Download a PDF - PLSN.com

“People were like,
‘are they for real?
Is the product going
to stay around?’”
– Albert Chauvet
The Fast-Paced World ofChauvet Lighting
Not the oldest company, but increasingly increasing its presence in this competitive market
By Kevin M.Mitchell
Ad info: www.plsn.com/rsc Ad info: www.plsn.com/rsc
[On September 25 of this year, it will be exactly
25 years since the first Vari-Lite system was used
on the Genesis “Abacab” tour in a bullfighting ring
in Barcelona, Spain. To celebrate this anniversary
PLSN will be running an ongoing series of profiles
of many of today’s automated lighting companies.
This article is one of those profiles. – ed.]
Right out of the University of Miami, Florida,
business school, Albert Chauvet set up
his company in the early 1990s. Originally
an OEM organization that created products for
companies like Radio Shack and Spencer Gifts,
the company then moved into distributing rope
lighting. Chauvet-brand lighting products for
DJs and clubs started appearing in the market
around 1997. It would be the start of an evolution
that continues to build up and branch out
into sophisticated professional products.
When asked to chart the history of automated
lighting, Chauvet goes back a little further
than most; he sees the roots of automated
lighting effects in the mirror ball that was first
produced in the 1940s. “The mirror ball made
effect lighting a staple of the entertainment
world. So with the advent of multiple effect
lights, it was only logical that people would
seek to devise a way to generate automated
responses from fixtures.”
In the late 1960s, sound and light started
coming together. “At first, lighting was being
moved by sound frequency, but that was too
complex for the human eye to appreciate. Then
in the 1970s, it was be activated primarily by
the bass and the beat, and that made it easier
on the eye. Then we started seeing moving motorized
effects, like the helicopters.”
From there, scanners that oscillated back
and forth came into play, but “people wanted
more effects; they wanted individual beams in
different colors.”
He points out that the fog machine was a
big influence on the development of intelligent
lighting effects because it increased their effectiveness
and brought them into more
widespread use by clubs and theatres. In the
1970s when fog machines became popular,
they made those little beams of light more
visible, thus amplifying the effect. They
went from spots on the floor and walls to an
entirely new dimension with a 3-D look and feel.
Chauvet, however, didn’t get into the automated
lighting market until the late 1990s, and the
first were primarily scanners—in particular the
Navigator. “We were primarily creating the products
for the DJs and smaller venues and clubs,”
he says. “We were already known in those markets,
and known as being a good value.”
By then, the market was quite crowded.
When asked if he was nervous about
entering into automated lighting when
he did, he replies, “No, we weren’t nervous.
When we go into a market, we do
our homework. We study what’s out there,
and then we put the little Chauvet ‘stamp’ on
it by adding features and benefits and making
it a good value.” Through an established market
of customers and dealers already familiar
with the company’s conventional lighting, they
were able to wiggle in and make their presence
known. Not that it was easy.
“It took a while,” he sighs. “People were like,
‘are they for real? Is the product going to stay
around?’ There were reasons to question, and
we had to justify ourselves through the product
and the value that it offered.”
Next, Chauvet got into color changers, and
moved up the proverbial DMX food chain to
the point where they are utilizing “some pretty
sophisticated moving heads” today. Most recent
is the Q-Series featuring spots, scans, roll,
and washes.
Then there is their ground-breaking, awardwinning
Scorpion series featuring Fat Beam
technology. It’s a 10mW green laser effects that
can be legally operated in the USA without a
special variance from the FDA. [See Road Test,
page 51 –ed.] “You can’t operate a laser more
powerful than a 4.95mW without a special
waiver,” Chauvet explains. “We studied that FDA
requirement carefully and created a Fat Beam
laser, a 10mW laser, but the human eye will take
in no more than 4.9mW of it. Therefore it’s a just
as safe to the human eye as a 4.95mW laser but
a lot more vivid and powerful. It’s an incredible
break-through.”
How will they continue, and what is up next
for them?
“As we move into more advanced and
more professional intelligent lighting products,
our customers are actually growing with us,” he
says. “They started with us, and now are getting
more professional, more demanding, and we’re
providing them with more products.”
Driving
all this
Albert Chauvet
is an R&D department in which he’s deeply involved,
he says. The sales staff works closely with
dealers and customers, and also with the R&D
department to come up with new products.
Since it is a fast-paced business, there’s pressure
to release products too soon. But Chauvet
says “we test our products vigorously before
we launch them. Sometimes we go through
five or six versions, going back and forth, and
when something fails, we learn why, fix it, and
test it again.”
The other side of that issue is that there are
only so many products a dealer can digest and
a manufacturer of automated lighting products
has to be careful about that. “The idea is not to
put out 100 products at a time, but to give every
product a fair chance to succeed.”
Keeping up with the industry can be a challenge,
but Chauvet laughs at the thought and
says, “Thank God we’re not in the communications
business!” He adds that despite the fact
that the industry is a specialized one, it is changing
quickly. Chauvet’s way of coping, he says, is
to stay focused. “We’re committed to lighting,
and that’s all we do. We’re keeping up, but it’s
a challenge. We travel a lot, go to trade shows,
read the magazines, talk to our dealers and customers.
It takes a lot, but we love it.”
36 PLSN AUGUST 2006
www.PLSN.com