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Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 7 - Index

Hear, Hear
Audio Company Sound Devices Celebrates 10 Years By C.J. Arellano
Sound Devices, a Wisconsin-based company specializing
in designing and building audio mixers and recorders for
production sound, celebrates its tenth year in business this
year. Its products have been used to record and mix audio
for feature films, documentaries, reality shows and newsmagazine
interviews. Though the champagne glasses may
clink in memory of its inaugural decade (the company
invites you to a toast on April 14th, 3:00pm, at its booth
during the NAB 2008 conference),
the company is already gearing up
for the future.
“We still operate in many ways like
the startup business which was our
heritage. That means we never really
look back and reflect, because there
is so much change and opportunity
looking forward,” says Jon Tatooles,
Co-founder and Managing Director
of Sound Devices. “In essence, these
first ten years have largely been
consistently looking forward and listening to our customers.
Our first product’s design and definition process was largely
the same as it has been with our latest products. There is a
lot of user involvement so that our technology makes sense
in real field production environments.”
Tatooles recalls the nascent stages of Sound Devices,
which he founded with his partners, Jim Koomar and Matt
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Anderson. Though they had little else to work with besides
a solid goal, they didn’t view their uphill task as a burden.
“[We didn’t] think of it as difficult or not,” Tatooles relates.
“We did, and continue to do, whatever it takes. We started
with no customers, no vendors, no history, no products.
However, in many ways that helped us because we had
no ‘sacred cows.’” Tatooles acknowledges one of the most
rewarding parts of creating the audio company: “We have
developed some wonderful business
relationships and friendships with
the production community. That
has been the most fun, because
there are some amazing people
doing amazing work.”
“Our first major company goal
was to generate sales. Any sales,”
Tatooles says, recounting the
company’s initial battles. “Our first
year of operation netted us sales
of exactly zero dollars. We knew
that the first year was pure ‘investment,’ but having no
income was a painful reality. We had $20,000 of sales in our
second year. It may as well have been $0, since we were
spending money developing products. It wasn’t until we
began building a product line and gave customers choice
that we started to realize that our efforts could cover their
development costs.”
(L to R) Koomar, Anderson & Tatooles.
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Tatooles, Koomar and Anderson’s work
has paid off. Ten years after the birth
of the company (its name taken from
a box marked ‘sound devices,’ spotted
errantly by one of the founders on an
office shelf in 1998), Sound Devices has
firmly established itself as a prominent
provider of audio products for the
production industry. “Our 302 mixer
is our best-selling product,” Tatooles
says. “Since their introduction in late
2004, our 7-Series recorders have been
well-received and continue to gain
in popularity for production, both as
primary recorders and as backup to
camera-recorded audio.”
So what’s ahead for Sound Devices
in the coming decade? It plans to
announce its goals during the NAB
2008 conference (find it at booth
N7235), held this year from April 11-17 at
the Las Vegas Convention Center. The
company’s outlook is promising: “We’ll
continue to grow, prune and evolve
our product line as technology and
applications dictate,” Tatooles says.
“I’d like to think that we will still be as
relevant to our core customers in ten
years as we are today.”
//www.sounddevices.com