Churches still 'carrying' pro AV business?
Nov 18, 2004 11:09 AM
For several years now, it has been commonly said that the worship market was not only the strongest growth niche in the pro AV industry, but was supporting the whole business as it struggled through declines in corporate and other markets.
Is that still true today, with the national economy growing and many observers reporting rebounds in many major AV application areas?
“Yes, it’s still true, and it has become truer in the last 12 months,” says Paul Martin, founder of TFC Info.
Richard Wallace of The Whitlock Group in Pensacola, Fla., agrees, saying “The growth factor as of October, 2004 is still at a frenzied pace. We receive calls and requests for bids faster than we can respond, and we are anticipating hiring additional sales and installation people in order to handle the upcoming work.”
TFC’s recent surveys, Martin says, reveal both robust growth and a qualitative change in the market. Specifically, a sort of “grapevine” has evolved to help church media specialists solve problems and choose systems.
“There are now more churches that have learned the hard way what works and what doesn’t work,” Martin says, “so that newer churches and installers have so many more resources to turn to for answers, for referrals, products, and much more. Peer-to-peer referrals bear much weight.”
Several observers have commented on the growing sophistication of church buyers, and this sophistication can take several forms. “The large majority of church facilities are exploring avenues which were unheard of in the history of what church used to be,” says Wallace.
“What used to be small, inexpensive systems are now highly involved audio, video, multimedia presentation systems. It is not uncommon today to see systems in the multiple hundreds of thousands, and some even in the millions of dollars,” he adds.
Jerry Gale, VP of marketing at SPL Integrated Solutions, comments that “in the past, it was mainly audio systems. More recently, it was audio and video. Now we are starting to see more requests for broadcast technologies and facilities."
But sophistication doesn’t just mean bigger budgets, Gale says. Church media directors now “know that they are not inventing something new. We are seeing an increased demand for complete, almost turnkey packages for new small to medium churches,” he adds. “They want to purchase a package of audio, video, and lighting that has been installed somewhere else.”
SPL’s own church business remains strong, Gale says, but not necessarily any stronger than the corporate or large performance venue sectors. Moreover, although the worship specialty continues to grow, it isn’t growing faster this year than in the past, Gale says.
He adds that SPL focuses on the larger, more complex installs. “We believe that the number of small, audio-only jobs is growing, but that is not a market we are pursuing,” he says. Martin attributes the continued strength of the church market largely to the fact that there are more churches than ever - more than 310,000 houses of worship in North America this year with more being built all the time.
“Fast-growing churches need new facilities and new equipment sooner and more frequently,” Martin says. At the same time, smaller churches enter the AV market as entirely new customers. “Over the last decade, through today, the use of AV has definitely migrated from the few mega-churches to the many medium-sized churches, and into numerous smaller churches,” Martin says.
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