MI Pro

After a decade in Tottenham, relocating in Waltham Abbey must be something akin to walking from a dark place into the light. All of the headaches of moving, let alone combining two separate inventories back into one, are worth it for the space, the freshness – not to mention the absence of bars on the windows – and the overall newness of it all.

This is very much the atmosphere that a visitor to Shure Distribution UK’s new premises walks into – and while I’m sure I would have been greeted by happy faces at any time in the past, I am willing to wager the smiles I saw were that much wider.

For a company the size of Shure UK, it can’t be easy to find a place that gives you room to grow, but the company’s MD, Dennis Harburn, has taken his time to find the right place.

“Actually this was the first place I looked at – about two years ago,” he explains as he leads me round. “It fell through then for various reasons and we kept on looking, but nothing suitable came along until this place came back on the market again. It’s just what we need.”

While Harburn has filled the position of managing director for Shure UK (and previously under the title of HW International) for around eight years now, he is something of the proverbial stick of rock: break him open and look inside and you will probably see Shure written through the middle.

He joined Shure when it used to have its own distribution operation in the UK back in 1972, and stayed with the company when Shure divested itself of its UK business to HW International in 1983. By the time the old guard at HW retired, Harburn had worked his way up to the position of sales director and was appointed MD when a family-owned investment company in Leeds bought the company.

Full circle was achieved in 2003 when that investment company – an odd mix that saw HW and its pro audio equipment essentially under the same umbrella as a fruit and veg business – found itself in need of cash and Shure stepped in to buy the company.

“I was planning a management buyout,” reveals Harburn. “But when Shure came along wanting to do it, it made sense.”

It was a tricky few months. Shure didn’t ‘do’ third party distribution, so Harburn took time out to talk to all the parties concerned. Shure was obviously attracted by both reclaiming its own name in the UK as well as the cash advantages of having third party lines to sell. Those lines were quick to agree as there was a very real compatibility between them – and it can’t be argued with. Shure with an A to Z of all things microphonic, QSC with its high-end audio systems and Phonic with its entry level audio, among others – the pieces simply fitted.

“Other Shure companies around the world have had some difficulty seeing the benefits of what we do here, so we actually produced a Power Point presentation to show them how much we can sell around the sale of one mic.”

This is something that has become de rigueur in the pro audio business: establishing a chain of products that matches the signal chain of live and installation setups. Harman, of course, owns all of its brands, but the UK alone sees most of its pro audio suppliers having a product to fill every need in the contractor’s, the tour company’s and the MI store’s stocking list.

It’s a lot to take in for anyone – and this brings us neatly back to these attractive new premises.

On the guided tour we saw extensive new offices around the, frankly, enormous warehouse, that included a new boardroom (with all of the AV conferencing facilities you would expect for such a company) more meeting rooms than you could shake a mic stand at, a chill out area and space dedicated to training.
“It’s something we really want to concentrate on in the New Year,” says Harburn.

“There is a lot to learn, whichever market you are in and what products you are selling. Having this place means we can bring contractors and dealers in and take them through everything they need to know. We also want to get out and visit the dealers personally – you know, spend a day training on site. I know it is often difficult for dealers to get away from the shops, so we can go either way.”

The training facilities will be fully functional around February 2008, although there is one important job to be done before the dealers can get in. With the new offices came a new computer system, which sees Shure UK now fully integrated with all the Shure operations around the world. This means training for the staff.

Training doesn’t end with the dealers, either. A space has been kept aside in the warehouse that will be a live sound test and train area for touring companies and their engineers, with full ground stack and flying array systems being put through their paces. This particular project is the baby of applications and product planning manager Tuomo Tolonen, who has no illusions about the acoustics of a warehouse.

“It’s perfect,” he says, somewhat surprisingly. “When you are testing or training with this sort of equipment, you want it to be as real as possible. We are putting in carpets and drapes, but the last thing we want is an acoustically dead space. It’s not a studio. It needs to be something like a hall in the NEC because that is the sort of thing they will be dealing with.”

In this space, Tolonen, an engineer who cut his teeth with studio monitor kings Genelec, will also be showing the ropes (literally) for rigging a system and calculating the dispersion angles and so on. “I’ve already done 12 ground stack demos in the area since PLASA. I can show how to get a ground stack up in about 15 minutes. Rigging takes a little longer, but it is still easy.” Such is the enthusiasm. With the test area little more than a corner of the warehouse at present, the company still has about one session per week.

“The outlay is negligible for us,” says Tolonen. “But there is a real demand for training out there. Both technicians and dealers must know what they are talking about these days. The good thing is that they know this, so I will be pretty busy.”

Another area where Shure is changing – or shifting – is that of endorsements.

Mic companies lean heavily on endorsements and it has been one of the most cutthroat areas of the business for some time now, but Shure is taking a different tack these days. Although it has, for example, supplied wireless body packs and guitar systems to Led Zeppelin for the O2 gig in December, and members of The Who have been known (as was the case recently) to pop in and pick up a few bits and bobs, the onus is very much on emerging bands these days.

Paul Crognale, marketing manager, explains his strategy: “Endorsing new bands as opposed to established ones means there is a lot less politics involved and less expectation, so we are now getting them as they appear. I think it is also worth remembering that major acts simply don’t need much support – but this isn’t really new. Shure has been around for 80 years and has always got involved in new talent.”

Recent signings include indie rockers Cherry Ghost and Maps. Work continues apace also at some pretty high profile venues, including London’s Ronnie Scott’s and Liverpool’s The Cavern, where Shure mics are liberally scattered.

It is illustrative of what Shure UK is about. Shure products, of course, sit at the centre of the entire operation, and as is mentioned above, there is a heritage to the brand, but it is one that has to be maintained at the cutting edge of live sound, music, installations and more – all of which are pretty dynamic industries on their own. Then there are the third party brands, which, in terms of Shure’s long history, are all young whippersnappers. To maintain tradition and a cutting edge, while juggling several brands in various sectors – it is a task of phenomenal proportions.

“As a distributor, you have to be ready for brands to come and go,” points out Harburn. “Here we have Radial [a Canadian company that makes guitar signal distribution and DI boxes, and re-amping, signal split, and switch devices] newly on board, and Phonic, which has been with us for 11 years. You can always find a hole in your portfolio, but you have to make sure that you are getting the right brand. Once you have found it, it is a quick way to grow and this in turn allows us to set higher targets.”

When pressed on there being any other new lines on the horizon, Harburn is expectedly coy. “There might be, we’re always open for the right product. Another new line we have taken on is the Servo-Reeler brand. Now that is a very small niche – they make reeling systems for conferencing installations, so that a conference room can seem entirely free of microphones, but when they are needed, they can reel down into place.”

Niche indeed… But I realise I have been deflected.

What trends, then, can be seen from Shure’s vantage point at the moment? “I think you will see IEMs and wireless products moving into the wider market from now on,” he says. “We have already seen MI products selling to major retail chains, and this will continue with mics and wireless products as the home recording market becomes more accessible.

“Personally, I am quite excited by the new HPR backline speaker systems from QSC – and a lot of dealers are getting behind these in a big way. For Shure UK at the moment, the star is outside MI and pro audio, and that’s consumer audio – it’s come from nowhere. But this doesn’t mean we’re any less focused on the other two markets. There are great opportunities in all the areas we work in.

In order to keep on top of such a diverse range of markets, Harburn has three very distinct teams working in each area. Each of the reps is trained up to be quite extensively knowledgable about the products he is selling, but then there are specialists in the office as well (such as Tuomo Tolonen) who are always just a phone call away.

“We can supply any sound system from a street musician to a stadium,” he says. “We have to have things organised so people’s questions can be answered with the least fuss. But things have been going so well that Shure EMEA in Germany has just taken on the distribution of QSC and is using us as a template.” Praise indeed – a German operation using a British template. Things must be going well.

And what of the product everybody asks about: the emperor of live microphones, the SM58. Having just celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2006, is there no end to the shelf life of this simple product?

“Every company would like to have a product like it,” smiles Harburn. “It makes your job easier, it keeps turnover going well. The strange thing is that Shure makes much better mics these days – and has done for a while now. The 58 Beta is a great mic, but what can you do? People walk into a shop and ask for an SM58. It gives dealers the chance to sell up, but at around £80 it’s such an accessible mic.”

In more ways than one, unfortunately. When a mic as successful – and as good – as this has been on the market for so long, it becomes easier for the counterfeiters to rustle up increasingly better copies – and Harburn is painfully aware of the money that has been lost.

“It’s getting better all the time now. We have a guy online everyday to block and close down illegal sales online and very few come back at us to complain. Also now, if someone thinks they have bought a counterfeit, we can check it for them and confirm it – or otherwise – and then take issue with the person they bought it from. The number of fakes is going down now.”

Harburn told the tale of a raid made on a dealer in the north of England who was selling fake Shures: “The guy was into credit card fraud and was selling drugs. I think it gives you an idea of the sort of people you are dealing with when you buy these products.” There is also a full-time lawyer working from Hong Kong who has orchestrated a number of raids – and it isn’t just Shure, of course. Sennheiser, Audio Technica, Sony, everyone suffers in some way. “The bottom line is that you have to educate the end user to take a little care.”

For now, however (whatever plans Harburn might have that he was unwilling to divulge), the main task at hand is to have the new HQ fully functional by February. “Other opportunities will arise in time,” he says. After 35 years with the company – he should know.