Thailand Country Report

I recall a few years back there was a sense of despair amongst the AV players in Thailand mainly due to the political situation at that time. Many were just biding time and hoping for a better future. My visit this time around saw a 360-degree change of attitude from the industry – there is indeed a strong positive vibe.

My first meet up was with Fuzion Far East Limited. Tony Oates, Siri Wongkamolchun and Pok Sutat are excited about the prospect of immersive technologies in Thailand. “Immersive sound creates a different level of experience for customers,” highlighted Tony. The company was involved in the Genelec S360 regional launch in Bangkok in March and feels that with Dolby Atmos and Auro 3D, there will be strong demand in the post-production, gaming, movie studios and live environment for their solutions.

In showing their commitment, Fuzion created its own mini immersive demonstration space within its premises for clients to experience what value-add an immersive environment brings.

Fuzion also highlighted about the Eastern Economic Corridor project. On February 1, 2018, the Thai parliament approved the law for trade and investment in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). With the

EEC, Thailand hopes to develop its eastern provinces into a leading ASEAN economic zone. The EEC straddles three eastern provinces of Thailand – Chonburi, Rayong, and Chachoengsao – off the coast of the Gulf of Thailand and spans a total of 13,285 square kilometres. The government hopes to complete the EEC by 2021, turning these provinces into a hub for technological manufacturing and services with robust connectivity to its ASEAN neighbours by land, sea and air.

The government has identified four “core areas” essential in making the EEC a renowned economic zone: (1) increased and improved infrastructure; (2) business, industrial clusters, and innovation hubs; (3) tourism and; (4) the creation of new cities through smart urban planning. The government predicts the creation of 100,000 jobs a year in the manufacturing and service industry by 2020 through the EEC.

These positively speak volumes for the opportunities presented to the AV industry.

As for Fuzion, the guys were happy to highlight that they had excellent and healthy growth in 2018 with higher hopes for 2018.

Mahajak’s top brass was not available, but I still managed to chat with Yodpol Keosuttha, Senior Project Sales Manager and Rungrote

Kerdpimon, Project Sales Engineer. The pair showed me around their Mahajak Experience Centre that was set up about a year and a half ago. It was an impressive set-up. There are also training facilities within the space which are used for upgrading Mahajak staff knowledge as well as talks catering to clients and dealers. They also let on that there has been steady growth in business for Mahajak in 2018 and there is confidence that this will follow through in 2019.

Yadpol highlighted that they see opportunities for both their distribution and installation divisions. “The hospitality and government sector offers great potential. We are seeing a growing trend for meeting room solutions in these sectors.” In line with this trend, there has been an increase in AV-IT integration. “AV over IP is becoming a trend now especially in the hospitality and corporate sectors. To ensure that we are on top of the game Mahajak is putting in full effort in training and developing our team in order to have more IT skills,” added Yadpol.

Next up I met with Vichai Trading (1983) Co., Ltd ’s youngish Director, Thitikorn Sopchokchai. Thitikorn highlights that the last four to five years have seen a stable government which has led to the positive momentum picking up at least in the city of Bangkok. “This has lead to good opportunities. Government spending has also been good as they have been busy building new offices or renovating offices

for their ministries as well as building new universities. This in turns drives investment in other sectors (corporate, education, hospitality). Thailand’s GDP averages at 4% but this has grown in 2017 and 2018, and we expect 2019 to be one of our good years as there are many good projects on the pipeline.”

Thitikorn reckons that the number one spender and driver is the government followed closely by education. Amidst his positive views, he highlights that there is a challenge for the industry concerning the shortage of skilled AV workers. “This is something we need to resolve.”

On trends, Thitikorn highlights that the adoption of AV over IP solutions has been positive across sectors. “In addition for learning spaces the trend is on interactivity solutions, at the Corporate sector, we are seeing more huddle room and training room requirements, and within the Hospitality sector there have been upgrades of ballrooms and meeting spaces to create a better experience for guests.”

Vichai Trading (1983) Co., Ltd is one of the largest AV companies in Thailand. The company was established in 1983 and has four companies within its structure plus a joint-venture company with TOA Corporation with a staff strength of 150.

My last stop was a meeting with Paul Suthapong, Chief Executive Officer of SpotOn International Group. The company established in late 2009 specialises in digital signage and visuals. “Anything related to screens we are involved. We are more than just a product installer. We provide consultancy and help create digital content to increase engagements and create positive experiences. You can say we are one-third SI, one-third provider of marketing and content consulting and the other critical one-third is the offer of our own software for the engagement aspect.”

The company indeed offers a holistic approach to customer engagement. “Our software is flexible and works to allow interactivity, analytics, quick content delivery and not only in the physical space of our clients, but we bring that experience to the customer’s mobile and laptops when they go onto the browser.”

“The opportunities in this sector is big, but it is also more competitive. We are creating a disruption in the retail sector with our solutions. Though we have been focusing on retail, our expertise is now being noticed by financial institutes as well as other verticals. Still, the retail business for us is sustainable due to great demand. I would say that the experience created in our retail sector is more advanced than anywhere else,” said a delight Paul.

As for trends, Paul highlights about these would encompass mobile connected experience to the touchscreens, rich text for SMS,

Official Apps that continue the experience for the customer and personalisation. “There is talk for location-based services for the retail sector, but it is currently not being implemented.”

Paul also sees substantial opportunities for signage and customer experience solutions at physical spaces such as banks, asset management companies and insurance companies. “With most services related to the mentioned sectors going online what happens to the physical spaces? As an example, Siam Commercial Bank has the most number of branches in Thailand. But with fewer people visiting the bank they decided to shut down some of the branches and recreate others as specialised experience centres.

SpotOn currently has two offices located in Bangkok with a third in Phuket.

Though I only met with a handful of companies, I believe that it captures the overall mood of the AV companies in Thailand. I suppose the fact that some of the companies were not able to meet is testament to the state of the industry:)

Two Singapore based SI companies recently made their entry into Thailand. ESCO and Pave ventured into the country mainly because of their work with multi-national companies. Their clients have built a trust with them and wanted their services to ensure the experience and outcome that they have come to trust continues seamlessly.

I met with Michael J. Lewis, CTS, Business Development Manager, ESCO Pte Ltd. Michael started with ESCO in May 2018 which is the same time the company established its presence in Thailand. In his own words, Michael says that he is planting the flag for the company in Thailand. His job entails business development, design engineering, handling sales, project management and even putting on a service manager’s hat. Of course, there is strong backup support from the Singapore office.

“ESCO has a great reputation, history and strong relationship with manufacturers. My coming on board is to have a local presence in Thailand. Currently, we work with regional clients who already know us and want us to continue the service for their offices here. My job is to ensure that we deliver the same experience for them that they are used to.”

Michael who is American was a Service Director for one of the top 10 largest SI in the U.S.A. for 10 years before settling in Thailand. “I have a real passion for the service side of our industry and when you think about it, service is very much about relationships, which is what I am building here.”

So what’s his take on the market and its opportunities. “I see great opportunity relating to Global companies as more set up their offices in Thailand. From the economic standpoint, the middle class is growing which in turn affects the consumer market positively that then attracts multi-national companies to the country. Thailand is also going through a 4.0 version where they have set up a Board of Investments to target specific industries offering them tax breaks. There is also a push towards IoT, digital and BIO Medical, all of which offer growth potential for the AV industry.”

“The challenge is at the labour level where expertise in AV is hard to come by. On another level, there are cultural differences, and additional effort needs to be put in to ensure that everyone understands what is needed and maintain timelines.”

Michael ends off his conversation by highlighting that ESCO has been busy over the months and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future which augurs well for the company’s foray into Thailand.

Jeffrey Lim, Managing Director, Pave System Pte Ltd highlighted that the company ’s presence in the country is to provide service and support for multi-national companies.

Pave is part of. AIDAS has expertise in the IT domain and we in AV which makes us complement each other well. We are currently involved in a few projects in Thailand which I would put as AVIT projects.”

There are strong established players in Thailand so how does a company from Singapore manoeuvre into the space. “You are right as when we started it was a challenge. It is a closed community, so there was reluctance in working with us, but we have shown them that we are not a threat. In fact, we are helping contractors get more work as our clients are not the usual clients that the Thai AV companies are involved with.”

Jeffrey adds on, “The potential in Thailand is good. We are able to offer a full solution rather than piece meals. We also ensure where possible we source locally for the solutions as we want to be part of the local eco-system and contribute to the country positively.”

Young Company Makes Strides in Thailand

Sonos Libra is a young company that started operations in Bangkok, Thailand in March 2017 and in December 2017 in Vietnam. Alfonso Martin and Vanessa Chompoo are behind the company. In the Thailand office, they are supported by Simon Rains for application engineering and more recently Roengchai Kongpeng (Tong) as a product specialist. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, Mr Cuong leads a team of young and dynamic staff in the two offices there in Hanoi and Ho Chih Minh.

Both Alfonso and Vanessa may have started a new company, but they both come with impressive credentials. Alfonso Martín is a B.Eng Acoustics and Psychoacoustics and had worked as an acoustician for several years in Spain. Due to the financial crisis that Spain experienced then, he was moved to work with a big rental company in Barcelona. From then onwards he had been related with pro-audio business working as an application engineer for Amate Audio, then moving to Thailand to work as COO for One Systems Global and finally starting his own adventure.

Vanessa Chompoo, who holds a teaching degree, started work as an International Sales executive for P. Audio almost 13 years ago in Thailand. She was also the first employee of One Systems Global when the company was founded. There she developed her marketing and sales management skills. Her extensive Thailand and Asia market knowledge lead her to work as APAC Marketing responsible for d&b audiotechnik for one year. She has been one of the key figures on the creation of Sonos Libra where she now looks after marketing activities and business development.

According to Alfonso, the company was set up to provide high-quality education and product support to further develop the pro audio markets in South East Asia. “We hold

regular training for each of our brands, and the training often continues into the night with ample supplies of beer!” said a smiling Alfonso.

The company currently distributes Adamson, Allen and Heath, Audac, Rational Acoustics, Xilica and recently have taken on re-selling of the Audinate AVIO adaptors.

Other than taking on the distribution of professional audio products, Sonos Libra also provides design services. “Installation is handled by some of our partners, but the on-site supervision and support is from Sonos Libra,” said Alfonso.

The company has in fact worked on projects beyond where their offices are. These include Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. In Myanmar, the company recently installed Adamson speakers at the DOSE nightclub. In Thailand, they were responsible for the TMB Bank headquarters’ Auditorium that featured the new IS7 line array from Adamson, with IS118 subwoofers. For audio mixing, the company installed an Allen and Heath dLive DM0 rack and C3500 surface.

On prospects for the AV business in Thailand and beyond, Alfonso shares his thoughts. “The whole region has great opportunities for AV installations. We are seeing that end-users are requesting for modern solutions which are both flexible and scalable yet extremely easy to control. We believe that within the next 3 years we will see a big increase in the number of installations, especially in Thailand, with the main focus on AV networking for those installations.”

Getting the Industry Upgraded

A group of hardworking individuals from the industry have been liaising with the Thai government over the past couple of years to create an industry occupational standard for those working in the entertainment industry. Currently the focus has been for those working in the live sound and lighting space touching on installation, operational, design and maintenance matters. The certification known as the Occupational Standard and Professional Qualifications, is issued by the Thailand Professional Qualification Institute (TPQI). TPQI is a

The tests are practical and not theoretical and is conducted at an appointed test centre. JSS (Jack Sound), a renowned rental & staging company is the first appointed test centre.

Once this new occupational standard is officially announced, everyone working in the industry would have to proceed to pass the certification in order to work. This is mainly to ensure safety factors and occupational standard and procedures are followed. “The good news is that this new standard helps align minimum wages to go up with Government and industry recognising the certificates,” says Daniel.

He adds, “One critical aspect about this certification is that it is in line with ASEAN’s TVET framework which is basically about industry oriented competency rather than academic. This also means that those who have attained the certificate can also work in countries that follow TVET framework.”

It has been a long arduous work for those who were involved in the process but the parliament approval and having a proper training content should lead to more knowledgeable technical staff in the coming years, once this becomes mandatory. The plan is for the training to be conducted by the Vocational Institutes once the institutes pick up on the course. Officially it is known as the “Audio Visual Technology for the Entertainment Industry” course and for those interested to complete the full certification course it would take up a full 3 years.

Creme Academy (Thailand) currently runs courses for both audio and film majors that lead to a UK (Honors) Degree with articulation partnerships. Students can choose from a range of industry courses that lead to a Diploma or Degree. The courses are available in both short speciality or full-time basis.