Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A
Dear Michael,
Thanks for your questions, and sorry about my slow response but the past few weeks have been extremely hectic!
I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished these past 23 years, realizing a dream to build a company that has stood by its founding philosophy. I started the business because I believed that professional audio equipment could and should be affordable. Even after all those years we continue to push the envelope by delivering quality, performance and value that are unmatched.
If I were to summarize our greatest accomplishments, I would have to say that they are our manufacturing facility, our global engineering team and our relentless commitment to quality. These three pillars are what we have built the business on and will carry us well into the future. Allow me to expand on each a little more.
When I moved manufacturing to Asia over twenty years ago, we were basically the first in our industry. Many in our business perceived Asian manufacturing as somehow flawed and incapable of delivering consistent quality. Well, they were partly right, as it is nearly impossible to hold contract manufacturers to consistent materials and manufacturing methods. That became clear to me in the early nineties and is one of the major reasons we opened our own factory.
Manufacturing your own products in China is no easy feat; as we say, if it were easy, everyone would do it. We have had more than our share of learning experiences with vendors, legislators, factory workers and the inevitable complications of working across cultural boundaries. But I am extremely grateful to our team for sticking it out and building a world-class manufacturing facility with the very latest equipment and processes that now produces the best pro audio products in the world.
Our other great accomplishment has to be the more than 250 engineers that make up the backbone of the company. We employ some of the most talented and motivated engineering staff in all of the pro audio industry, with specialties in digital power, DSP, software, analog, wireless, microcontrollers, acoustics and every other discipline. These dedicated people are based in Germany, UK, US, China and the Philippines, delivering breakthrough technologies that find their way into our products.
It is interesting to me that many of our competitors have outsourced engineering right along with manufacturing. That is something we will never do as we view intellectual property (IP) as one of our main competitive advantages. Our extensive IP portfolio allows us to leverage core technologies and roll out new products that we have designed ourselves. I believe that this is the only way to ensure long-term stability and continued growth.
Finally I must say that our relentless commitment to quality has resulted in what I consider to be a metric that I am most proud of. We make some of the most reliable products in the pro audio and MI world, and that’s not by accident. Our continued investments in automated manufacturing, optical and X-ray inspection and rigorous lifecycle testing equipment, and in-house quality assurance have resulted in documented failure rates that are well below most of our competitors. We even built a comprehensive EMC and UL-approved safety lab to do rigorous and comprehensive compliance testing that goes way beyong the regulatory requirements.
Quality starts with reliable and well-tested designs that hold up in the real world that users live in. Our in-house testing labs qualify each and every component before it finds its way into our designs and we continually test every batch to ensure consistency. From axial insertion machines that place e-caps and other through-hole devices to the optical inspection machines that verify each and every solder joint, no-one takes more care building products than we do. Our goal is to deliver products that work flawlessly for years.
As a result, we recently introduced a 3-year Warranty Program for our products. Together with our new state-of-the-art service centers in Las Vegas and Kidderminster UK, we now provide a 24-hour response time for our customers.
As for what you can look forward to from us in the coming years, I can guarantee that we will continue to evolve right along with the people who make and perform music. Look for more affordable digital products, even more powerful and lightweight speakers, phenomenal DJ products and software that ties it all together. This is an exciting time in product development and the things we can do with our talent and efficient factory are nearly limitless.
What would I have done differently?
I believe in never looking back except to learn the lessons that help you move forward. In that regard, I would have built our factory even earlier than we did and not wasted time with contract manufacturers. Remember that our philosophy is to make great products and to make them affordable. That simple promise keeps driving our business forward as much today as it did when I first started on my kitchen table 23 years ago.
Warm regards
Uli
