Mackie Designs recently issued a statement announcing several key personnel moves, the creation of new positions as well as the elimination of redundant ones, and the ongoing implementation of an Oracle information management system that’s expected to provide numerous benefits. (Click here to view that statement.)

Jamie Engen

For more detail and explanation, we turned to Mackie CEO Jamie Engen, who graciously agreed to meet with PSW Install Editor Keith Clark and answer a wide range of questions. The two met up at the United Airlines terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on a Friday afternoon as Jamie traveled back to Woodinville from a management conference. Sharing a plastic bench next to baggage carousel number 4 as the terminal’s paging system droned on with effective intelligibility (kudos to the contractor on the project!), they had a far-ranging discussion covering “the here and now of Mackie” as well as future plans and projection relating not only to the company, but the pro audio industry.

We’re pleased to present that conversation here in its entirety.

(Editor’s Note: Just prior to press time, Mackie released yet more news, which can be accessed here )

Keith Clark: Can you give us your specific strategies behind the recent personnel moves?

Jamie Engen: It’s a big part of our ongoing refocus as a company. Refocus, in our definition, is about getting closer to customers, finding out what they want and need and then providing it as quickly as possible. One thing we could do a better job understanding the needs of our customers and users by fostering really strong relationships with them.

EAW deserves a lot of credit for this refocus. We’ve studied their success, and to a good extent, it’s always been based upon getting the customer anything they need. If a customer asks for a speaker in blue, or with pink polka dots on it, let alone a 70 by 30 coverage pattern, EAW has always been the company to say, “we can do it”. Simply, it’s a “yes we can” attitude, and it’s extremely powerful.

So as a group, Mackie has looked at that and said that all of us can and should be that way, not just one division of the group. This is about developing relationships better, staying in front of our customers in a more personal way, and further, putting people who already have a good understanding of customers in the field.

Through this process there have been some layoffs, but actually, that’s a misnomer. Of late, we’ve let people go at certain levels, but we’ve actually added more employees in total, at a variety of differing levels that we’ve determined are vital.

Significantly, we’ve elevated Ivan (Schwartz), Costa (Lakoumentas) and Keith (Olsen) to a more senior level as heads of touring, contracting and recording, respectively. But we’ve also given them more people to work with, to better address their markets, and further, we want all of these people on the road, working with customers, an average of four days a week.

This includes product specialists like Greg Silsby, who specializes in churches, and Paul Carelli, who specializes in concert touring, as well as many others, and still more that will be hired to further increase each team’s effectiveness.

Regular customer interface is important, as is introducing and demonstrating products, so that customers really understand what they’ve got and how it can be used. This is especially important as things in our industry get more complicated. In pro audio, things are a lot more complicated than they’ve ever been; for example, with ever-increasing amounts of digital equipment that has to be programmed.

So let’s make it easier for them, and at the same time, let’s find out what they really need. It’s so easy to “over-feature” products right now because features are cheap and “more is better” and all that - but do our customers really want and need it all? Are we making things too complicated by giving them too much, instead of what they really need to get the job done?

One of the goals that we have as a company with this refocus is for Mackie and all of its divisions to be known as the source for alternatives. Now, it’s easy to say that you should give customers what they want, but in reality they want different things. That’s where alternatives come in.

Using recording as an example, there are companies out there saying “the only way to go is software-based; there’s so much processing power in the computer, and software is the only way to go, and that’s the future.”

That’s fine - I don’t have any problem with a company doing that, but we want to be a little bit different.

Our focus: we’ll provide the tools, and you’re the artists, and you do whatever you want with the tools. No one goes to a painter and says “here’s the best paintbrush, so use this one only.” Rather, paintbrushes come in many forms and sizes, and people also paint on paper, on wood, on canvas, all sorts of surfaces. In the audio sense of this, we want to be the company that provides the tools and choices for as many customers as possible.

Historically, we’ve had market managers responsible for advertising, spec sheets and all that type of thing, but one of the new positions we just added was account executive. This individual will handle much of the day-to-day traditional “advertising and marketing” responsibilities, so our market managers and their teams are freed up to focus more on working with the people who buy the products and coming up with ideas for more and better products.

With this approach, we’ll introduce more products in 2002 than ever before. This is exciting for us and exciting for the market.