FEATURES: COMPANY PROFILE
The next 50 years
After more than 50 years, FBT is following
a long-term strategy to address professional
markets. Barney Jameson
Roberto Mataloni, Chiara Palmieri and Luigi Paoloni with the
company’s new X-Series at Pro Light & Sound 2014
Testing line arrays outside the factory
116 PRO AUDIO ASIA July–August 2014
TO UNDERSTAND THE 51-YEAR
history of FBT, a visitor need only visit
the Italian manufacturer’s museum,
located next door to its headquarters
in the picturesque village of Recanati.
Originally assembled to mark the
company’s 50th anniversary in 2013,
the museum is separated out into
the decades that have passed during
the company’s long life. As you pass
through each exhibit, videos play,
rst illustrating FBT’s origins in the
birth of rock and roll in Europe, and
its central role in the various musical
trends that followed. Most telling,
however, is the gradual change in the
kind of products that are presented.
While the tour starts with purely
musical equipment, it soon begins to
evolve into more semi-professional
PA products, before ultimately
arriving at the professional audio lineup of the modern company.
The brief experience serves to
demonstrate not only how much
FBT itself has changed, but how
a particular set of European
manufacturers have had to transform
themselves over the last decade
or more. FBT is far from alone in
having set out on this journey. Issues
such as online trading, out-sourced
manufacturing, diminishing retail
margins and the global economic
challenges of recent years have all
hit the MI industry hard. Before times
got really tough, a number of the
continent’s oldest manufacturers
were wise enough to recognise what
was coming and react accordingly.
A handful began the long march
towards more professional, more
stable sectors. But not all of the
companies who did so have been as
successful in their v