After 26 years at Martin Audio, Maureen “Mo” Hayes — the longest serving member of the company staff who primarily focused on marketing and PR roles — announced that she is retiring.
“Giving up something that’s been part of your life for such a long time is certainly going to feel strange, and I can’t imagine not having it in my life,” she says. “But while I will miss the camaraderie, I feel comfortable that I am leaving the company in good hands, with a blend of experienced people and new blood coming in to keep things fresh.
“Dom [Harter] has brought some much-needed stability to the company, as has the Focusrite Group. Martin Audio today is very different from the company I joined in 1997. Over the years I’ve been privileged to work with some really great colleagues, both at Martin Audio and the industry in general.”
By the time Hayes joined Martin Audio, she was already something of an industry veteran, having spent the previous 12 years working first for Otari, and then Sterling Audio and Focusrite. “In that respect, with the company now owned by Focusrite I’ve virtually come full circle (if you exclude Otari),” she says.
After earning a degree in Social Sciences, her first job at Otari was a temporary position that quickly turned into a permanent one in sales administration. Then when the company closed its UK office and moved to Germany, one of their dealers, Andrew Sterling (of Sterling Audio) offered her a job. “I left Otari on the Friday and started there on the Monday,” Hayes notes.
But the daily commute to Kilburn proved too much and after 18 months she suggested to Sterling that it was no longer sustainable. He, in turn, was friends with Focusrite founder Phil Dudderidge, and this became her next port of call, initially working as Dudderidge’s secretary before moving into sales administration. With the company’s expansion from Bourne End into High Wycombe’s Cressex Industrial Estate, where they became Martin Audio’s neighbor, her job role changed, and with Dudderidge’s consent, she applied for a sales admin position, with which she was familiar, at nearby Martin Audio, then under the stewardship of managing director David Bissett-Powell.
“I worked to develop the sales administration department at Martin Audio, which was very primitive back then, but after getting it to the stage where there was nowhere further for me to progress, I was all set to leave,” she says. That’s when Rob Lingfield, the company’s ales & marketing director, asked if she would be interested moving over to his department with the departure of the previous marketing manager. “So it was Rob’s intervention that stopped me from leaving,” she explains, adding a special tribute to the “much loved and much missed” Rob.
As the company moved in and out of corporate ownership at the behest of venture capital money, she reflects on several landmark events. The first was when her own band JUMP, in which she has played keys for 33 years, was invited to Birmingham’s NEC specifically to launch Martin Audio’s W8L line array in 2002.
And when the company was ready to launch MLA in 2010, she was part of a press trip to Antwerp, where the company and its Belgian dealers, Ampco Belgium, took over the main town square and delivered a demonstration of the system’s multicellular control. She remembers how visitors stood in disbelief as the stage volume and atmosphere were ‘contained’ within the square itself while tapering it to near silence immediately outside the sound field—thus avoiding encroachment on the surrounding houses and businesses.
Hayes’ career at Martin Audio has run parallel with her time with the aforementioned JUMP. In fact, her arrival at the company coincided with the band’s support tour of former Marillion frontman Fish’s ‘Sunsets on Empire’ UK tour. This is one of many highlights that has seen her work with rock legends such as Marillion, Rick Wakeman, Steeleye Span, Hawkwind, The Searchers and Kajagoogoo.
Retirement, she hopes, will allow more space for the development of those keyboard motifs. “While I want to spend more times with my family, I may also take up another hobby,” she suggests. “There may be a Picasso in me … you just never know!”
Marketing director James King concludes, “Having worked with Mo for 10 years, I can honestly say she is the loveliest person I have ever worked with, and she has contributed so much to the marketing team and to Martin Audio. We are all going to miss her dearly.”
