Listening as a key to success
Port Coquitlam company counts music greats among customers
When bluesman Buddy Guy plays the Vancouver International Jazz Festival tonight, he will be using Peter Janis’ products.
They may not look like much — 20 to 25 small metal boxes that clutter the dark corners of a stage — but for professional musicians, the Port Coquitlam entrepreneur’s gear is essential equipment.
Paul McCartney? Check. Bruce Springsteen? Check. The Rolling Stones, Cirque du Soleil, Tony Bennett, U2, Andrea Bocelli and Taylor Swift? Check.
Janis’ Radial Engineering is the global market leader for equipment that connects musical instruments to amplifiers.
Radial shipped 90,000 “direct boxes” and similar electronic interfaces last year, and is on track for 100,000 this year. The company has 70 employees and annual sales of more than $10 million.
Direct boxes eliminate buzz and hum in a PA system, and convert an instrument’s sound output into a signal that can be read by a mixing consul as far as 120 metres away. The boxes are generally used with acoustic guitars, bass guitars and keyboards.
Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen don’t put a mike in front of their acoustic guitars, Janis said, but use a direct box to prevent feedback. On the other hand, electric guitarists usually avoid direct boxes because they want and use sound distortions.
“We found a crack in the marketplace,” Janis said.
Giant multinationals were offering just one or two basic boxes when Janis got his idea to produce 100 different products at different price points.
“We’ve had competition, but they’ve pretty much gone away.”
One product is a splitter that allows musicians such as Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana or AC/DC to switch between different guitar amplifiers during a set without any noise, buzz or hum — and without having to plug and unplug their instruments. “When you take a small amplifier and play it louder, it sounds a certain way versus a big amp that’s played softer. It’s how the sound distorts,” said Janis, 56, who grew up taking radios apart and graduated to building speakers and “getting electrical shocks on stage.”
His Radial J48 has become the industry standard for connecting low-output instruments to PA systems without using batteries. And the Radial JDI became a bestseller simply because it was the first commercially available direct box to use the famous Jensen audio transformer.
“Before we came along, everyone was building them by hand,” Janis said. “There was nothing innovative at all.”
Janis is careful with his money.
“We don’t own any new furniture to this day. It’s all used,” he said of his 23-year-old company.
“Retained earnings is the magic. I think being a musician you realize the value of things because you have no money.”
Retained earnings were what allowed Janis to continue advertising and growing through the 2008 recession. It helped that artists were shifting their financial model from selling CDs to live touring.
Another key has been focusing on professional needs, not luxuries.
“You can buy a direct box for $30 or $40 from China or one of ours for $200,” but for crews mounting $2-million productions, reliability is what counts. So Janis has his printed circuit boards soldered on both sides, uses metal switches rather than plastic, and builds sturdy boxes designed to withstand being kicked on a dark stage.
“Ultimately, when you’re selling a product, eliminating all the negatives is the best way to win. If someone says, ‘Why didn’t you do that?’ you say, ‘This is why we did this,’ ” Janis said. “When you make a product that has no excuses, guess what, people buy.”
Janis started out as a young Montreal musician who talked his way into an Edmonton job selling synthesizers and PA systems. At 24, Fender hired him as Canadian product director after noticing that only one store in Canada was selling their hightech synthesizers.
“They said, ‘What’s going on in Edmonton? Who’s the guy who is selling these stupid expensive synthesizers?’ And that’s how they noticed me. Next thing I know, I’m at Oscar Peterson’s house showing him how to use it.”
Top lessons learned along the way? Janis started out pitching to the biggest equipment rental companies who told him they didn’t care. It wasn’t until Janis created demand by directly approaching the artists and show technicians that things really turned around.
Janis started out in distribution, but moved to manufacturing. The Internet and cross-border shopping made distribution a tough gig, and he discovered developing his own products gave him greater control. He orders in components and assembles product in Port Coquitlam.
In 2000, he started an acoustic panel division that has grown to 20 per cent of his business and is used in everything from conference rooms to police stations and dog kennels. In the last five years, Radial has bought three audio companies: Jensen, Hafler and Reamp.
But the real key to success, for Janis, is sticking close to his end users and listening hard.
When musicians such as Buddy Guy or Tony Bennett come to town, Janis is always in the venue during sound check.
“We talk about the setups, the problems and what solutions we can bring to the market.”
For him, it feels like “playing a game of chess or tennis.”
“You get an idea, you put a strategy in place, bring it to market and score a point.”