Sound meets service in the Great White North.
Real estate moguls are not the only ones who succeed by reciting the redundant maxim of location, location, location. Just ask Peter Hendrickson, who opened a production company on the far eastern shore of Canada in 1984. How far on the eastern shore? Well, far enough that there was a time when his company, Tour Tech East, was tapped to help with an Iron Maiden show because the band’s boat, which had set sail from Germany, couldn’t dock due to extreme Atlantic Ocean weather.
Where It All Began
Hendrickson opened the doors to Tour Tech East in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1984. He’s fond of saying that this is only his second job. His first job, as a freelance lighting designer, started in 1975 while he was in high school and ran for the next nine years. During that time, he started acquiring gear, eventually stocking enough where he could rent it out without having to go on the road.
Audio came along in 1984 because he saw a need in the eastern provinces for sound support. “There were some music stores that had sound equipment,” he recalls, “but no professional sound companies. When acts would come from Ontario or western Canada, if they were carrying sound equipment then they would carry lighting equipment, so I was missing out on an opportunity. I looked at it as a package and it made sense.”
Somewhere in the late ‘80s, Hendrickson decided to add staging as well. “We would show up to do these shows and outdoor festivals and it would be a piece-of-crap stage,” he reports. “It was a flatbed of piled up crates and plywood on top. It became a real liability issue for us, so we decided that we were going to invest in staging, and it worked out quite well.” Over the years, the company has also added power distribution. “Everything that we ended up doing was complimentary to what we were doing right from the very beginning,” he says. “It was just a natural progression.”
Positive Progression
That natural progression has now made Tour Tech East one of the largest companies in the land with an impressive inventory the includes over 200 L-ACOUSTICS V-DOSC, dV-DOSC and ARCS boxes, 300 Meyer MICA and MSL-4 boxes and around 150 pieces of Electro-Voice’s X-Array system.
As far as desks, Tour Tech East is well stocked with a number of digital boards from DiGiCo and Yamaha. The company is also checking out new boards from Digidesign and Midas to add to the collection soon.
Experience has proven to Hendrickson that there is only one way to make purchasing decisions. “We buy what’s on the riders,” he says simply. “In the early days, I used to buy what I really liked and what I thought was great. Unfortunately, what I think is great doesn’t always translate to cash, and I can’t grow the business if I only buy what I like. I am in business to stay in business, and I can be either right or I can be dead right. I have given up on the dead right.”
After all, he adds, “these days, you have to go out of your way to make a shitty-sounding box. There are some that sound average and there are some that sound fabulous, but there are not a lot of bad-sounding boxes.”
Making It All Fit
At the same time, Hendrickson also has to factor in the space it takes to truck gear to gigs. “In Canada, we have great distances between venues,” he states. “Typically, we have to travel quite a few hours between venues, and so truck space becomes an issue because of the cost of transportation. The days of the 12-truck tours are pretty limited.”
Yes, the company also is into hauling. “If we are able to offer a package to the customer, it secures our relationship a little better.”
Over 20 years in the business gives Hendrickson an interesting perspective. While he looks forward to festival season, to hear all of the up-and-coming acts as well as the newer engineers, he forsees some clouds on the horizon.
One of the clouds he forsees is the ability for new companies to launch by purchasing gear at lower price points. So, those companies can take work away from bigger companies like Tour Tech East, who are attempting to recuperate from massive capital investments because they have the newer gear and can offer it cheaper.
“We need a certain period of time to pay our equipment off before the next tidal wave of new equipment comes in,” he explains. “But we are finding that it’s coming in faster than our ability to repay it. That concerns me. At what point does it stop?”
Hendrickson does not have an answer right now, but he is opting to continue to build and sustain his company the old-fashioned way. “At the end of the day, as long as you provide good service to a customer who has faith in you, they will remain a good customer,” he says. “If they buy on price, then they really aren’t your customer, they are just someone you are servicing along the way. Price is a factor, because we all have to answer to the money god, but if they are a real customer then they will believe in what you are doing and trust that you are sending them in the right direction.”
