We’ve been diversifying our specialised covers for the last 20 years.
Throughout the eighties and the nineties we were doing standard covers for companies like Cannon. Making simple dust covers for the big, clunky photocopiers and fax machines that you used to have in offices. The other side of the business though was burgeoning AV work. It was mostly standard covers, not shaped, not tailored, just something to throw over a speaker and try and protect it when it’s being manhandled onto a van.
Around 1998 we started getting inquiries for the Millennium Stadium. There was going to be a lot of audio visual equipment going up inside it, and it was all going to be exposed to the elements. They approached us looking for specialised covers that could stay in-situ for 6 months or so. It turned out that a lot of those exhibitions ran for nearly 5 years before they eventually sold it on to O2.
The job itself was to provide a solution that placed speakers up in the rafters safely. They needed to be ventilated enough so as to not overheat and cause a fire risk.
It meant extensive research into fire resistant and breathable materials, looking at heavy canvases, water resistant canvases, natural materials, chemically treated linings and outer layers, etc.
The other complex side of the solution was to allow access for cabling and still have acoustic transparency throughout. It meant we had to start looking at designs not just from a protection point of view but how we can actually make an installation cover.
Roll forward a few years and then we are doing work with people like Function One and Turbo Sound, and they’re coming to ask for not just transport solutions, but they’re also looking for installation solutions for big bands going on tour all over the world.
“We want it to be able to go up in sort of X many hours at this site, come down and then go to this next leg of the tour There’s going to be 60 – 120,000 pounds worth of speakers and lighting. What can you do to help us?”
So we started tailoring packages for tours for far more than just speaker covers and amp covers, and before we knew it we we’re adding all these little solutions to problems that tour managers were finding, and now we are rolling out work annually for six out of 10 of the biggest event supplies in the uk doing all sorts of gigs. We’ve done work for Kings of Leon, Biffy Clyro, Queen and Adam Lambert.
For more information around our AV hire solutions head over to our Audio Visual page, or visit our Pro Speaker Covers website which has our full range of AV covers.