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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Why I Do Business with Apple

We interviewed four Valley area CEOs who are leading some of the fastest-growing companies in the region. We asked them to share their corporate philosophies, views on leadership and secrets to success. John Maier became familiar with Apple when the company was still defining its brand. Now Maier is chief executive at Westlake Village-based Blue Microphones, where he develops microphones for a wide spectrum of Apple products, as well as PCs. The companies share passion for innovation and creating products that delight the customer. That kinship will continue following the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs, Maier said. Apple bought a company called eMagic that makes recording software. After a couple of years they created Garage Band and they put it on every single Mac. It was the first time that every single customer in the world walking out of a store with a Mac had really cool recording software. We were paying attention and realized — through some conversations with some folks at Apple and others — there was not a great quality way to capture acoustic sound and get it into Garage Band. You could make keyboard sounds right within the computer and it sounds great. But to capture your voice, or a really nice acoustic guitar, the microphone on most laptops just didn’t really cut it. So there was kind of a need because there are all these customers who have this really cool program and we had products over on the analog pro-side of things that made great sound. All we had to do is bring it together. It has created a whole new category for us. We used to focus our attention on the recording professional. That customer is still important to us. But now we have this whole new customer, which is a guy at a desktop or remote plugging right into his laptop. That part of our business has taken over the rest of the business. It is over half the business. It’s a lot of fun bouncing back and forth. One minute we will have a major artist singing through a mike and then the next minute they are using a $99 Snowball on their tour bus. For us, the Apple brand means a couple of things. From a creative side it is trying to make great products for customers. We try to do the same thing. We are not just a brand that pulls stuff off the shelf and slaps our brand on it. We design this stuff from the bottom up. That striving for perfection, striving for creating a delightful customer experience — we can identify with and enjoy seeing them do that. At the same time it’s creativity. We are from the music business so it’s all about creating and creating music and creating art. Nobody shows that better than Apple. Thirty five years and the creativity and the art they create in their products is vibrant. We have a couple of products that we sell in the Apple store, and we are involved in their holiday promotion. It shows how our products fit with theirs. We sell our products to the entire computer recording world, not just Mac enthusiasts. But we definitely feel kinship and we have some cool designs that work well with theirs. headquarters: Westlake Village CEO: John Maier three-year growth rate: 202.2 percent 2010 Revenue: $13.9 million 2009 Revenue: $9.8 million 2008 Revenue: $4.6 million I have been a huge Apple nut and fan for a long time. I only came to Blue two years ago, so it’s kind of interesting that Blue, in a way, hitched to their star in certain parts of our business. We have been to the Cupertino campus and met with different teams depending on different projects. I never had a chance to meet Jobs in person. We hear all the stories of the Good Steve and the Bad Steve as far as how he does business. It would have been fun. I think Apple is going to continue to innovate. I don’t think we are going to see them rest on their laurels. As much as Steve was in the details he also has an incredible team there making incredible products. I am certain there are products we deal with today that Steve had less to do than others. As far as how we fit in, we’ll continue to develop for a couple of different platforms for them. We have three new products at the Consumer Electronics Show we will be introducing, a couple of which apply to Apple products. I can see Apple in new markets, like redesigning or re-conceiving how a TV works. We may be able to go down that road at some point. Right now, we have some interesting concepts that grab from our recording past and pull that into the desktop situation for customers. — As told to Mark R. Madler

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