Bob Forbes is taking the opportunity to breathe. As the president of SPL Systems (www.splsystems.net), a regional sound company who strikes while the proverbial fair and festival iron is hot, Forbes has recently finished a five-month-long run of festivals around the company's Chicopee, Mass. headquarters.
This past summer, the SPL crew worked at 17 fairs in the southeast Massachusetts and northern New York state region that included the Barnstable County Fair in East Faimouth, Mass., Ulster County Fair in New Paltz, N.Y. and the Duchess County Fair in Rhinebeck, N.Y., as well as the Eastern States Exposition ("The Big E") and the Big Y Balloon and Music Festival in West Springfield, Mass. "It was a really productive summer," Forbes reports. "We picked up a couple of new accounts and kept all our old accounts."
SPL worked with artists such as Foreigner, Grand Funk Railroad, Charlie Daniels, Brad Paisley, Lonestar, Lee Ann Womack and Dierks Bentley this summer. While the company provides P.A. for most of those acts, there are the times when a band comes in with their own gear. "Brad Paisley brought in his own rig and crew," Forbes says. "We got out of the way and tried to help those guys."
The equipment list at SPL includes EAW and Ramsdell speakers, a collection of Crest power amps and Yamaha MP4000s, Crest LM52s, Crest VX40s, Ramsa 840s and Soundcraft LX7 consoles. The company also boasts a range of outboard gear from Ashly, Drawmer, Yamaha and TC Electronic, as well as microphones from Sennheiser, Shure, Audix, CAD and Countryman.
Forbes opened the door of SPL (Sound Plus Lighting) Systems in 1995, and the company includes a sales and installation business as well as production services division. Installs have gone into a variety of venues, including nightclubs, restaurants, houses of worship and hotels.
It's the summer fair schedule, though, that has Forbes running, and in the midst of competition from a number of larger production companies, he has stayed busy. "I'm not sure if it's a price thing," he says. "Price doesn't seem to be an issue, and I don't think we're extremely high, and I don't think we're extremely cheap; it's a matter of doing a great job for them."
Then he waits for word to spread. "The mainstay of our business is referrals," Forbes explains. "For whatever reasons, we don't really knock heads with anybody. We do a real good job for our clients, and that seems to motivate them not to go anywhere else. So we haven't had any bidding wars that we've lost to somebody."
That said, Forbes reports, "We don't want to stomp on anybody with price, even though we can be extremely competitive, because I have extremely low overhead. That's how I run things, and that way I can survive and be competitive."
Proving that survival is a matter of service, Forbes is surprised when he hears about the conduct of other sound companies. While he won't get specific, he says, "If that's what we are going up against, then it's just a matter of getting our foot in the door. If we can do that, then we're there. A lot of times, at least the fairs that we've dealt with, it's about longevity. If they've been with a company for a while, there is a lot of hesitance to move on, unless there was something major that happened."
But if the door opens, Forbes and his staff at SPL are ready and willing to take advantage of the opportunity. "We're always on the lookout to pick up new stuff, and we start that process right around now," he says. "We're getting hired back next year for all that stuff, too, so it looks to be a good 2007." After all, there's all winter to rest.
