Re: Some truth about investment and growth
This from a guy that bought a PM1D. 
The reality is that even a mid-size line array requires very different logistics than a ground stacked conventional rig. The difference between them, besides some purchase price considerations, are labor and rigging.
Your comment about large firms not being able to handle small shows in a competitive (to small operators) is correct. At shops that do bigger shows as a matter of routine, everything is packaged and set up in ways that require stage hands, rigging points, trucks with ramps and venues that hopefully have loading docks. Brandon is in between already. Unless he can sell his Versarray rig for what he paid for it (possible, but doubtful), he's buying twice, for more money. He says his clients won't/can't pay more, so why is he increasing his cost of doing business? He MUST expand either his market area/customer base or find a way to charge his existing clients a higher fee. Or he'll be out of business in a couple of years.
As bigger firm that IS expanding downward, the issue is one of labor. If we're going to make a profit the gear has to be cheaper, sure, but the real issue is that a rig must be assembled, operated, and taken away by a single employee. When you add in lighting of any significance it's a long, hard day for that person and we have to pay them more; the savings come from not sending 2 other guys. But our overhead does not change: the cost of insurance, office, warehousing, taxes, permits and licenses remain the same or even go up. Part of the reason (in the US, anyway) small operators have lower costs is that they simply don't pay them. Insurance? What's that? Permits and licenses? Only if someone complains or there is an incident. Our accountant figured that most of the small operators in our area are dodging between 50%-70% of those types of expenses. It's a significant amount of money. Factor in that owner-workers are not required to have workman's compensation insurance or provide health insurance and there is a huge difference in operating costs.
