The Home Cinema Alliance - Tech Talk Podcast
A consumer-facing podcast hosted by industry veterans, Stuart Burgess from Immersive Cinema Rooms and Simon Gregory from Cinema Rooms.
Each episode, we bring you News, Reviews, and Interviews from inside the industry covering Home Cinema, Home Theatre, and all things tech.
Get involved podcast@homecinemaalliance.co.uk
The Home Cinema Alliance - Tech Talk Podcast
How a 1935 radio repair shop became a modern AV powerhouse—and why service still wins
A 1935 radio repair shop doesn’t become a modern AV powerhouse by accident. Stuart Tickle, fourth-generation MD of AWE, sits down with us to unpack a 90-year journey of pivots, grit, and careful bets—from wireless sets and coil winding, to background music in pubs, to reference-grade cinemas and a showroom built to persuade even the toughest architect. The story isn’t about chasing every trend; it’s about choosing your lane, curating top-tier brands, and proving value where it matters: in the room.
We dig into the inflexion points: selling the factory freehold to fund a strategic pivot to residential distribution, surviving the twin shocks of Pronto and plasma disappearing overnight, and taking a calculated leap into a much larger Epsom headquarters. Stuart explains why showrooms became AWE’s superpower, how fixtures and finishes now match the expectations of interior designers and MEP consultants, and why training and support—right down to remote help on decade-old control systems—win loyalty in a saturated UK market. You’ll hear how Sony projection and Bowers & Wilkins reshaped the demo story, how the trade counter still saves jobs on deadline day, and why specialisation beats “sell everything” sprawl.
Threaded through the business is a love of content: Top Gun-era demo nostalgia, LaserDisc memories, and the way F1 IMAX thunder or a perfect Atmos moment anchors emotion. That’s the point of all this tech—creating experiences people feel. If you care about home cinema, residential integration, distributor partnerships, and what it takes to grow through uncertainty, this conversation is a masterclass in building for the long game.
Subscribe for more deep dives with industry leaders, share this with a colleague who loves showrooms as much as specs, and leave a review to tell us what you want to hear next.
So Stuart, thank you for coming on the podcast uh today. Wanted to sit down and have a bit of an informal chat about AWE. Obviously, it's their your 90th year. So for anybody that doesn't know Mr. Stuart Tickle or doesn't know AWE, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and potentially a little bit about AWE and then we'll drill back to the foundations of the business.
SPEAKER_02:Excellent. Yeah, well, thanks to you, first of all, for coming down and uh yeah, letting us share our story. Um will some will know it, many won't. And uh that's the interesting thing. You're you're one of those people who who who have dealt with us for quite a few years. So yeah, so about 12 now, yeah. About 12 years. Yeah, that's it. Teenager when you started. Oh wish. Yeah. So we we go uh back 90 years, but in terms of me, yeah, so I'm Stuart, MD of AWE, and what AWE 90 is about is explaining um what our roots were, what our foundations are. Um so for myself that involved growing up in a family, so I'm fourth generation family business owner, and uh the great thing that we're drawing out of AWE 90 is what the different generations have done over the years, because we've all made our different marks, but for me, it was just you know, the family business was a factory in Thornton Heath, it wasn't what we do now, it was nothing to do with what we do. So, my introduction in terms of work was actually Saturday boy in my dad's shop.
SPEAKER_01:I I saw the picture. If you go to AWE's website, there's a nice little, you found a nice little story on there, and it was just it was seeing the picture of you as a Saturday boy on your first day or whatever like that, and obviously known you for so many years, it was like it's great to see that picture. Uh, and to see, yeah, the the the bloodline, you know. That the fact of the all the way back then. So when was that? What sort of year was that?
SPEAKER_02:Well, that would have been in the 90s. I was still at school when I started, so I was part-time, literally Saturday boy. Um, so it was uh well, there's a picture of the shop up there, the old Pioneer logo uh with a tuning fork in the ohm sign and and all of that, an old cortina outside, it wasn't mine, yeah. Um but uh yeah, that was uh there was a factory next door, and we can go delve back before that. But me growing up was yeah, dad worked, you know, it was called the works, it was a small coil winding uh business in Thornton Heath. Um, say small, we had about 25 people, but on a production line, yeah. Um making transformers, wound components, and so on. And dad had started this business on the side, um, which ultimately resulted in there being a hi-fi shop, and I'll explain more about the detail later. So my introduction, as I say, was there, and that was selling at what at the time was Pioneer Hi-Fi, yeah, and we had the top 40 CDs. Um and uh yeah, I spent my days, and there was a small trade counter out the back, which is the nucleus of what AWE now is. And you still have the trade counter. We still have the trade counter, it's a different physical counter. Yeah, um it's not 90 years old. It's no, it's not, it's not the original. Um, but we have uh still got a trade counter, and you know, you were here yesterday picking up some bits.
SPEAKER_01:I've got to say the trade counter is is brilliant because yeah, I was I was local uh you know on the day job a few weeks ago, and not like I didn't think about it, but the fact is that I was just swapping the network out. So, of course, everything's there, swapping the network out. But of course, I made the oversight that it was front-facing uh switches on this uh on the one that was there. And of course, I needed rear, I've got rear faces switches now or rear facing ports. So it was like Thornton Heath, not Thornton Heath, um Thames Ditton, Thames Ditton to Epsom, right? I could do that literally on the website, you know, uh put them in, put a little message on there saying, I'm gonna come and collect these in 30 minutes, yeah, rock up at the back door, buy them, go back and finish the job off and get them. Yeah, which is good. And obviously, getting them at a great price as well.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, of course. Yeah, of course. And that's why we have um, yeah, I'm sure we'll touch on our brands later, but you know, that example it was caught to cables, which is a newish addition to our portfolio. And I don't I don't think, you know, we're not trying to be everything to everyone. We're specialists in what we do, but things like cables and connectors are the type of thing that you need to get. Um, and yet our location in Epsom, um, so Surrey, south of London, is there's a reason we're here, um, and it is because it services quite a wide variety of um you know jobs. Obviously, there's quite a lot in London and the southeast, um, and everything else goes nationwide courier um or by our own van.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, and and here you don't have to worry, there's lots of parking. You could pull up out the back, pick up your TVs like I did last year, I think it was a couple earlier this year, a couple of big screen TVs. So um, so let's go back so uh to put my glasses on because I'm getting old. Uh to 1935, yeah. Um when the business was founded. Um I should have been able to work that out if my math was any better than it is. Um back to 1935. So so the the the seed, the essence of what is now AWE, how did that sort of take us through that journey from you know 1935 to where we are now?
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SPEAKER_02:Sure. Well, this is a funny thing, because I touched on there that when I was growing up, my dad was running The Works, which was a factory in Thornton Heath, and that is the original premises that my great granddad started the business at. Um but what I didn't know is that my great-granddad, um he was actually a hobbyist, so it was about 1933 he started the principle of the business as a hobbyist, and it was radio, uh radiograms, radio menders, wireless radios. Um it was 1935 that the company was actually incorporated, so he professionalised his hobby into the business, hence being um the sort of uh yeah, the 1935 is the landmark date that the company was incorporated. Officially on paper. Officially on paper, exactly. Um but yeah, that was a guy who loved the new technology at the time that was wireless radios, the original wireless, not wireless like we're using a lot of it. Wireless like we now know and love. Yeah, yeah. Um so he was um taking what were commercially available radio sets and um mending them, repairing them, improving them, selling them, and that led to Radio Menders Limited being incorporated. And that company registration is the same one that we have today.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:So whilst we've gone through a couple of evolutions, um the Radio Menders Limited is the original uh incorporated bit.
SPEAKER_01:So if you look back on Company's house, you can see the the whole history there, probably.
SPEAKER_02:It would go from there and it would go from Edgar Alexander Tickle, who's my great-granddad, yeah. Um uh to uh Alexander Tickle, uh AJ Tickle, uh, through to B. E. Barry Edgar Tickle, uh, who's my dad, and then to myself um uh now. So so that original nucleus of the business was actually um mending and selling radiograms. So hi-fi of the day, the best things of the day. Um and we have a folder which um yeah, maybe we can insert here, yeah. Um, which is his original folder, leather bound, his master's voice embossed HMV folder. And as you flick the pages, you've got photographs, beautiful black and white photographs of radiograms with handwritten details and letters from suppliers and so on. So I didn't know this growing up because I it was my dad and maybe my granddad's era that I was aware of, and um you know, funny enough, there wasn't a huge draw for hi-fi of the time during World War II. Yeah. So having started 90 years ago, um the you know, World War II was a thing. Um and it came along and the company pivoted. And being a South London-based, there was a sales side of the business, but also the engineering and coil winding, this is where my granddad was now involved. Um, yeah, it was a protected trade. Um, so the company pivoted more towards the manufacturing uh and electronic component side of things. Um, and there is some there's some vague history about being involved in radar and just supplying some components and things. Um, but of course, that stuff was never documented, you weren't allowed to and it all had to be destroyed. It's not relevant. Not that time. It was all very secretive, yeah. That's it. But those are the days where, well, the country, but London in particular was peppered with lots of different engineering companies. And we did coil winding for um some loudspeaker brands, for example.
SPEAKER_01:You mean back when we actually manufactured things in this country?
SPEAKER_02:Back when we manufacture things in this country, which you know I could We still do. Well, we still we've taken you to the Bowers and Wilkins factory and word things. So we still do, but we generally manufacture expensive things because of the the the price of doing business for the cost of doing business in the UK. Um so yeah, we tend to manufacture really specialist things. Um the company moved um, it was then Electro Wines Ltd. Um uh which reflected the coil winding side of things. So it's wines with a D rather than the drinking type. Yeah. Um I'm sure a bit of the drinking happened as well. In fact, I remember my grandfather well and there's a few bottles of red involved. Especially after rationing ended and all that sort of war stuff, it would have been exactly just one small glass a day. Yeah, you know, with dinner for health reasons. Yeah, we'd like to fit in. Um so it was uh a time when small businesses were thriving, um and the generation changed, and my father evolved the business to newer technologies of the same thing. But within Electro Wines, we were doing aircraft ground lighting transformers, uh so BAA and MOD, all every runway light at Gatwick and Heathrow had one of our transformers buried in the ground next to it, believe it or not. Um and there was some BAA or sorry, some MOD airfields as well. So we were the approved supplier for all of those. So that's an example of a probably a 20-year period where there were that's what my dad did, that's what I knew growing up. It was manufacturing transformers, wound components, and they used to be baked in ovens. So literally dipped in varnish, baked in ovens overnight. So I just remember dad working hard, popping off to the factory to empty the ovens and put the next batch in over the weekend so that when the staff came back in on the Monday, they could uh dip them in resin and do the other bits that were needed.
SPEAKER_01:It's funny, isn't it? Because like that sort of story you have there is completely the same with me, because like my my dad was the um uh a manager for singer sewing machines, and then he had the opportunity to start up his own business with I think it was his area manager, they're shopping haze shop in Brighton. But it's the same. I can remember being at school, coming home from school, overhearing the conversations from mum and dad, and then you know, because the shop wasn't open on the Sunday, if dad needed to do something or catch up with something or paint in the front of the shop because he owned a building, he would go off at the weekend. So what you did because you it was your business, it was it was the bread and butter that fed us kids.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely, and the the interesting thing is it's that yeah, it's been a real privilege going through the AW90 process and hearing staff talk about their thoughts of AWA and the business and that sort of ethos of uh well that that's the work ethic side of it, but also that family ethos of making sure you know everyone's happy, for example, as best as you can within um you know a bit the business environment, and that type of thing is what's basically passed through the generations because it's been demonstrated to me, yeah. Uh yeah from from my parents and and previous to that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think you still see you can still see it jumping forward to today, slightly for a second. You can still see that. I mean, a lot of the people that are still in the building today, obviously people come and go, but you know, they're still the same faces that were here, slightly older, uh, but the same faces that we're here. Same faces a bit wrinkly. Yeah. Yeah, than when we were when I started dealing with you guys, you know, sort of whatever it was 10 plus years ago. Um, so it is always quite nice, you know, picking up the phone and going, Oh, how are you? You know, and um Nick, uh like Nick Mott, you know, it's just like, oh, I've heard you had a child. Yeah, you know. Got married and had a child. Yeah, and he's like, when did that happen?
SPEAKER_02:But I thought you were 16. Yeah, yeah, because he was. No, that those are the those are the nice things. Um with so we have very, very good staff retention. Uh uh within that, what you get though is a core of people that grows. And then of course you get people that come and go, yep, stay for a year, three years, five years around the edge. Uh the reason that's noticeable is because we have a core of people who who are here and continue. And that core enlarges, let's say, every few years, you notice, oh, there's a couple more familiar faces who have been around for a long time. So number of people that have been working for us five to ten, but we've also got 15, 25, um, and and 30 years. In fact, our GM, Jackie, worked for my dad, yeah. Uh, and her mum worked for my granddad. And her son was our warehouse manager. I started as uh a junior, but ended up as a warehouse manager worked for us for about 10 years. Yeah. Um Paul brought his son in.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and it was it was like it was just over the weekend just flipping through the the website and watching the the 90-second video you did, wasn't it? You know, through the years, and it's the picture of Paul, you know, at the counter. That was the tray counter.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Do you know what that that was our tray counter, that was the packing bench. Yeah. That was the goods in. And from where the photo was taken was our basically our office, our marketing department, our sales line, because it was me and Paul. We had a fax machine and uh some kind of old computer, which was modern at the time. And everything, there was a shop out the front, back to the site, well, and the office at the back. Yeah. Um, and that was it. I'll insert a picture of a fax machine here, just so anybody doesn't understand. That's it, yeah, exactly. That's how we distributed our prices. Because before email, so we used to we it used to be cut and paste but and photocopy it, but then it was on a word processor. Yeah. It was a really modern thing. And we used to PagePlus, I think it was called. Yeah. There we go. And we used to um piece it together, print it out, and then fax it through, having typed in a number, and the numbers we were getting out of yellow pages. Oh really? Because we were scouting for business. We were in, you know, I suppose this this is actually great segue, like what you did there. Yeah. When when we got into the new the part of what AWE is now, is because within that electrowines business was a factory. And uh my dad started a sister business at the same premises called Audiolite Limited. And that was manufacturing background music systems um and uh PAC.
SPEAKER_01:So we'll be using commercial spaces, commercial space.
SPEAKER_02:So for the for that was we were then selling to integrators but commercial installers, and that was going into River Island, Deep Pan Pizza, um Bass Brewery, uh pubs, and so on. So there was the two parts of the business. There was the manufacturing of WAN components transformers, and then there was Audio Light, which was the background music systems selling to commercial integrators, and that that was based upon clarion car tape decks. Oh, okay. The mechanical type, you know, where you push the middle button for eject and the tape pops out and spits at you, and then the mechanical rewind and fast forward. So he was buying those tape decks and then manufacturing a quick release mechanism around it that just let you slot it in. Because when they're in shops, they used to just get covered in clothes and uh in pubs it came back with literally beer in it. So the whole idea was that you could remove these tape decks and do service exchange. Okay. So actually, one of my first jobs, one of my first paid jobs, I did cable stripping free when I was child labour, but one of my first paid jobs was servicing these clarion car tape decks. Yeah. Used to change the pinch rollers and clean the heads and um yeah, change the drive belt band in there. Um so one of my first jobs was just repair sitting out the back of the shop. Yeah. If somebody came in, great, let's try and sell them something. But out the out the back was just servicing the tape decks.
SPEAKER_01:It's weird because like that's just it's so hitting nostalgic for me because I was down in the basement in Hastings sorting out the metal machines from the new plastic machines because the metal machines had value to them. My wages were loading them in the van, taking them to the recycling place, and whatever they gave us as recycling, I then went and spent that on trainers. Um but yeah, when someone came into the shop, and like I say, my mum and dad I admire greatly because they worked together for 35 years. Okay, my dad was upstairs and my mum was in the shop, but like if mum had said, Oh, I've just got to nip out and get a pint of milk, can you just look after the shop? Someone would walk in, um, and it was just oh hi, how are you? You deal with it, you know, and you just deal with it, and then mum would walk in, or if it got a bit complicated, you'd call dad down from repairing upstairs. Oh, well, they want to buy a sewing machine, can you come and have a look? So, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it's very similar, very similar. And the the the reason the shop was there was actually because the twin tape deck and the four quadway tape decks, that was all fine. But Pioneer brought out the PDM1, the six disc CD player with the cartridge. Yeah. We've got some of those out there as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I rem yeah, I remember that. Yeah. So that so it's reminiscent alley, this is, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's AWE 90. We've got to cover some of the old stuff because it's this is the foundations of yeah, where why we why I even have an interest in audio, visual, and hi-fi now. It's it was so Pioneer. Essentially, Dad saw that the six disc CD play gave you seven hours of random play music um rather than tape decks. So it was more reliable and better quality, and seven hours of continu of random music. Um so he got a pioneer account, and in the old factory premises was a shop front that used to be a carpet shop, uh just leased out. And the carpet shop went broke, and Dad was got a Pioneer account, got a shop front, was opened a pioneer shop. And that's just when Prologic and Laserdisc was going. And the reason we had the top 40 CDs was because we used to do an exchange program for the shops and the pubs where they just used to say what kind of category of music they wanted, and one of my other jobs was loading these six disc cartridges and with the music and posting it off to the shops, and then they'd send their old ones back.
SPEAKER_01:So you with Netflix, but for for CDs, basically. Absolutely, or block buses. We were spotted from further, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But that's what it is, there was no streaming. No, there you know, so now it's completely different. Yeah. So that was the ways of the stores getting their music, and yeah, I was sitting in the shop doing it. So for those of you that were shopping in River Island in the probably 2000s at that point, and drinking or drinking in in pubs, that music would yeah. Probably pretty much. I could have loaded I could have loaded those cartridges and sent it off.
SPEAKER_01:And if you got any skips in it, was your sticky fingerprints on the back of the CD that was making the laser not read it. You'd be amazed what came back in the CD players and the uh and the cartridges.
SPEAKER_02:Especially in pubs, because obviously smoking was allowed in those days. Smoking, the the the equipment used to come back and it at the clove shops it was full of um the fluff that comes off clothing. So because these things were just shoved in shelves. It's not like now, even with you know the safety of equipment, it they just used to be shoved in a storeroom and they get stuff piled over them. Um and in the pubs, they were do you remember going into pubs and there was literally a bit of there was usually a stack of a couple of bits of equipment in a corner?
SPEAKER_01:In a corner that someone could quickly do this to if they needed to. That's it.
SPEAKER_02:And like some dodgy cabling, yeah, uh like stapled or up round the edges. Times have changed. Oh yeah. It's not all for the better, but in terms of installation capabilities. We don't have pubs now, really.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we have eating establishments that sell beer. Yeah. Okay, so so obviously, so what sort of time period was that?
SPEAKER_02:That was so well I would have been I would have been employed in the nineties. Okay. Um so probably 30 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Over that, over that because I was at school. And then um really the well so that that's about when Paul joined as as well during that period. So it was still when we were a shop with a tray counter, and Paul Mott, now sales director, joined as well. Yeah. So whilst the company had previous generations before, I think the the the thing that's made a difference and why we're still here is um we have built on what's before, but what happened next is if you like, you know, I can say, well, that was my contribution to the to the sort of family business, um, which enabled dad to retire and us to move move premises. But I think what's interesting, I I remember even going back to things like Sandown Park at or Cedia um exhibitions, and even now we get it. It's okay for you, you're one of the big ones, aren't you? And and sometimes we're positioned as like this huge kind of corporate entity, um, alongside you know some of the multinational businesses that were there. And it's like, no, actually, we're here through graft and it's we've built to this point from scratch in terms of audiovisual distribution. Yeah, it was like say, faxing priceless to numbers at the yellow pages.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's good. So like looking at looking at the website, you've got in 1990 Stuart D. Tickle started working at the business of the Saturday Boy, and you've got the picture there of the shop and the van and you. Yep. Uh, and then obviously that then we then fast forward to uh 2002, where you've got C Dia join um AWE joined CD for the first time with the CDA Expo in Brighton. Yep. Um so was that so when did you move, when did the move from the shop to what was round the corner?
SPEAKER_02:Uh we're doing about 2000. Yeah. So we uh took a decision. So I started a under um at the time the bigger part of the business was the manufacturing and the shop was ticking over. It was in Thornton Heath, it wasn't a particularly wealthy or you know, lovely place. We got we got broken into more times um thanks for. Exactly. So there was there, you know, it wasn't it was an old building uh with a small shop um in an area that was okay, um, but it it it wasn't a wealthy area. Um so yeah, as a shop it was never gonna just fly. Um so but with that plus the trade counter, um, it was building um and it was a decision point in the shop uh and between myself and and sort of dad, whereas, okay. The manufacturing was getting harder because things like the transformers were starting to come from China from big manufacturing places that were frankly better than you know, kind of an independent business in South London uh could do. Um so whilst the products were superb, it was just the scale and the cost.
SPEAKER_01:Um there's obviously a so point when you start with every business, you start to look at okay, I want to support these people and what they do is really well, but what do we do? And then obviously buying from China, you've got to buy bulk, otherwise it's just is stupidly expensive. You start to use those products.
SPEAKER_02:That's it. And and so both sides of the manufacturing was getting harder, if I can say that. It certainly plateaued, but times were moving on, and it was becoming more obvious that we'd either have to totally invest in the manufacturing side and effectively transform it. Yeah, pun intended, but yeah, it's quite a good one now. Think about it. Yeah, gonna use that. Should I do it again?
SPEAKER_01:Pun intended, transforming the CI industry. There, yeah, we got you, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, and we transformed our business. Yeah. Um when I say we used to build transformers, some people automatically think of those tools.
SPEAKER_01:I was about to say, yeah. Oh, really? That must be brilliant.
SPEAKER_02:No, no, no, no, no. These things got buried in the grad. So it was a conscious decision because with we had the commercial distribution, the residential was wasn't really there yet. It wasn't an industry in itself. So we were battling against the big distributors of the time. Um, some of which are still there and have gobbled up most of the others, yeah. And uh others who have just disappeared completely. Um, but so we started seeing because we were doing Pioneer and we had large screen TVs and then Plasma TV, it was Laserdisc Prologic, AC3, and then eventually Dolby Digital, and all these things. This was exciting stuff. This was playing CD videos and say laser discs, and um so there was something happening, and it was the beginnings of Cedia. So Cedia in the US was now a thing, and it was when Cedia Show was at Selsdon Park Hotel, and this sort of captured our imagination, and it was a time where we thought, okay, can I make this what the business is going forward? And Paul was in the business by then, and we sort of decided, right, we're going to pivot the business and focus on this because I wasn't an engineer and I wasn't excited about running a factory. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I'm a kind of a people person, but sales and marketing and people is my thing. Engineering and electronics. I went to college and I started learning about the PNP junction on the inside of a transistor, and I was like, This isn't for me. This isn't for me. Let me hear what it does when you've built it, and I'm interested, but I I'm really not interested in the engineering side, or should I say the detail board level componentry? Um so we pivoted and we made a five-year plan, and it was to make distribution and more specifically residential distribution or distribution of audiovisual equipment into residential market, um, what we did as a future. And so that small part of the business became mine and Paul's focus. Yeah. And uh we then decided to exhibit a Cedia, and the first one that was Brighton was the first one we did. Um, which we all look back, we've rose tinted glasses for anyone was there because it was just lovely. Yeah. And it was a young, exciting industry that was growing, and yeah, that's the beginning of what we where we are now.
SPEAKER_01:I think home electronics. I mean, I so about that sort of time that we've talked to sort of like late 90s, you know, I I sort of started to get into it and it started, you know, was picking up um I think it was still might have been was it home cinema? It was what hi-fi, maybe home cinema choice.
SPEAKER_02:Home cinema choice. Well, well, what hi-fi followed, because they went, they then was like, oh hold on, it's what hi-fi sound and vision. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because I can remember, I can remember being because I so when I got made redundant from a job in London, I went back to what I did at college, which was working for Victoria Wine. And I can remember being over in a I was sub-managing, so I was like that manager that went into a store when the manager went on holiday. And I can remember reading an issue of you know, about Blu-ray. Sorry, about DVD. Uh, you know, and like and when I was got to know the guys at Seven Oaks in, you know, in Tunbridge Wales, and it would be like I've got a 2% pay rise, wandered up to Seven Oaks, and I bought the you know, pioneer laser displayer. Yep. And then because I'm a boy, I still lived at home with mum and dad. So like in my bedroom, I had you know, floor standing kefes around a 32-inch catharade tube TV, which nearly killed us carrying it upstairs. You know, lazy boy like Joey and friends would have, with you know, and and it was starting to be something that you know, the the the laser discs, the DVDs, and you started to see more of it, and people sort of doing these little systems at home. And and as you say, my first amp was probably a pioneer, and that was an AC3 amp.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Probably the VSA 701S and the laser disc would have been the CLD 1200.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, probably.
SPEAKER_02:Unless you had the CLD 1480, the one that changed the sides. It's like I can't remember what I did.
SPEAKER_01:No, last week, but yeah, there you go. I bought bought it just as because it was like who. Wants to turn it over. Yeah. There's some people watching this podcast going, What the hell are they talking about? What do you mean you have to get up and turn it over?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I love the bit. Um, it's related but different. Uh, Tom Petty full moon fever. Yeah. Playing the CD. Yeah. And uh about halfway through, it has some farmyard noises, and it goes, um uh now this we're just going to take a few moments for those for those people that have to get up, walk over to their record player, and turn over the record and come back. In fairness to them, we're gonna take a short break, yeah. About three seconds later, goes to the next track.
SPEAKER_01:It is funny, it's like when it was a thing. Yeah, segue slightly. I remember having a conversation with a cousin, I unfortunately she's no longer with us, and I was talking to my mum about uh a queen song, because you know, queen, 10cc and all that I was brought up with. And I'm like, no, no, that was that was a b side, mum, that wasn't the A side. And Laura, my cousin, just said, What's what's a B side? Yeah, and I'm it's track two, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it's like you used to have to turn the record over, and then you would get the record would come out, and on the front side would be the one that was in the hits, but as like a bonus, you got one on the B side, which was like, and you had to get up halfway through and turn it over. Yeah, now you just get your track and you skip around to whatever you want. Uh, what do you think about that?
SPEAKER_02:Because I find it much harder to listen to an album because if you because it's too easy to press next.
SPEAKER_01:I I get really frustrated, so uh I take my daughter kitboxing uh ironically up in my old showroom, and she does kitboxing on Saturday morning, and we're literally driving from back from my office back to my house, which is 15-20 minutes, and she'll be on like Apple home kit in the car, Apple CarPlay in the car, and she'll be like, no, no, no one, not that one, not that one. But then when an album comes out like uh Demon Days Gorillas, where the whole thing is like you you start in the day and it goes to the night, and the album gets dark, and and I think it's such a beautiful thing. Yep. And and although there are some people out there that will still do it, I it does annoy me that some of the generations that are generation now, the generations don't do that. Actually, I think I think it's flipping back a little bit. I think people are starting to appreciate music a bit more. Oh, absolutely. I think we've gone through that scenario where people are happy to just blare it out on their speakers as they're walking on their phones, they're walking back from school or whatever. And I think I certainly see like my daughter, maybe it's because it's me. My daughter has, you know, it's like we've got she's got decent headphones, she's got she's got dead on hios in her bedroom with automated blinds, you know. Uh just your typical yeah, just your typical teenage bedroom. Because and I think that they start to learn to appreciate it. And I think we have gone down and we're going back up again, where I think people are seeing the importance of a good two-channel system and actually listening to music again.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I'm a big fan of um just um content being consumed essentially because it gives us all the foundations to sell up, or when I say sell up, to let people experience better. Um so back in the Hi-Fo shop days, I remember it was it was before Price by and things like that, but it was with uh yeah, it was always the red pages in the middle of the magazines where everyone went to find the cheaper stuff or went up to Tottenham Court Road to find the cheap stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the same people owed all the shops all the way up. Yeah, so they knew you were coming because they had a phone call. Yeah, but you still diligently went from shop to shop trying to get a disc£50 off here, trying to do it. And it was a thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, um, but it was quite a small audience in compared to now. Um, but I remember when supermarkets started selling DVD players bundled with 10 DVDs, that was kind of£199 or something. Um yeah, this is when we were trying to sell proper high-quality um DVD players with transports, and um, you know, you worried about what the DAX were and all that sort of thing. And all of a sudden,£199, you could get 10 DVDs and uh and a player, yeah, and they were rubbish. Yeah, um, and I remember at the time everyone was like, Oh no, this is terrible, it's gonna kill the industry. It's like, no, no, this just gets people going. They'll buy that, they'll hopefully enjoy it, they'll get into movies because again, no Netflix, no Prime, and Apple TV and everything. So they're now consuming content, and sure enough, we had people coming in saying, I bought this, um, I it's been a bit annoying, or it's broken. Um what's next up? And then so you had a wider audience, and that's what I think now with the opportunity our industry has is um young people listening to music all the time. Yeah. I mean my daughter's just one of them is constantly plugged in either one way or another, not not just on headphones, but just the default is playing uh Spotify.
SPEAKER_01:And if it's not if in if in my house, if it's not listening to music, it's singing music all the time. Yeah. I mean, I literally, literally a few days ago.
SPEAKER_02:Crowd participation.
SPEAKER_01:I was I was editing a video where I was at a V Day celebration in Icklesham, and I just took the camera along to record Molly and my wife singing in the V Day celebration. And uh and I'm editing it, and I'm literally sitting in front of my screen editing with Molly singing. Yeah, and then downstairs in the lounge is Molly singing.
SPEAKER_02:And it's just like, oh my god, I can't get away from this. That's what noise cancelling headphones are for.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I know. I just yeah, I was trying, oh, I was trying to listen to something on TV whilst editing at the same time, so headphones wouldn't do it.
SPEAKER_02:But um but that's lovely though, because it shows the engagement with music um and movies, and these you could you can look back on times in your life where particular music, you can hear a track now and it will it will evoke an emotion from a time. And it might be a pleasant emotion, it might be a sad one, it could be various things, but there's very few things which can do that. Yeah, um, and I think that's an interesting thing uh with well you could say art in general, but music and movies.
SPEAKER_01:I think with music, I mean we touched on it two things. We touched on it with uh um, I think it was episode two of the podcast with Dan from Hin Home Tech about how music um and theme and um scores in films just evoke emotion. And actually, you know, when you sit down in a good system in front of a good system, I've got a client um which was um a previous Hi-Fi brand you did. Um we bought a set of their speakers just before, you know, the switchover. And whenever I go back to that job now, I always sit in that room to do my yearly service and I play some stuff on the speakers. Obviously, I'm testing them. Oh, obviously. But just I'm not I'm not privileged to be able to afford those because they it was circa 40,000 pounds setup, and just the the the what you hear, and I think you know, it's a bit like yeah, we're not uh we're not not fans, but we're not fans of like Dolby Vision on the soundbar and Dolby Vision in headphones and immersive in headphones. But as you say, it it makes people aware of it, and then they go, well, hold on a second, is there anything better to do? And that's when you get talking to them about you know proper audio or proper immersive audio for for cinemas and bits and pieces like that. So I suppose if we so if we look at AWE, you look at moving round the corner. I mean, I can remember going in there, um, and and actually it was quite funny because it was only when I looked at the the dates I you weren't there for that long when I first started to know you. And I mean when I went, when I so the period between sort of okay, let's go, the period between sort of 2001 to when I started to know you, so let's say that that 2001 to 2010 period when you started around there.
SPEAKER_02:So that was um a big move and so the the factory we owned Freehold um and that was sold, and effectively that was sold to finance the change in direction of the business. Uh so at that point I became MD. Um so that would have been about 2001, I think it was, if I around there. Um yeah, it's about 25 years ago. I became MD and and really we pulled out of retail, so because we shut the shop, we there was a few contracts remaining which we sold off uh from the factory and sold the building. What's the building now? Well, annoyingly, we weren't property developers, but what we should have done is got residential development rights because the person we sold it to flipped it the same day and made about half a million quid in a day selling it onto a developer. Yeah. Flats now, is it? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we we we missed that one, but again, we were we were not property developers and it didn't think at the time. We we just wanted the business to go to its next stage. So, but with what we got, you couldn't then come to a place like Epson and buy a five, six thousand square foot warehouse on a nice business park um with the money that we got. Um, so um yeah, we changed to leasehold. Um we brought about six staff with us, myself, Paul, uh Jackie, um Lady Call Allison, who's retired, um, and uh Dinka, who was our uh he was uh service engineer. Yeah. He's the one that designed the old background music equipment, but by then we were we there was still a need to repair CD players and things, so we're doing that. Yeah, because I can remember Dinka sitting out the back here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly a few years ago. Until he retired, yeah. Yeah, until he retired a few years ago. Yeah. And I remember walking in and him saying to me, it was always when you went for the transition from the car park out the back into here. Yeah, hi Diggs. Yeah, and he'd always be sitting there surrounded by something repairing something. So that's it.
SPEAKER_02:So the people that came over were now travelling to Epsom from wherever they were living, but most of us were sort of, you know, sorry, Croydon sort of side, Croydon Thornton Heath side of things. Um, so we were now travelling here, and so yeah, we'd shut down the retail, we'd sold off the last bit, so it was purely trade distribution um of audiovisual. So um that was a decision that was huge because now you have a completely different scenario. Um, so we effectively downsized the number of people and the turnover of the business in order to put all our efforts on that because dad by then was probably 60, so probably had five years left of his started thinking retirement. Um so we could have retired um at that point, but being a family business, you know, you're so invested in it, you want to make it work. Um you want to be every help you can.
SPEAKER_01:Um was that the responsibility of the generations, isn't there? Yeah. You don't want to be the generation where it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. And what so actually my mum and dad were in the business. So the the van that you saw earlier, that Electrawines White van, my mum used to drive the transformers up to places like Oxfordshire to deliver them to the companies, you know, uh, that needed them. So in the old building, you had mum, dad, myself, Paul, and uh other members of the team just focusing on distribution. And we had the warehouse at the back, sales office downstairs, and then upstairs was the accountant's office, and then we had a boardroom, which probably about this size. But that was also where we set up one of the first THX Ultra um residential cinemas. So that was Pioneer Plasma on the wall. It was still some out there somewhere. It was a uh surround A V amp with THX Ultra. Um at that time it was JMO, THX speakers. Slightly. Uh and we had that there. And this was a point where we had yeah, we had integrators bringing in footballers and so what brands were you distributing?
SPEAKER_01:Obviously Pioneer, J Mo.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Pioneer JMO was our main speaker company. Um we had um a variety of AVMs at that point, so we did we did Denon at that point, uh, but that particular amplifier was an Onkyo, which had uh the first to get that certification and the number of channels. Um but um you know many of the brands we still do, but it was just a handful of brands in comparison, so we did URCs. Well, and this is what's changed. So this is what's changed now. I would say over the last 10 years, really, you know, that we were there. Was us and probably Pulse. Pulse were doing cinema systems, we were doing audio visual and control. So Philips Pronto, so it wasn't URC, it's Philips Pronto. So we were the audio visual control when you had Pulse doing cinemas. You'll buy those on eBay working. Yeah. I know I'm still selling them.
SPEAKER_01:Still got the sum in the warehouse.
SPEAKER_02:The thing that's changed now is the industry in the UK is very mature, and this is what makes it hard for everyone. It's what integrators are facing now. Um, but you see the number of companies that have either gone broke or been absorbed into others, be it distributors or or integrators, you know, there have been some big names that have gone in recent years. And that's because when there's a downturn in business, um, yeah, things get harder. And there isn't enough business for everyone that was coming into the thriving market, particularly over the COVID period, um, to be sustained. And the same happened in the 2008, 9, 10 banking crisis. I was gonna about to say, yeah. So this isn't our first rodeo. Yeah. You know, so the the thing that's changed is now every time I open a central install, there's another company selling another range of speakers or another range of application or another streaming device or another lighting product or another. So now there are I'm not gonna say too many, but for the market right now, you have to say it's a saturated market in the UK.
SPEAKER_01:I think if you just like we all we we went both of us went to ISE this year, Integrated Systems Europe in Barcelona. And I mean I even I go back to what the first time I went just to Amsterdam when it was there, and you were probably way before me. It there is it it was huge. I mean, even the what we will say the Resi Hall hauls, you know, it was just like if you want a speaker brand, take your choice. If you want an amplifier, take your choice. Yeah, um, there is just a there's a lot of maybe not confusion, but there's a lot of brands out there all vying for that same space.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I think I think both, you know, I think it's a hard uh it's a different job to what it was. When we were starting out, we the the market wasn't the size it was, so we were helping create the market, working, you know, alongside CDR and others to bring integrators into the residential side. And obviously, yeah, there was companies like SMC and others who were uh very active at that point, uh, you know, sort of founder members alongside others working to build this exciting new industry. Um, but that's what it was. Yeah, uh it was new. So we we were good at what we did then, and I believe we're good at what we do now, but the thing that the emphasis was slightly different. Before it was trying to find people that might want to buy something that you're selling. Um I suppose it's the same. The difference is now there's a million one people you can buy from. Um more people but more people. Bigger industry, but uh yeah, more. So the so the question now, the challenge now is um why would might people want to buy from AWE instead of one of any other people uh uh choice they can go to? Yeah. And obviously that's the you know, I think that's where it's helpful bringing out things like the legacy of the business we have, because um, like I say, people quite often just assume we're well, you're okay, you're you know, you're one of the big ones. And it's like, well, we are okay, but we've worked bloody hard to get here and we will continue to do so. And the team that I'm privileged to lead, along along with the other, um, you know, with alongside Paul and the senior management team, um, are all pulling in the same direction, um, trying to make uh a difference really, trying to help AWE stand out amongst a very crowded marketplace.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think even if you go back to like the two units you had around the corner, um what was in the second unit? That was offices in the end.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we outgrew the first one uh because we needed more warehouse space. So the the growth was substantial from there, um uh starting from you know six people um not making money to uh probably by the time we left there, maybe 15, 15, 18 people. Um so just office space for one, but warehouse space was the other. Um so we added the second building um because things were going very well, and we wanted a more dedicated show space, so that's when we were able to build a bigger um demonstration area. And that we were so we were actually one of the first to have a proper um, let's call it multi-room with dedicated cinema room, uh, and that was in just around the corner from here.
SPEAKER_01:And I think that's when I sort of got to know you. I can always remember walking, walking in to the front door, you chucked to right, and there was the the pronto home. Yep. And then I always remember, was it an Onkyo amplifier, which was literally crushed? And you had a little bit on it which was like, can you guess the re can you guess the excuse the delivery company gave us or something like that? Yeah, that's something always stuck in my mind.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. No, it was um there were fun times. Yeah. There were fun times because things were happening. I mean things still are happening, but um it was it was exciting to see people like yourselves come in from a different industry, and basically the training and the learning and the demonstration facilities, um, you know, we were one of very few doing it uh in the way um that the industry is now embraced. And uh, you know, you you grew your position and standing in the industry and businesses, um, you know, utilising companies such as ourselves through the training and all the knowledge.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean 100%. You know, it was I was doing looking after a lot of the Sony centres in the southeast, sort of discovered that you know, trying to get more income to the business, um, and then obviously also trying to get the Sony centres which are franchises to you know to embrace CI. Yep. Surprised they didn't, they're now closed. Not Sony's fault, it was the franchise's fault. Um, and then yeah, I mean you guys were a great help, you know, teaching me, you know, coming on, you know, uh what pronto courses, then URC courses, you know, dynamite courses with Craig when he was here. Yeah, you know, even to today, you know, I know Simon, who works with me because James and Craig he came in here to see you guys because he's only in Leatherhead. He's like, Do you know anybody who might need some help? I'd just broken up with my previous employee, and it was at that awkward period. It was like when you you know you dump a girlfriend and you don't want a new one for a few months, and Simon comes walking in, and and now he came from here, and even to the extent. Uh that's what's been great, you know, especially with me, is that you come over here, was it 11 years ago here?
SPEAKER_02:Uh yes, it would have been 2013, so just over yeah, 11-12. I mean, I yeah, I was looking at that and that was just that it's been that long. Yeah, because that was that was another huge step from from the building around the corner. Big, big step. It's like four times the size of a building. Um and that was in order. Uh again, whilst we wanted to to it was actually the tail end of the banking crisis. So well, when I say it was tail end, the banking crisis and the the um what do they call it? The money lending is basically the the restrictions that all the banks put on following that. Yeah. So business was hard then. Uh yeah, Pioneer had pulled out of plasma, Phillips had pulled out of pronto, that was 50% of our business over a 12-month period. Um but the undergrowing, the underlying business was growing at a rate which gave us confidence to still move here because this building became available and we were like, that's not going to come up again very anytime soon. So we actually again took a pretty big calculated risk at that point and again went from profit to loss to move here because we could have battened down the hatches and like restrict retracted into one of the two buildings that we then had. Um, but it was probably one of the final uh parts that my dad was involved in as well, um, even though he'd yeah, kind of stepped back um by then, it was okay, no, this is this is like sets us up for the future. Yeah. And so we spent everything we had moving in here. And you'll probably remember things like the show apartment, we didn't have all these rooms and cinemas, we just had the show apartment.
SPEAKER_01:Just the show apartment, and then the cinema, the first cinema was open. Added later.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but the show apartment was pretty much a uh plastered white room with a 85-inch TV in the corner and a few posters almost because we had no money at all.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, and that's what's been great about the space now. I mean, obviously, if you if you uh go back on the newsletters or if you go to uh immersive virtual tours, we last year we captured the the what it is now as a virtual tour, and like the room we're sitting in now was last year added, wasn't it? Um and so the fact that yeah, you went from that one room to now to two cinemas, you've got the hi-fi rooms now over where the training room was, yeah, it's been brilliant as a a fan of AWE, you know, and a customer of AWE to see that growth of a family business.
SPEAKER_02:And and I think what's changed in the last five years compared to when so if you if you take in context, us going back over 20 years ago, so 25 years when we first moved to Epsom, we set up a showroom and a cinema room. Yeah, but it was also our boardroom. Uh we call it boardroom, you know, it was me, mum and dad, um, and a table.
SPEAKER_01:Um but we've got a boardroom, it's just me. Yeah, it's the kitchen table.
SPEAKER_02:So we've all got a boardroom, you know, to be honest. Um but that was the beginning of a showroom which we allowed integrators to bring people into. And moving into the other building gave us the ability to create a dedicated space for that, and then moving to here, we really set a benchmark at that point. And then when we added the cinema, uh, and that's when we became it's really the first point we became serious in the home cinema because we were selling amps, we were selling speakers. There was some Panasonic projectors which we sold, but we didn't really have a cinema room per se. So it was when we moved here, and once we could uh afford to build the cinema room, you know, it was okay, let's do that. And from that point forward, you know, that led to massive growth with Ethson and then winning the Sony projection business and helping them substantially increase that in the UK working together. Um, and that then led to Bowers, which you know, we're doing so much Bowers compared to any speaker brand we ever did before. And that's the same with Sony, it's the same with uh you know other key brands, and that's what you need to do, is you the my lessons from the previous generations was if you just get up every day and I could put it in the context of retail, if I was still you know at the shop at Thornton Heath, waiting for the next person to walk in to buy something and then complaining about the price because it's cheaper online, yeah, we wouldn't be here.
SPEAKER_01:And I and I you know, as I say, touching on what I touched a minute ago, it's it's I was sitting there as the hanging and bang them guy for the TVs for the Sony centres, and I was saying to them, you you've got to stop shifting boxes unless you are massive like some of the shed locations, the industrial state locations, you you're not gonna survive. No, it'll be fine, it'd be fine, it'd be fine, you know, and they had massive credit accounts, and and you're sitting there going, look, just trust me, just try to do this, try to do that with it. And then I think the people in question, 2010 was the first time, and then they Phoenixed, and then 2014 it was the final time, yeah, and that was when I met you guys, was because I was sitting there going, Do you know what I can't rely on these people? Yeah, um, I can't rely on the over-the-counter stuff to give me work. Um so touching back to obviously, I know you probably can't go into it to a huge amount of detail, um, but touching like you know, where uh when brands pull out of the market, obviously we've just seen the issue with Sony, yes, um, you know, having that little blip, and then obviously, you know, uh DM holdings going to Massimo, and then you know, and now there's the offer from Harmon. Yeah, not uncertainty, but the you know, now that's now changing hands again. Yep. How does that affect the business? Do you do you sit there and see the headlines like we do, or have the advanced warning of it, and then sit there and go, okay, are we batting it down the hatches or because it's from this from this side it's I see the headlines and go, Oh shit, I can't get so many projectors for two months.
SPEAKER_02:You're sitting this side going, okay, I know we've got Epsom, but you have good days in the office and bad days in the office, and uh you know the so the thing that happened well let's let's separate them into two things. If I go back to the earlier ones where Pioneer poured out a plasma, you know, that was our biggest brand. Yeah, um, that was probably 25% of our business at the time. Um, but there was the opportunity I'm not gonna say we had notice, but writing was maybe on the wall, and we had other brands that you could sell to. Things like Pronto, we just launched, you were probably there, we just previewed new products to 150 integrators who came down. We were showing IP integration on a control solution before anyone else. And then Philips can it be like, what are you doing? The so, in terms of those, the the reps from Belgium that were here with us talking to our customers got the phone call as they were coming out the Euro tunnel. Yeah. Uh and then we got the phone call the next morning, and that was last orders, please, we're shutting it down. Yeah. Um, so you the the what the the news, the way the news comes is varied. In the Pronto example, there was no opportunity to cross-sell, and it was we want your last order, it's done. And that again was about 25% of our business. So um add that to the pioneer, uh, well, the pioneer bit then came later. But those two bits together were substantial. Yeah, we we went from profit to loss because of a phone call. Um, nothing to do with our decisions.
SPEAKER_01:And you probably can't help but sit there and go, okay, what did we do?
SPEAKER_02:Well, so so it's been very good learnings. Um I can that's where probably at that time I could still draw upon uh say mum and dad's experience of before, because there had been recessions previously, you know, and that was all off the back of the banking crisis and the recession. So it's not like business was easy at the point the phone call came, but we were a growing company and that gave us a massive knock. Um, but the underlying business was still good, the market was still uh good. Uh sorry, the market wasn't good at that time, but the principle of the market it wasn't like pivoting from mending radios. It was there wasn't something in the industry. The industry was had long. Discovering plasma and home control and yeah, so there was still opportunities. So the question there is you get up every day and you go, right, what are we gonna do? What are our best options? What um how are we gonna make it work? Um and if as a business you have to make cutbacks at that point, um we've always we've always been willing to give up profits for a year or two in order to retain you know the best or to retain staff and to come out the other side fighting. You know, that's what we did through COVID, it's what we did through that period there. But the numbers matter, and if the numbers don't add up, as a business you have to make difficult decisions. And back then we had to let some staff go. Yeah. Because yeah, like I say, it was half our turnover within a period of a a year. Um, but we grew, we grew out of it, and it makes you sharper. And whenever you have those difficult times, uh you do analyse everything much closer. So my dad always referred to the leaky bucket. It doesn't matter how much you're putting in the top, if you've got leaks at the bottom, uh you're never gonna be successful. So um that mindset has always stayed uh with me. So we've always tried to be very efficient as a business, but there's being efficient, and there's being efficient. Yeah. And when the numbers start looking more difficult, you have to look at them. We will always try and do whatever we can uh to minimize you know overheads uh in terms of outgoing routine expenses. That's why you know we're not sitting there with a fleet of Ferraris with personalised number plates for uh uh out there. If an individual can go as a result of their success and buy that, fantastic. But it's not an overhead to company. is we're not about being showy for show's sake. No, I mean I've always making deliver.
SPEAKER_01:I've always seen your your growth is is is calculated.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:In your your decisions to build the second cinema. Yep. Your decisions to move here. Obviously there's a certain amount of risk, but there's also there's also okay I think the the people come in here I mean obviously with the two cinemas you had the bigger we still have the bigger one and the smaller one. The bigger one is a bit bigger and the smaller one is a bit smaller. A bit bigger in respect of the equipment it has. But it it it is a calculated sort of like okay so I think the the market now warrants a projector that could support a£70,000 budget.
SPEAKER_02:So it's it's organic growth off the back of the work that the we all put in and those decisions are always measured against that. So for example we recognise that now from when we the ethos when we designed this apartment was we're not selling the fixtures and fittings we're selling the equipment in it. So what we need to do is present the equipment in the best light that we can against a fairly modest backdrop. Over the last five years there's been a notable change to high-end fixtures and fittings in showrooms. Yeah. And it's been led by the fact that interior designers and architects and M ⁇ E consultants and this are getting more engaged and and they're visiting showrooms and integrators are then being very good at recognising okay we're what integrators are setting up showrooms so because they're working with those people the um the level of fixture and fitting and environment of a showroom has um got higher.
SPEAKER_01:And we were up we were just briefly earlier we were discussing the warehouse this year. Yeah and that some of the AWE clients uh customers have got involved in that and and I know that being there recently recorded some stuff there the interior designers have gone so perforating fabric that's a that's a thing we do yeah yeah yeah yeah we can perforate fabric so you can put speakers behind it oh wow yeah and and just the us dealing with that industry and that industry dealing with us is growing the industry.
SPEAKER_02:It's and it's um yeah we there's always new challenges there's always opportunities but there's you know the challenges um come as well so with regards to us in the showroom and what what you expressed about the way we've done it um you know this room is to a higher standard than when we did the main apartment but we want to do the main apartment we will do in the you know coming period but for us that is okay you know that's a I don't know yet but let's call it£1000 it's certainly a six figure investment to get it to where it would want to be or where we would want it to be so it's great apartment it's really good but if we want to move it on we've got to you know step up uh everything within it um there's no parent company you know we're not European headquarters of a loudspeaker brand who can suddenly say well let's make this a European showcase and put half a million quid into it you know this is this is me uh uh looking around going okay this is what I believe our ROI will be if we invest this amount we work with partners you know and we've got plans breaking news we have plans I was gonna say so let's go on to the future where do you where do you see like so if we look at generation if uh of any of the uh of are your children gonna come into the industry is there an what happens when you decide to retire have you is there plans there did you exp you you're gonna stay in this building for the foreseeable future or do you expand to if it is you need to grow further well it's there's things I can talk about and things I can't talk about. I want an exclusive I'm retiring next week. Yeah well the thing the things I can talk about are um this building we've just renewed on a 10 year lease okay um but to give you an example it's doubled in 10 years the the rental in in Epsom's doubled so imagine it was again a uh quite uh well it was a calculated decision to renew um because there are places you can go that are cheaper um but the location we have is fantastic and it's got parking like you say it's a lovely building so the decision is to stay here um so we've renewed for um 10 years and that's what's then enabled us to start having the thoughts about the showroom because there's no point when you've got two years left on a lease when you start thinking okay what do we need to do so what we've done is incremental changes built additional rooms you know constant improvements and it's a lovely showroom that's still got people coming through every day using it but we're always pushing you you don't get to 90 years by saying yeah that'll do like we're we're always gonna push so so you know there is we are gonna push and with the brands we have they are top tier brands yeah we get offered brands yeah I can imagine literally every week and there's very very few we take on because they need to be you know top tier in the category that they're working in. Yeah and some of those are consumer electronics brands who are fairly mass market others are high end of consumer and others are very specialist. So across that portfolio you'll see our brands are always you know within that top tier and um so for us to show those in environments like this to encourage people such as yourselves and other HCA members to come down and spend time give us their time and bring their customers here we need to keep moving on. So we are here we will continue to invest in the showroom um there um you know we've got our core brands um which we are uh very much uh working with together and focusing on and developing partner programs and so on um to enhance those and there will be some new brands um you know over the coming 12 months um which we'll be able to share at the right time yeah um so in terms of what are we planning to do um we are planning to grow as a business but we will remain specialist yeah um you know the decisions we have to make are to grow we either have to sell what we've got to more people or sell more things to the people we've got or a combination of the both how far do we how far do we widen that so we could go into networking we could go into lighting we could go into security systems we could go into window shading we could go there's all these different areas we could go into um and but the question is you sort of end up becoming you you're no longer as specialist so one of the decisions is right do we continue strictly within an audiovisual category as you know I know numerically speaking the leaders of the audiovisual categories with the brands we're dealing with or do we add um associated um categories of products I think it's the it's the support as well because you know for me literally when we finish this I'm going to I'm putting on the other actually no I've got the t-shirt on I'm not just AT I've got the dual t-shirt on I'm going back to a a literally a 10 year old uh URC job yep and I've already spoken to Mel and Danny about it because the client doesn't want to upgrade it because it's working but he's got an issue.
SPEAKER_01:So you know I guess Mel's like right yeah download the accelerator mark one when you're there give me a shout and what we'll do is we'll team view you into it. Yeah so which is which is for me you buy from people yeah you know and you know and it's gonna sound mushy but I don't consider ABS I consider you guys a lot of you guys to be friends. Even new people that have sort of come in you know Mara, Ellie which is the persona the company yeah which is like everybody's still a friend you know the amount of donuts I've bought here on a Friday afternoon just say here go you know and then uh someone will say can you bring fruit next time that's Christina. But um but yeah so I mean it sounds exciting um obviously you know I have I've not been here in the showroom for a while um and already you know even now you're constantly updated it things are coming things are going you're tweaking it it's always fresh and you know that for anybody who's not been here you know uh obviously reach out uh to the guys to come down and see is a fantastic place to come and and it's always nice to see it ever evolving.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah no appreciate that and it's here to be used so yeah as Drew says get in touch if you want to come and visit um and that can be yeah with or without a client um it could be one person it could be a team uh we we hold events for companies where there's could be anything from three to 15 people from one company coming down and learning about stuff and the the good thing is with our industry knowledge that can be not just product training it could be talking about um cinema design for example um it doesn't have to be just about well what is the technology of that product we could be drawing comparisons between different technologies and what the relative benefits are and things.
SPEAKER_01:And I think there's lots of people coming into this industry, into our industry there's lots of people coming into our industry who may do a bit of this and they may do a bit of that and they want to learn about this and I think that's where you know yourselves are really good in respects of you'll say okay well your knowledge is X, Y, and Z, you know, so come in and we'll teach you about multi room audio a bit more or you know the bowels of Wilkie's range or or what cinemas can be. And then obviously then I could join join them up to the HCA to become a member. Exactly exactly nice symbiotic relationship. So to end on a little bit of fun which you don't know anything about what I've fun I know lots about fun that's my middle name and there's a massive car behind you which obviously is a sponsorship you had and I've been on many a fun days with you. We usually do something fun with the members which is you know like if if money's no object any sister you know what would it be? I think for I what I ask you is simple your favourite movie you can sound so cheesy.
SPEAKER_02:It's gonna sound so cheesy.
SPEAKER_01:If you had to sit down tomorrow or sit down this weekend and watch a movie see that's what would it be?
SPEAKER_02:That's a different question to me. And and I explain why when you say what's my favourite movie yeah something in my head that I can't control talks about thinks of original Top Gun. Yeah I can't control that yeah it's probably not my favourite movie but it is probably the one that evokes the most emotion because it it relates back to the days we were talking about like the first surround demo that we were doing alongside Indiana Jones and things. So it's not going to be that but of its age you know that period of life when you got a car got put your sound system in it when you could put 12 inch subs in subs in the pool of that and then just that whole era I think so that's probably the sort of slightly um nostalgic favourite movie. Yeah just because of we were talking about music and movies evoking emotions and I think that was just a great time for me. You know so I suppose it's that independence and work and and having fun with audiovisual equipment. More recently oh yeah I'm probably sort of I'm probably more like more like top five I I love different movies at I know it sounds strange but different times of year. So coming up to Christmas and just that sort of it's cold outside sitting inside yeah um I go back to the older stuff I go back to things like Great Escape and um yeah probably classics classic movies really um so yeah you're right you I'm on the spot I haven't thought of them but there's two examples well it's funny because like you're my if someone says to me what's your favourite movie it's natural born killers and again I don't know why and I haven't been and watched it in years because I'm afraid that I won't like it again.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah yeah but why I like it was because I went to the cinema to watch it and I the emotions of people it was a Marmite movie. Yeah you know it was like what a pile of expletive or man that was amazing and I think that's why I loved that film was because it was just so defice it was like black and white yeah good or bad yeah and I think my favourite film of current time and I I don't want to watch the the the sequel because it's get I think it's getting panned was Joker the the latest Joker movie. That the first one oh my god that I even put out on social I think this is now my favorite favourite film of all time and I won't watch the new one because on Sky it's got like one and a half stars out of five and I've not watched it yet.
SPEAKER_02:That's that's the tricky thing. So you've got um there's movies that weren't good but become classics like Blues Brothers and things like that. So again there's sort of points in life which you can say I remember yeah I remember at that point I was doing this or yeah that was my first trip abroad and I listened to that album that type of thing versus what's a great movie now. So when you watch back the old movies because they were on tube TVs or smaller TVs with a certain level of audio you can't necessarily watch them now and get the same experience you had at the time because it just looks and sounds old. Yeah so I saw uh F1 the movie at the at the weekend and uh at IMAX cinema and yeah that was great um but I was I was kind of split on it because I'm such an F1 fan there's part of me saying just enjoy the movie it's Hollywood okay and there's the other bit there's the other bit which is just the cinematic nature or well what they've done with the soundtrack and the filming is superb and to bring that to a mass audience I think is really exciting and no doubt it's going to be the one that we keep hearing once it's out on Blu-ray.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah it'll be like the Lady Gargar film. Star is born Greatest Showman Maverick you know I mean I've still not watched the Star Is Born I've still but apart from those two or three clips it's a much it's a much when I say slower movie than I imagined it's the same as anything else.
SPEAKER_02:You see that you see the highlights a hundred times and then you you're aware of it constantly playing and then when you watch a movie it's not quite what you expected. So that you know that's a good movie but once you've seen the highlights the the bits in the middle are are kind of like um not quite so engaging perhaps awesome what anything else you want to touch on uh I think we put we covered a lot yeah I think I think we covered a lot um no just just to say thanks again um for for joining us help us uh spread the AWE 90 message yeah and uh if uh yeah if this is if anyone's got this far thank you as as well and I was thinking I hope we can get 20 minutes out of this I have no idea how this is like I don't know how you go I don't know how you're gonna edit this down but I won't I I like I like long form.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah I'm going to Wales tomorrow and I've already got the podcast lined up that I want to listen to and I think there's a lot of people that will listen to this. I was chatting to Rob from Maven recently and you know he's like I've been on site the last few weeks I've listened to both your podcasts because they're great I could just put the headphones in work away and just listen nice uh and hopefully what we're doing with the podcast can communicate to the installers what uh AWE is and what our industry obviously is but also to the end consumer saying that you know behind the brands there are the distributors and there are these family companies that support the installers that you know fundamentally support the end client and the systems that they have. So you can just flag this one for long journeys. Yeah for long journeys yeah yeah yeah warning it's it's that you know you need to be travelling uh yeah to a CD at tech summit or something like that. This this is Stuart Stuart talking so they should probably figure that out if they know either of us. And uh all I can say is just like uh bookmark this one and we'll come back in ten years for the hundred year. Absolutely massive plans I would say you could take us on a trip down to your speaker manufacturer but they're literally like down near where you live on the road. Yeah. Awesome Stuart thank you very much for your time