The most trenchant clues to the state of the industry are often seen from the most oblique angles. Manufacturers of flight and road cases for the touring sound business are getting hit by many of the same economic forces as the rest of the live sound industry, mostly in the form of higher costs of materials, stemming from a combination of products such as foam padding, which some case makers report as having doubled in the last year, to increases due to the cost of shipping both materials and finished goods. “The cost of the metals and the foam has gone sky high,” says Mark DeHart, president of Rock Hard Road Cases in Albany, Ore. “All of the aluminum and casters are up, as are the foam costs.”
Tour Cutbacks
Then, the impact of energy costs on concert touring is also having its effect; as tours cut back on the amount of gear they carry, the demand for new road and flight cases has decreased commensurately. If you’ve gone from 18 semis to 12, as Tim McGraw has reportedly done this year, you simply need a third fewer cases for your equipment. “Demand from the touring side of the business is down a bit,” says Ken Burbage, a partner in Showcase Custom Cases in Nashville. The fact that Nashville is such a locus of touring for country artists has helped offset this to some degree, he adds, but slower activity in that sector has inevitably brought additional price pressures.
On the other hand, some of the changes in the economy are actually helping some materials matters. For instance, the downturn in the housing market has diminished demand for plywood, a major component of cases. Case manufacturers report that plywood costs have remained steady or even declined as much as 20 percent this year. “During the height of the building boom, a sheet of Baltic birch plywood was over $100,” says Burbage. “Now, we’re seeing it at between $75 and $80 per sheet, and supply is considerably better.”
A Favorable Impact
And the shift in the revenue stream for music artists from recorded music to live performance has also had a favorable impact. DeHart has seen more business coming from a larger pool of independent acts that have increased their touring schedules and are carrying their own small PA rigs. An interesting twist on the phenomena, DeHart reports, is a surge in orders for merchandise cases used by indie touring acts to sell T-shirts and CDs. “They’re not selling their stuff out of Tupperware containers anymore,” he says. “It’s become a significant part of their business and they want it to look professional and to keep the merchandise intact during travel.”
Tom Vaughn, division manager for Flight Form Cases in Bedford Park, Ill., says that rising materials costs are intersecting with some softening in the live sound sales sector, especially in the last six months. However, the company’s sales to the professional, semi-pro and academic sports markets are more than offsetting that, at least seasonally. “It’s not picking up all the slack,” he says. “But it’s a good buffer when other markets aren’t as strong as they usually are. Football is ordering lots of cases and seems to have underestimated its need for the season — at the moment, we’re getting deluged with rush orders from the teams.”
The Tip of the Iceberg
Bruce Stemler, president of Viking Cases in St. Petersburg, Fla., notes that more touring sound is moving to truck pack cases, where dimensions are in multiples of 15, 30 and 45 inches, allowing users to better maximize their packing of trailers, and thus, hopefully reduce the number of trailers needed. Essentially, the case is designed around what it’s going into rather than what’s going into it. That predictability of dimensions makes the truck pack case a good fit for mass production, and Stemler says he’s seen more volume coming in from Asian manufacturers for those products. That combined with increased competition — he estimates that there are over 100 cases makers in the U.S. alone now. GearPage.com gives you the tip of the iceberg — puts pressure on profitability.
However, demand for custom cases remains strong thanks in large part to a relatively robust touring market. “We did cases for U2, and most recently, Julio Iglesias,” says Stemler. “The demand for high quality and custom work can help hold off the effects of more mass-produced cases in the market to some extent.”
But there’s no one single solution for a fluid market landscape. Much of the case business at the upper level is repeat business from touring companies and equipment rental providers, year-over-year customers that are the hardest to raise prices on. As long as live sound remains healthy and petroleum continues to stabilize or decline from its record highs of the summer, case makers will find ways to work around their challenges. “We just don’t want to see any more ‘perfect-storm’ scenarios,” says Burbage.
