Audio Industry Leader Focuses On The Religious Market
As a major force in the installed and touring sound market since the company’s launch in 1979, Meyer Sound doesn’t follow the trends — it sets them.
In 1995, Meyer shook up the audio industry with the first self-powered loudspeakers for the concert sound market. Today, the company, which devotes 60 percent of its business to the installed sound market, is focused on making speakers that are even easier to use and install.
“We’re setting the standard,” says John Meyer, president and CEO. “It’s like back in the early days of automobiles, when they had lots of levers on the floor. We’re trying to simplify it. We’re creating the standard as we go along. We have a tendency to lead, because we’re thinking about the end user rather than what the market is asking for.”
Meyer Sound, located in Berkeley, California, has over 150 employees and offers customer service not only from its U.S. headquarters, but also from five fully-staffed international satellite offices. Meyer Sound is privately owned.
Founders John and Helen Meyer spoke with Church Production Magazine about how they will address the highly specialized religious market, including plans for seminars and classes designed specifically for church technical directors. “The church market is a very interesting market for us, and it’s growing tremendously,” says Helen Meyer, executive vice president for Meyer Sound.
CPM: What are some of the initiatives you’ve launched that are targeted at the church market — either products or programs?
Helen Meyer: One of the things that we recognized about the church market is that it really responds to the kind of products we have, which are very simple to use. They’re already optimized. From the very beginning, John pioneered the idea of building products, which could be used as building blocks. And he’s taken that a little further in the church market. Do you want to talk about that a little bit, John?
John Meyer: The whole idea of trying to simplify the systems started out in the 70s. [Back then,] sound designs were very complicated. I always dreamed that it would be nice to have units that you could configure, and if you wanted to move something around — because things change — it would be easy. I was working in the late 70s, for contractors. Once something went in, it would be so permanent, you’d have to get a change order [to move it] and it would be a huge amount of work. Now, we’ve made everything fly-able and easy, much easier to configure. Each unit is self-contained. We pioneered the idea that instead of having all the equipment in a backstage closet, every speaker is self-contained. If a speaker needs to be replaced, you can take it down and put a more powerful version in there. Kind of like if you need a new TV set, you can just go buy a bigger one and take the old one away, rather than having to rewire your whole house. We spent a lot of effort simplifying these systems to make it easier for dealers to install them and change them.
CPM: Have you introduced any products that were designed specifically with the house of worship market in mind?
John Meyer: The church market is very similar to the theatre market. It really is doing theatre. It isn’t really a different kind of product. You have a reverberant base, which is like a concert hall, and you have a stage and you have performers. Really, it’s lent itself well toward the kind of products we build for Broadway shows and musicals. One of the things that we did implement is custom painting. In theatre, everything is pretty much all black. We embraced the idea that we can custom-paint our product. That took some work. That is part of the customization, so that it blends into the space better.
CPM: What does differentiate the church market from the theatre market?
John Meyer: The theatre market is not permanent, whereas the church market is permanent. Theatres get changed out after the show is over. So it’s still a long-term rental or lease. The church is buying a system and they’re going to keep it. It’s a little different in that sense.
Helen Meyer: It’s also different in the sense of how the system is operated. Typi cally, in the church market, we’re finding that in many cases, the smaller churches don’t have a professional audio person, per se. They have people that are volunteers. Our product, by virtue of being simpler to operate and to understand, makes it easier for them to operate the system and make sure that it’s well maintained. We also have a service program that makes it very easy to service the product.
CPM: What differentiates Meyer from other companies?
John Meyer: Again, we’re thinking about what the end user wants rather than what the market is asking for. Marketing will come back and say we should build what everybody else is building. If you were going to build a camera, you’d look at all the cameras that are out there and build something kind of like it. If you were trying to build something for the photographer — what the photographer needs rather than what the market is clamoring for — it’s a different kind of issue. You’re saying, “What would be useful?” That’s how we came up with the powered speaker. You don’t have amps, you don’t have closets backstage, wiring and expert personnel installing this whole thing, aligning it, getting it to work. We said, “How can we make this easier?” We put it all together into a box. It seems obvious that this would make it really easy. Someone would just get it, hang it, and it would work. For the church, we ask, “what would make it really easy for them to use the equipment? What would make it so that they have good shows?”
CPM: What do you see in terms of growth for the religious market over the next few years?
John Meyer: All the statistics say it’s growing a lot. Everyone you talk to says it’s a very fast-growing market. We see that all over the world, India, here. It seems that more people are going to churches as kind of a full-service organization.
Helen Meyer: It’s not just a small service, it becomes a real focus of life. They’re little communities. I think that we see that growing tremendously. And, like John says, we’re working with faith-based organizations around the world. We see the growth all over the world. It’s coming at us from all different directions. I think people are coming to us because we can offer them the solutions to help them the most, in terms of running sound so that it’s easy to operate.
CPM: What would you say are Meyer’s main goals over the next few years?
Helen Meyer: One of the things we’re going to concentrate on very, very strongly is education. We’re going to start doing seminars specifically for the church market. We feel that educating the people in those areas of the market is very, very important, so we’re going to offer a full range of seminars and classes in terms of how to use our product. We’re going to invite people here to the factory, and we’re also going to take those classes and seminars on the road. You’ll be seeing a lot more of us trying to reach out. That’s one of the things we will definitely be doing this year, and over the next couple of years.
CPM: Are there any other trends you see, either overall, or specifically in the religious market, that are going to affect your company and how you do business?
Helen Meyer: The biggest thing we’ve noticed, as John mentioned, is the churches are more like theatres. Each of these organizations that we’ve been involved with puts on major shows. They have music directors and choirs and orchestras and they put on full productions. They’re becoming very similar to a theatre. That’s the most unusual thing we noticed about a year ago. We hadn’t realized that until just recently. That’s a big advantage for us, because that’s what we’ve been doing. We feel that it’s a good market for us.
Dawn Allcot, a New York-based freelance writer, is a regular contributor to Church Production Magazine. She can be reached at Dawn@DawnAllcot.com.
