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...We would much rather work with one of the best audio brands and no one else than lots of different brands. We never double up on products.
ARNAUD LESCHEMELLE PRESIDENT, FREEVOX GROUP Where did your career in the industry begin? I have always been into music and was a DJ from the age of 14, doing weddings, parties and so on, but my career really started in 1993 when I started working with J.Collyns before being appointed Sales Manager at CSI in 1998. I had a short break from the industry while I pursued other things, but returned to CSI in 2002 as General Manager. How did CSI grow as a company in the beginning? It started with the Freevox (audio), Elite and Starway brands before the first media server was added to the portfolio in 2004 - video had started to play a major role and began to blurr the lines of the lighting world, therefore CSI continued to grow, but we realised we couldn’t do everything at the same time. We concentrated our efforts on lighting and merged products from Elite and Starway - rebranding them all as Starway. CSI grew further to become the biggest European distributor of Vari-Lite. In 2009 we bought
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Halto and signed an agreement with Griven. CSI eventually moved back into audio though? Yes, that’s correct. In 2012 SCV’s General Manager sadly passed away and as a result got into difficulties, affecting a number of audio brands including Harman. We bought SCV Audio & SCV Hi Tech and we now offer a full range covering audio, lighting and video under three separate arms and revived Freevox to manage the global offering and become the mother company. You’re quite selective about the brands you represent though aren’t you? Very much so… We would much rather work with one of the best audio brands and no one else than lots of different brands. We never double up on products and we feel very privileged to be working with Harman, as there is a lot of history there, a lot of innovation and I don’t want to detract from that. With Starway on the lighting side we can take our business
in the direction we want to. We have a product selection that has had great success in France already and when you’ve been involved in projects such as the Eiffel Tower and London Bridge I think it’s safe to say the products you’re working with are doing the job. So what’s next for the Freevox Group? We’re pushing forward the global offering with our distribution efforts inside of France. At present less than 5% of our business comes from North Africa thanks to its close partnerships with France historically. We’ll look to work with new distributors around the world for Starway, with the arrival of Umberto Maurizio to manage the export business. You need the right products and people working for you to make things happen and make the business grow. This is something I feel confident we have at Freevox.