just been a
good ride.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Now you have.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
We're going to talk a lot about some new products,
some technology that EAW is developing. We're going to talk
about the partnership and relationship between RCF and EAW. A
lot of stuff we're going to talk about, but I
wanted to start off with just talking about how in
the world did.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You end up in the audio space.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I don't think it's all that unique. I mean, I
was twelve thirteen years old and going to a contemporary
church with a band, and it was early nineties. There
was a sound system and they needed somebody to stand
back there and and run it. And I was very
happy to be part of that. I just liked being
(02:15):
kind of part of what was happening without having to
be on the stage. And the worship minister at the
time kind of took me under his wing. He bought
me a book, Yamaha Sound Reinforcement for Worship, and then
he had this. It was a binder throwing binder full
of the EVP, a Bible like hand drum. It's a classic,
(02:37):
and I just absorbed them any brochure I could get
from any audio and manufact I read the thing, try
to understand. So I just yeah, I just glombed onto
it from there, And that's the impetus for my career. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Mine.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Actually, I have a lot of background in audio with church,
with churches. I did some touring stuff for a while
on my early twenties and is really a lot of
fun stuff. But it was showing up at the church
with my dad sitting behind a sound console and going, well,
if I'm going to be here early, I might as
well learn it too, right. It's so interesting how many
(03:12):
people that's how they got into the space, which I
think just shows the testament of like the power of
discipleship in a way, whether it's in the church or
whether it's in the marketplace, we're raising up leaders all
the time.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, that's that's one of the ways. You know, I
look back on that and the people that have you know,
given into my life. Right, So that worship Minister Lee Anderson, right,
he was a big part of that, And there was
the other guys in the church that just let me
try then do things that you know, because they saw
that de propensity that interested me that the career and
(03:49):
you know, blossom from there. So I really appreciate that
and I'm always looking like, how can I sort of
repeat that and give that back out to another generation.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I mentioned, you know, early in the two thousands, was
working as a worship pastor and we had an eaw
kf like six fifties which were great point source boxes,
loud and just really great boxes. Of course you got
the seven fifties, eight fifties which were the staple of touring.
(04:20):
That and Turbo sound, floodlight and flashlight. I remember in
the nineties I worked a festival and my first Big
Boys sound sound system. Of course, a lot of JBL
stuff and everything like that, but Turbo Sound at a
Christian festival, was working monitors and just went, oh, this
is a different level. And then I was introduced to
(04:41):
EAW and it was like, oh, these two, these are
the rock stars of the industry in the nineties, just
killing it out of the park.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, that was certainly, you know, a high point for
this brand for EAW. By the mid nineties, I say
it was it was the number one professional aw speaker
brand and in the world. Yeah and yeah, so a
lot of the innovation that you see today actually was
one of the things I learned as I started here,
came out of that period. So when you look at
(05:12):
the current catalog, the adaptive products, the leadership, the ownership,
which was there were founders, you know, Ken and Kenton
saw you know, here's where we think the industry is
going and started investing in technology at that point that
we didn't really even have the hardware the support. So
it's really interesting the trajectory of the brand that way.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I think of like the seven thirty Slams, the
really one of the first leaders and what's now been
the revolution of line arrays.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, of course, yeah, there was, Yeah, there were a
few of those products there early on in early two
thousands as that that technology sort of took off, but
we under the surface there were investing in where we
saw it going next. And that's why in twenty twelve,
as their team, you started seeing Anya and the adaptive
(06:06):
wine sources coming in.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Now EW's gone through some changes over the years. Loud technology,
which originally was Mackie and now is Loud Sound.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
There was a season where brought.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Under that that venture capital fund, and that really changed
the trajectory of EAW and now you're in a season
where you're coming back under our RCF and really reinventing
the brand towards the future again.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
So you were.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Brought in originally to help Loud Technology in the process
of figuring out what happens with eaws?
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah? More or less? And that was a surprise to me.
That was as a harmon at the time, and someone
I had worked with their approached me with the job
and actually didn't tell me what the job was, just
having Seattle to interview, and I was like, you know,
I had a list of the four companies they owned
at the time, like which one do I want? Where
do I want to move next. I was very surprised
(07:08):
and pleased to hear that ew was where they wanted
me and the goal the brief was we want to
sell it and they felt like I was someone that
could help them do that. And I always laugh that
I had never imagined in my wildest dreams that I
would be someone that people would reach out to it
you can help us sell a company, TJ. That just
wasn't part of how I saw myself, But indeed that
(07:31):
that worked out.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, And I love that you've chosen not to do.
So many people when they come in for those transitions,
they come in for the brand. They help the transition,
they position it, the brand is offloaded into another VC
or a different brand, or sometimes are bought back by
the original team. And so you know, it would have been
(07:53):
easy for you to go, Okay, I can do my
job and then go on to the next thing. I mean, harmon,
we're talking JBL, We're talking in was a Crown Amps,
We're talking a lot of Soundcraft is under their Brown brand,
and so a lot of great brands there.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
You could have.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Used that as a stepping stone, but instead you you
seem to really have an affinity with the EAW brand
and staying for the long haul. You've been there for
getting close to ten years now, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
That's true. Yeah, I mean there's the if any from
growing up in the industry in the nineties and watching
EAW and it's heyday. You know, I told you I
had an EW bumper sticker on one of my textbooks
in high school. Was bad devoted, And then yeah, having
a chance to come in actually be part of the
brand that got us to move out to Boston from
(08:44):
we're actually in Utah at the time. We're Midwest origin,
but we were in Utah. I got us out here.
But what really got me to stay was what the
new ownership, what RCF wanted and as they wanted to
rebuild the brand, and what I've I've realized about myself.
I was just talking to Michelle, my wife, about it,
you know, the other day. It turned forty eight. A
(09:05):
few weeks ago. I'm a forty eight and I finally
understand what makes me ticket is I like to build
things right. I like that energy around, you know, a
problem and steps and processes and people and bringing that
all together and rebuilding EAW from where it was and
when I started in twenty sixteen to where we're going.
It's just it's very intrinsically motivating for me. And just
(09:29):
enjoyed it immensely. So I'm glad I'm here.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Super cool now.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I had the opportunity years ago a friend of mine,
a guy named Leo Gunther, He was an integrator in
northern California, and I had the opportunity to go and
experience at the time EW in Washington at Woodinville.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Is that right or is that that was it? Yeah?
And got to go to the.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Corporate offices, got to tour the warehouses, and I remember
we had an EAW rig at our church, a pretty
nice right center, left center, right set up, and so
it just sounded amazing in that room. And I just
remember seeing AW just go through that hard time of
(10:11):
outsourcing manufacturing, of moving to China, some of the roadblocks
along the way. AAW had actually designed a forerunner of
the modern digital console in many ways, had to buy
them all back and everything like that.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
But you eaw's.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Doing some really cool stuff. One of the few manufacturers
bringing manufacturing back to the US, bringing R and D
fully back to the US. Talk to us about that
transition as you're re establishing AAW as America's top brand.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, okay, so you know we'll start at the point
of the sale.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
In twenty eighteen, you know, we were sort of set
free from that corporate structure. And I joked with the
people we used to work with when they were kind
of like ungrateful children, where we're suddenly on our own
and we're like, wait, where are all these bills coming from?
What are you talking about? And all the work that
they were doing for us, we suddenly had to do
but it gave us, uh, the ability to create the
(11:10):
company that we wanted. And so from the very bottom
to the top, you know, we got to create the
customer support functions, you know, how how we interact with
our SAP system and how our customers do the portals. Uh.
That took a long time. That was that was a
good four years of just focused effort that you know,
(11:32):
we were in in the nuts and bolts there because
I we we said early on, in order to be
that number one brand, we have to do that a
foundation of customer service. Yeah, deliver on that basic promise.
No one's going to trust you beyond that. And so
that was our first thing and the whole company was
involved in that. That was through COVID. There were eight
(11:52):
people in the building. Uh, that was the distance between
us and that that point. I was the one entering
orders that we were at that point. But again, very
thankful for that experience because it allowed us to create
the company that we wanted to create. So that from there,
our next step was looking at our production footprint. Because again,
you can't say you're the number one American brand if
(12:14):
everything is made overseas. That doesn't make any sense. So
we've started the process of building assembling some of our
products here in this new facility we're in. Now about
half of our skew lists by quantity, is assembled here
in the US, and with the current changes in the environment,
(12:36):
we're working to bring more and more of that back here.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Super cool.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And that's in Franklin, Massachusetts. So EW has returned to
its New England roots, if you will, It's hometown in
many ways.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, this is I think the third location we've been
in in our forty six year history, and we've only
been in it for a year, so it's pretty new
to us.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Super cool.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Now, you had mentioned some of the technology, and we're
we're big fans of innovation strategies to getting new products
to market, the process of ideation and and there's there's
a lot of stuff going on in the R and
D at EW. Of course, there's the adaptive technologies, which
is your ANYA ANYA and auto some of the other
(13:21):
technologies that you have.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
You have.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
A column array I think in that family that's a
little bit of a smaller footprint. Yeah, And and that
was such a departure because at that point when you
started developing that, that was when line arrays really were
getting their footing, and you you all had a really
(13:45):
big staple, a stable of line array.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
But you make this departure.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Tell us a little bit about what adaptive audio is
and how these speaker arrays are really setting a new
tone for how we approach audio and how we maybe
think of installations are touring.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Okay, well, to say it's a new idea is actually
not entirely accurate. Okay, what EAW did with adaptive and
we're always accused of you know this is it's a
marketing term, right, It's it's just beamforming, and we say
it's not being forming. We actually say say no to
beam forming because you know, when you're looking at a
(14:23):
performance system, you're trying to do music reproduction, you make
sacrifice for sacrifices in doing beamforming that will harm the
performance of the music. So what adaptive does. It goes
back to the original nineteen forties handbook on creating liner arrays, okay,
and it's it's using sources that are physically small and
(14:44):
close together. So we say there's two rules to adapt
The first one is create a single acoustic source. The
second one is defined coverage. Beamforming skips The first one
they do not create a single acoustic source because do
that you have to have a transducer or a speaker
that is small relative the wavelength you're trying to produce.
So in physics, right, the higher frequency the sound, the
(15:06):
smaller the wavelength. So we're using one inch sources, which
gives us in the math. I'm not the acoustician, but
it gives us a gives us that the response out
to about thirteen point five kill Hurtz, so just a
little shy of the edge of our ability to hear
as humans. And then we place them directly next to
each other, so there's no space between those drivers. And
(15:28):
when you do that, you're creating a pattern because of
interaction that is narrowed down right to a straightforward polar plot.
Then we put an amplifier and processor on every one
of those transducers, so in an ANYA there's twenty two
amplifiers and processing blocks. So by changing the interaction or
(15:49):
the timing between those transducers, we can create whatever polar
plot you want from the bottom edge of the responsive
speaker to the upper edge, and it's all it's all
in phase. So that's the difference. You know, we spend
a lot of time this past year trying to educate
the market on how that is and how it works,
but is fundamentally different than what anybody else is is
(16:12):
doing on the market right now.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
So you know, in the market we see a lot
of manual rays where you're actually doing displays the spacing
between speakers and the angles manually. There's also a DSP
processing that's going into to sometimes modify what a speaker
is doing. D and B Technologies does a lot of
that within their arrays and structures.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
How is this?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Is this a hardware solution, a software solution, something that's
in between that marries all this together to make it work?
How like, what's the magic saws that There's a lot
of things that have to work for this to work right.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
No, as a great question, and I had this conversation
with Jefferies, artically acoustician, director of engineering. Most of what
you see in Adaptive is mechanical. We created a single
acoustic source. It's the genius. And if you look at
the pattern, there's really two things in the patent. One
is how did we create that single acoustic source mechanically?
(17:10):
And the second is how do we make it all
work together? So it's not complicated. There's twenty two transducers
in an Anya took a lot would be twelve twenty four. Yeah,
if you've got to manage that all, I mean, it's impossible. Right.
We could talk about where I think the touring market
is going and why that would be counter where the
touring market is going, but that that is the special sauces.
(17:31):
You know, we spent the you know, the herd acoustic
work pays off. We say we did the heart acoustic work.
Now the DSP is actually really simple. Everybody's like, oh,
I got this new algorithm, Like our algorithms not that complicated.
We you know, that's not even even what we patented.
And you know we don't beat the acoustics to death
with the DSP. We actually let the acoustics do what
(17:53):
they want to do. Like that, that's built into the
mechanics of the platform.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
I have a friend that's mixed Anya and and I
have not. I wish maybe one of these days I'll
get that opportunity. But he talks about like the steerability
of the speakers, which is a little bit different. I mean,
you can do that in some line ray of technologies
that are out there. But when I think of these
(18:19):
boxes and what I know of them. When I think
about these, they're not true. They're not a linerary. They're
almost like a line point source in a way.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Is that a good analogy on that?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I would
tease that apart. I mean, in some ways that are
more of a linerary than anything else, because if you
go back again to that original paper or what is
a linerary, the adaptive products conformed to that formula. So
what happened in the early or late nineties and early
two thousands when we were starting to see lineries come out,
(18:53):
we said, well, we don't have small enough transducers. They're
not lightweight enough if we if we actually do that
in our lineries, they'll be enormous and difficult to work with.
You don't have electronics, like let's let's find a compromise.
And so all acoustics primarily I think, came out with
that isophasic waveguide and that's what made that product work,
where they're taking one relatively large transducer and converting it
(19:16):
to a planar wavefront output, and it works. We hear
it all the time. There are limitations, right, You've basically
in that you kind of set it a minute ago.
You've created a line source that in the high frequencies
is actually a point source because you have to point
it at what you want to hit, or the high
frequencies don't don't go there. So you know, if you
(19:38):
need a large vertical coverage, you have to have a
really long line to hit the bottom of the you know,
the coverage of the people closest to the speakers. So
you're gonna have something hanging down into screens in front
of lights cause some issues there. Or if you're trying
to shoot up like in stadiums, you see this where
display you know it's got that sort of reverse a thing. Yeah, yeah,
(20:01):
you're having huge problems that long throw distance in the
non overlap of the high frequencies in that range. And
those problems don't exist with adaptive because we do not
require any sort of display angles.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So do you see.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You know, different companies are taking different approaches in the
speaker manufacturing, Some like Danley really doubling down on cardioid,
single box Jericho, things like that. DNB is doing a
hybrid with line source with cardioid and some other technologies.
(20:38):
Of course, most companies have at least some kind of
offering in point source. Do you see adaptive for eaw
as being the future of where you develop? And then
how does that change your product offering as you develop
out for both small scale to large scale events.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, so we continue to develop Adaptive. It's a it's
a little hard to see because those loudspeakers are acoustics platforms.
So we got the mechanics right, So anything you you
know that's going on is kind of happening in the
interface or yeah, the the user interface electronically or the
physical interface how you're hooking it up, because that's where
(21:18):
you know, where we see you know, the biggest opportunities
for products like Adaptive. You know, there's you know, additional
accessories that we haven't development ones hanging you know, just
on the other side of this wall here as we
work out the kinks. So we continue to develop in
that space. But you know, we we're also aware that
(21:39):
there's a heart of the market right where people are
buying products every day, and if we want to finance
further development and that leading edge technology, you know, we
have to hit that hit that space. And so that's
why you know, you see us developing products in the
NT line, but we're doing in a uniquely e AW
way that addresses where we see the market going.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Overall super cool.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Now we think things like the sphere, which is kind
of nuts. I was hoping to see you too. Maybe
they'll come back and I'll get to see them there.
But one of the buzzwords in the industry, I know
all acoustics is it's one of their big buzz is
immersive audio.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Is this something that eew's working towards.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
And how does the product lines that you're developing fit
into this immersive experience in a live environment?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Oh yeah, So you know, we bring it into two pieces.
So there's the content creation, so that's an engine connect
to the console essentially the stems, and then there's the delivery.
Right now, we don't have that, you know, engine that
allows you to create stems. That's not part of our portfolio.
Where we have focused is in that delivery and this
(22:51):
is where we think Adaptive actually has a tremendous advantage
in delivering that content because of its short a ray length.
You know, we've done a couple of churches now in
particular where a traditional lin array would have had to
be so long in order to create that immersive experience
throughout the room that it was impractical. Or you know
(23:13):
a lot of houses worship there they're shallow and wide
doesn't work for that, right, you can do outfills, but
then you you've got issues with that. And Adaptive because
it hangs straight, they're designed to go right up against
each other. You can expand horizontal coverage at will. Probably
the best example for us with immersive is a faith
community church in Arizona. We did a study on that.
(23:36):
They did it with AC six so it's a low
ceiling wide, really shallow, and they wanted immersive. Linerarray was
not going to work point source in that environment, was
not going to create an immersive experience in the entire room,
and and Adapted did that in spades.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
That's super cool.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
One of the things that's happening is that you have
some new products that are coming to the mar market
the NT series you mentioned there.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
You've got the NT two O six L which has
a new.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Horn technology that for free aw and how you're approaching
that research and development done in Massachusetts and then you
are making that one of the first man big manufacturing
pushes back in in in the US.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Right, Is that right?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
It's actually made in Mexico. We have a fully owned
plant into cat Mexico and this is the first product
that's that's being built there.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
So talk to us a little bit about this project
because I kind of got excited about it thinking about
applications for myself, I'll be honest, a little greedy there,
thinking of our church, thinking of other things that we're
part of. And I looked at this and I went, Okay,
is this like a comparable with a different horn component
(24:53):
to like maybe an all acoustics Kiva or something like that.
Tell us about this project, the process that got it
to market, and then why this project at this time?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
This why this product for the market today?
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yeah? Okay, Wow, a lot in there. So you know,
we start with kind of why why would we do this?
And and I call it the mid thirties watershed, So
above mid thirties. I talk to people and they want
to talk about KFA fifties and that golden era of
(25:28):
v AW which is great under thirty five thirty six,
and it moves up every year. We won't talk about that,
but the young.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And feel that pain. I'm in that bracket where it
becomes more painful every year.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Right, more more often than not, the people in the
younger generations go, well, what's you? You know they and
what's that symbol in front of your your your your
logo there? And so you know, we knew we had
to do some things to sort of hit the heart
of that belchurve, right, the heart of the market I
mentioned earlier. And the NT is is that the anti series,
(26:03):
anti line is is that that effort, But we wanted
to do it any uniquely E A W. A. We're
not trying to go in the music store. Uh you know,
hit all the DJs that I don't I don't think
that I'm saying we wouldn't do anything DJ. It's just
it's not like the people don't look at E A
W and say that. Like they look at E A W.
They want to see it in stadiums and arenas and
(26:24):
tours and the we knew that a dual six inch duel,
but you know two by small we were calling it initially,
would do that. But we know that the touring market
is trending towards less space in the truck less space
on the stage. Higher are our customers seeing higher labor costs,
(26:45):
So things that are easier to move around, that take
up less space. And so that's why we created the lightest, loudest,
best sounding dual six inch LAUD speaker that is available
on the market. So with an amplifier embedded in the
product made out of wood, it is lighter and louder
than the competition you mentioned earlier, which is externally power amplified.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
And you know, when you're focusing so heavily on new
technology like the adoptive space, this box seems very old school,
not a lot of DSP. It's very Hey, you want
to change the width of the horn, here's how you
do it.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
You just you do it manually.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Why that decision at this time when you're investing so
much towards adaptive to go, Hey, we still think old
school has a place in our portfolio.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah, it's about giving people experiences with the aw Ken
what I alluded to earlier, Right, I mean some people
when they look at the Dante and the networking and
the DSP, it's a little much, right, It's a little intimidating,
and it's kind of a sales preventter in a lot
of ways. And so we wanted to go and make
it the simplest one we can. Now, I'll say, in
(28:02):
the roadmap we've considered. You know, is there a networking solution?
I think there is. Is it a typical TCP IP solution.
I don't think so. I don't know that that part
of the market really wants to deal with switches and
IP addresses and subnets. So that's why we started work.
It's a side note. We have grown our engineering team
(28:24):
by seventy five percent in the past year. Wow, tremendous investment,
all right, and so we have enough people now to
work on those products, and in parallel more people working
on expanding the state of the art with the higher end.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Stuff that's super cool.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Now.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I was talking to a friend of mine.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
He's in his sixties and amazing acoustics guy eaw Dealer.
He's been working with the ADW for a long time
and we were joking just about the change of technology.
You know, he was doing stuff back in the seventies,
so he's he's had a wide birth of experience and
(29:05):
he just goes. I didn't think I needed a degree
in it to be able to saying as speaker when
I started, like never on the horizon. So much has
changed in the audio pro audio space. You know, early
two thousand, you're still talking analog consoles. That's twenty twenty
five years ago, still dealing with analog technologies, speaker configurations.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
So much has changed.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
When you think of EAW as a brand, we talk
about the golden years, which I'm always the golden years
should be ahead of you, not behind, And I think
that that's what you're building towards with EAW. You know,
it used to be in the nineties, AW, Turbersound, Martin Audio,
JBL were kind of like the heavyweights, and then you
(29:52):
fast forward to now you've got ell Acoustics Meyer, which,
oh my goodness, the price point on those boxes. Yeah,
and d NBA Audio Technic. Where do you see AW,
What is the trajectory you want this brand, this company
to be at. Where do you see the market taking you,
(30:12):
guys when it comes to touring install Like, what is
the heart that you have for this brand and where
you're leading it as the president of the company.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Yeah. So you know, the mantra we have internally is
the number one North American professional loudspeaker brand. And that
doesn't mean that we're just the number one in North America.
It means that when people think of loudspeaker brands from
this part of the world, that EAW is the leader
in that space. I think the vision can go far
beyond that. I think we have the gas in the tank.
(30:42):
You know, people want to see AW successful in the
you know, around the world, you know, and that big
sense like it was in the nineties. But that is
I think a direction that we can take that is
very achievable in a reasonable period of time, and we
see ourselves back in the live touring space. I mean,
that's that's really what we're saying when we say that
(31:04):
is and we're back on riders, We're back out with
a list artists, you know. From the outside, I think
one day we'll people will wake come and go, Wow,
they're they're back here. They are. Internally, we you know,
we're taking bites of that elephant every day, you know.
I know, we're pretty close and looking forward to the
day when we you know, we're we're on those riders
(31:25):
again and we're able to talk about all the big
tours we're supporting.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
That's super cool, and I think.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
There were many people who were heartbroken to see kind
of the transformation under loud, but coming out of that,
I one of the reasons I wanted to chat with
you was simply for the place that what you guys
are starting to do is getting exciting again. It doesn't
feel like you're just going, hey, we're holding on. It
feels like, no, we're going to take some ground here.
(31:56):
We're going to really reinvent some spaces. We're going to
look and say, hey, how do we how do we
make this the best brand from the US again?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (32:07):
And so for you, that partnership of r CF is
a critical part of it.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
So talk to us a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
That relationship and and how it's setting e a w
up for the success for the future.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah. So when they bought it, they they came in
and it was a surprise, right we when I came in,
it was another venture capital is going to buy this
into your CJU and your family can move back to
the Midwest and close out this big round in the
world tour you've had, you know, moving around for your career.
But what r CF came, it wasn't It was another
(32:39):
founder is what I help people. And mister Facari in particular,
who is the primary owner, wanted to return e A
W two that that space it wasn't in the mid nineties,
and he's point blanks at at then, TJ, I think
you're the person to help me do that. So I
was all about that. If it had turned into, hey,
you know, we're just gonna milk it and get our
(33:01):
money out of it, and I don't think I would
have been interested in doing that. And as long as
they keep supporting us, I'm fully in and put a
finer point on it. I mean, we you know, we
had just had a board meeting here last week. They
flew over and we sat down talked about the state
of the business. And it wasn't a hey, TJ, you're
not doing enough. Het TJ. Get you know, grow faster.
(33:23):
It was what do you need? What else you need?
I'm like, you're sitting in in fifty six thousand square
foot building that we just moved into. Uh, we were
still figuring out where all the light switches are. You know.
It's just it's an amazing amount of support that they have,
you know, very high expectation, right, they want big things
out of it, but they understand the industry, and so
(33:43):
I don't you know, it's not like I've got some
some MBA that's never seen a loudspeaker or can't tell
the difference between two, you know, giving me advice or
trying to help us solve problems. It's it's somebody industry
that's incredibly supportive and they keep showing that support by
writing checks. And I couldn't ask for anything more. It's great. Now.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Is there a synergy between RCF and EAW and I
think dB Technology. There's several brands under the RCF family.
Is there collaboration or are you guys going, hey, we're
staying in our lane. We have a mission and a
vision of where we're going, and we're doing our things,
they're doing their things. And then that relational equity from
(34:26):
across all of these brands then helps with marketability product placement.
I was up at full Compass a year and a
half ago for a big demo with E and W
and dB Technologies and a bunch of other brands were there.
And so how does that work in the relational space
(34:46):
of what you guys are doing and how you're developing
the future?
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, I mean, as a general rule, all the companies
are fiercely independent from a sales and marketing perspective, there's
no there's no attempt to combine sales channels and things
like that, right, we will allow that are we've operate
independently that way. On the other side, you know, we're
talking about research and development technology. Mister Vacari. His mantra
(35:12):
is don't reinvent hot water. So you know, we look
at it and go, okay, So you've got an amplifier
platform at this amount of power it does these things.
We know it's reliable because you you know, our CF
is building tens of thousands of these things. Get economies
of scale and quality. Uh, you're gonna have to have
a really good reason to say I can't use that, right,
(35:35):
and so we're sharing. You know, things like that run
into the surface. So we're constantly, particularly between E A
W and r CF, kind of having that conversation about
where where the technology is going in platforms and trying
to leverage that to help each other.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Super cool.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Now, as we kind of move towards the end of
the conversation today, I think of you as a person
who straddles the world of business and creativity, and I
think sometimes people forget that engineering, research and development, that
product development. It seems sometimes especially in something that's so
(36:11):
mechanical as just numbers and information, but it is a
creative endeavor. How do you balance the You have big
ideas and vision, but then you have some realities that
you have to cross.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
That bridge as you go.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
How are you making those decisions as a corporate leader
to know this is how fast we can move, this
is how quickly we can get to the idea, this
is how we can invest better. How are you looking
at those strategies?
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Oh wow, that's a good one, you know, And that's
one of the challenges you know you have, especially in
growth mode, is what is a realistic target? And I
think if you would have asked me this question five
years ago, four years ago, I would have had one answer.
You know. Being in this position now, it all happens
(37:02):
slower than you want. And the organization as it gets bigger,
it just needs more focus and more autonomy at the
same time to be able to operate outside of your
direct everyday control. And so the tools I've used are
those big picture ideas. Right. So, if you're working in
the warehouse, the thing you know that I think is
(37:25):
important is that every shipment shows up looking like a
million dollars because whoever bought it, when that truck door
rolls up and they see it to them, they probably
spend like a million bucks, right, and they're going to
want to use this for the next ten years. They
don't want to make this decision again. And so they
understand that. And then as we go through the organization
(37:46):
into order entry, you know, we sort of have these
sayings that we put out there that everybody very simple.
They all know what their goal is and their job is,
so that it can operate without somebody having come into
my office and say, hey, what do I do about this?
You know, we shipped the wrong thing to this customer.
Should we ship the right Yes, ship them the right
(38:07):
thing right and take it on the chin and whatever,
you know, whatever expense kind of thing. And everybody just
knows that now.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
So yeah, that's super cool.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
And for me, I think of recently we upgraded our
consul at our church, and we're not a big church,
we're not a small church, but we're somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I remember they dropped off a new island.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
In heath Avantis and there's a picture of all the
people that were on the volunteer team just around it
like glowing. It's an emotional day where whether you're a
big company that's going, hey, we're upgrading our speaker portfolio
for our clients, or you're a small church upgrading your
(38:50):
sound system for the first time in thirty five years.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
And I know some of those churches.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Anyway, when you think of that, it is in a
way much more than just getting a product. It's about
the vision that you're able to help them fulfill in
what they can do, having that asset, that tool in
place for their organization. And so to hear that was
one of the things with you know, fulfilling orders. EAW
(39:19):
struggled with that in early two thousands just because of
the changes with loud and some other things. And to
hear that coming back to the brand, it feels like
the heartbeats coming back again.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
And it has been for a long time.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
It's not like this is an overnight thing, but it
feels like the heart's coming back to EAW where it
just it's growing stronger and stronger every year.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, we just hired a new sales VP. As I
allude to earlier, you know, as we kind of grew,
I put myself in different seats in the company, so
order entry for a while, and as we grew a
little bit of marketing and then most recently in sales,
I just took the sales role. It's like, I want
to understand all of this. I'm going to travel a
ton and just get get my arms around it. And
(40:05):
that came to an end here about six months ago.
Uh a new sales vice president. And the thing he
came in and one of the first things he said
is he was shocked, astonished at how much everybody in
the organization. Everybody knew about every order. Yeah, you know,
we put it, we have a monthly meeting. You know,
we look at Okay, here's what's coming up, Here's what
we got to do, and nobody was, you know, confused
(40:27):
about what that customer needed or what we had to
do to get it to him. Is as an organization
pointed that customer's success and that's really what it's all about.
I'm kind of a Donald Miller fan. I don't know
if you've read any Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, Blue Like Jazz, love his stuff.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Blue Like Jazz was a good book. But he's a
whole marketing consultant. Yeah, But but the real the core
of it is your Your customers are coming to you
because they have an unmet need and they want to
know something very quickly. Can you help Can you help
me solve this problem that I have? And so we're
pointing a w at here's how we help you solve
(41:01):
this problem you have. Yes, we're a seventy you know,
we started nineteen seventy eight, we're forty six years old.
That's not going to help you. But what will help
you is smaller, lighter, louder, easier to deploy. You know,
we just put a six year warranty out there. Yeah,
you know, communicating the faith of the product that this
is an operational asset is going to last for a
very long time and we stand behind it.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
I know, for us, we're not the typical pro audio news.
We're not the typical audio So this is a little
bit of a different conversation than you're probably having with
a lot of technical But a lot of the people
that listen to the show, they might be going, hey,
I have a small little venue. Hey I have a
restaurant that has you know, we put on monthly shows
(41:47):
and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Oh, I'm a pastor at a church.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
I'm in charge of a nonprofit and we have I
have some friends that are in a pro audio space
that listen to this podcast too. If you were to say, hey,
if you're new to the EAW brand, or maybe it's
been a long time that you've listened to it, that
you've checked out this equipment, what would you tell them
about how you can serve their specific needs. I know
(42:13):
that's a broad question, but how you can help solve
their pain point. Just like you said with Don Miller
there like that. If you can solve a pain point,
that's like the number one thing to sales is like
can you make this not hurt? So, how can EAW
come into whether it's a church that might be going, hey,
what do we do next, whether it's that restaurant, whether
(42:34):
it's that maybe even a regional touring company or something
like that, how can you help them?
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah? Good. So. One of the easiest things you can
do if you go to the website on the upright
hand corner is a request to design. So you click
on that. There's a pretty simple form you can attackt pictures, drawings,
whatever it is and say, hey, what would EAW do?
This is a free service. We will create that design
for you, give it to you and then work with
(43:02):
local you know, dealers and reps to quote that out.
So that's one way that you know, it could be
I think very intimidating to have that need and not
who do I call, Like what's what's the bat phone
on sound system? So it's a bit of that. You know,
our rep network is really complete, and you know, one
of the hallmarks of our rep force is they have
(43:23):
to have technical people on staff that can answer technical questions,
are not just you know, broad salesman. So you know,
definitely reaching out to them them can help. But we
have a product line that that spans a broad range.
You know, our mantras take control of your sound. We
do that through acoustics. We also do that by giving
(43:43):
tools to designers that you know, go from you know,
passive points sources in the cafe or the restaurant, up
to stadiums, up to tours. You know, it's it's a
it's a bit difficult to maintain that product line as
a manufacturer, but it's an important thing, you know, as
we look at support all of those needs that people
have in.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Sound systems and that website's eaw dot com correctdaw dot
com and we'll put that in the episode note. So
whether you're watching or listening, super easy, just click on
the link and go over there.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Lots to read, lots of good stuff going on.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
It's really exciting to go back and regularly see these
news updates, which means there's a lot going on. Whether
it's TEC you won some awards there, whether it's some
other showcases where you've gotten nominated for some great awards there,
there's a lot happening and people are taking notice.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Awesome, Thanks Michael, it's been good.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Wow A, what a fun conversation with TJ today. I
hope that you'll go check out what they're doing and
how they're innovating in the pro audio space. You can
head on over to EAW dot com or find the
links in the episode notes wherever you're watching or listening.
On our next conversation, I'm sitting down with director Jonathan
Bowen to talk about his new movie called.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
The Comic Shop.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
We learn a little bit about what it's like to
write and manage a film production. It's a cool conversation
where you get to learn the behind the scenes, both
the pain and the joy of creating these films that
we so often like to watch, So make sure to
join us for our next conversation. And while you wait,
(45:20):
I want to encourage you to make sure you get
out there, that you're dreaming, that you're chasing those dreams,
that you take those ideas.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
That you're in in your head and make them into reality.
So until next time, dream big and change the world
around you.
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