Following a fire at a property adjacent to its former location, AV staging, rental and sales company Forty Two Inc. relocated its headquarters here and has re-equipped, acquiring new QSC Audio WideLine, KLA and K Series loudspeakers.
The company put the new loudspeakers to work for the first time at President Obama’s inaugural campaign event at Ohio State University in Columbus.
“QSC’s local rep called us as soon as he heard we were in the market for new inventory, and he did a good job of focusing us on what would work best for our needs,” says Tony Ferrello, president of Forty Two Inc.
In total, Ferrello purchased 32 WideLine-10 line array modules and twelve WL218-sw subwoofers, eight KLA12 active line array modules with four KLA181 subwoofers, and ten K12 active loudspeakers.
“We have used WideLine speakers quite often for several years through a partner vendor of ours, and we’ve been using QSC amps since we’ve been in business, so it wasn’t a hard decision,” he reports.
The longevity and roadworthiness of the loudspeakers were critical factors in Ferrello’s purchase decision. “Ninety percent of what we do is rental and staging and only 10 percent are ancillary things like sales and service, so we need a company that is building products that are made to last on the road, not just hung somewhere and left,” he says.
Cost-efficiency and quality were also a major factor. Ferrello elaborates, “We don’t make as much money here per unit sale as is the case in other areas of the country. So if we have a quality product from QSC that we use for five or more years then we’re going to make our ROI and keep a consistent quality. Those are the two things in our market that are really important.”
Forty Two Inc., a GSA [General Services Administration] and CCR [Central Contractor Registration] contractor, does a lot of government work, and that carries into the political world every four years. “That’s a big boost for us, to work with one of the candidates, typically the incumbent,” says Ferrello. “Obama for America” is one of our big clients. We bought the QSC system right at the beginning of this election cycle, and in May at Ohio State University’s Schottenstein Center, a 20,000-seat arena, we used 56 WideLine-10s, 12 WideLine-8s and seven or eight racks of PowerLight 380 amplifiers. That event was really successful.”
He continues, “We started with President Obama when he was a senator. The first event we did with him, at Penn State University back in early 2008, was with a sub-rented WideLine system. We’ve done probably 30 or 40 large events for the president over this summer with WideLine in the northeastern U.S. So the whole time we’ve been working with him we’ve been using WideLine.”
Working as a government-approved contractor, every dollar that the vendor charges is under scrutiny, he says. In the case of GSA work, the agency schedules the payment based on national averages. Those factors, too, encouraged Ferrello to look for a cost effective PA solution, which he found in the QSC speakers. “That has focused our business on getting the job done with less transportation and labor costs,” he says.
But it hasn’t been just political events for the new QSC loudspeakers. “We had the WideLine for Bruce Springsteen in Cleveland OH, which was a show for 10,000 people at a college.. We’ve done some shows for ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’ And we used WideLine on the Fourth of July for firework music at different locations,” he reports.
Looking to the future, he says, “We’re going to become Q-Sys Certified and see the ways we can make Q-Sys work for our customers. And if things work out the way I’m hoping, we may end up doubling our inventory within a year.”
