MARTIN AUDIO GEARS UP FOR NEXT GROWTH WAVE

Martin Audio has enjoyed unparalleled levels of success in recent times, with four successive years of growth built upon the foundation of the MLA series. This has been ably supported by consistent sales of Omniline, Blackline and new products such as the XD and DD range. However, driving a company forward always brings with it fresh challenges.

James King, Marketing Director, takes up the story. 'Although the business has nearly tripled in the last few years, many of the structures and processes underpinning this success haven't necessarily grown as quickly. As a team, we could see that we were about to hit a ceiling, and that now was the time to invest further -both to improve our facilities and processes, and to bring in additional expertise and resource that could provide the foundation for the next five years. And this is exactly what we've done.'

In recent months, Martin Audio has developed an additional 900 square metres of factory, storage, office and testing facilities, whilst further investments have been made into electro-mechanical assembly to improve lead times and flexibility to customers. This is coupled with the start of institutionalising 'lean' manufacturing principles to make Martin Audio manufacturing in Britain globally competitive.

To support these efforts and grow the business further, Martin Audio has taken on multiple hires: Andy Weingärtner has beefed up sales in EMEA; Robin Dibble has come in to bolster the Product Support Engineer team; Alan Josey has been confirmed as the new Finance Director, strengthening the management team with over 20 years' experience of domestic and international manufacturing and engineering businesses; the finance team has been further bolstered by recruiting a dedicated Credit Controller to provide a smoother customer interface; Carl Davies joined as Junior Mechanical Design Engineer, strengthening the Mechanical Design team to three; Nicole Thorne has supplemented the North American team in sales admin support; and Martin Audio is also set to announce two new critical hires in the coming weeks for positions of Product Manager and Director of Operations.

Simon Bull, Sales Director, continues, 'These improvements are timely as we start to see Europe returning to higher productivity, commercial installation in China continuing its strong growth curve, and MLA now beginning to make great strides in the rest of Asia Pacific, following its tremendous success in Japan.'

Rob Hofkamp, Director of North American Operations, added, 'I've not seen an opening quarter like this one during all my time at Martin Audio. MLA and business in general has never been stronger in the US with new customers like Alford Media coming on board and existing customers adding to their inventory-taking us to well over 200 MLA cabinets for the opening months.'

As Jason Baird, R&D Director, concludes, 'It's a really exciting time to be in the business right now. A fresh wave of investment, new personnel, better facilities and the demand for our products has never been higher. The next chapter in our history has well and truly begun. '