Distributor Focus - The Rycote Lifers

Rycote has now been in business for over 40 years; enough time for many people closely associated with the company over the years, such as original founder and designer John Gozzard and long-standing Managing Director Vivienne Dyer, to have made incredible contributions to Rycote's history and then to have taken their retirement.

However, two people who have now been associated with the company for over three decades — a commercial lifetime — are still involved with it to this day: Robert Sloss, head of Rycote's Australian distributor Syntec, its longest-standing international sales representative; and Steen Peitersen, who now heads Rycote's Scandanavian distribution channel, Sennheiser Nordic. With over 35 and 30 years respectively of dealing with Rycote behind them, we asked the 'Rycote Lifers' how these commercial relationships had begun, and why they thought they had endured so long.

Robert Sloss

Syntec was founded 36 years ago by Sloss's father Clive, who also signed the Antipodean distribution deal the same year with John Gozzard. Robert remembers meeting his father in London just after Clive had signed the Rycote agreement.

"I had been working for ABC television in Australia as a sound catcher for ten years. We were all using the very frail Sennheiser windshields of the day, made out of plastic stretched over a lightweight bamboo frame. They were very easy to damage — we always used to have to stuff socks in them so they would retain their shape, and that didn't do much for the sound! John Gozzard was obviously having exactly the same problem, and realised that if he made a lightweight plastic windshield, it would retain its shape. He made one for himself, somebody saw it and asked if John would make him one, and John realised he had a business! I remember Dad saying that he'd been down in Stroud looking at this strange product, and he'd come away as its first distributor!"

"Rycote became the industry standard for windshields, and that's not just a coincidence. A lot of the people that make windshields also make mics, and they always regard the mic as the product, and the windshield as just an accessory. For Rycote, the windshield is the product, and I think that difference in attitude is reflected in the quality of their products. It might not be the cheapest solution around any more — but you get what you pay for. And when you pay less, you don't just get a less effective product. Rycote are brilliant at customer support — if ever you have a problem with one of their products, there are never any awkward questions asked — you just get sent a replacement. Not every company can do that — in fact, not many do."

Steen Peitersen

Steen Peitersen joined the offices of Kinovox, Rycote's then-distributor in Denmark, 31 years ago, straight from his engineering degree. Over the following 18 years, he rose through the ranks, becoming first a Technical Consultant, then a Salesman, Sales and Marketing Manager, and finally Managing Director. Kinovox was also a Sennheiser distributor, and five years ago, when Sennheiser decided to set up a subsidiary to handle their distribution in the Nordic region (in this case Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland), they approached Steen about heading the new venture. Rycote's distribution arrangement for the region followed Steen to the newly formed Sennheiser Nordic in rapid succession, thus maintaining his long commercial relationship with the UK company.

"One of the first things I remember seeing when I started at Kinovox was a Rycote windshield, this strange shape like a Zeppelin... and I soon realised what a good design it was. You could tell it had been designed by an engineer who was determined to solve a problem that was bothering him. I mean, yes, if you want to keep wind noise out of a microphone, that's fairly easy, but the trick is doing it without shutting out all the sound that you want as well! And there are other tricky requirements too... I mean, if you are a location sound engineer, you need a windshield, but the product also has to be light; if it's heavy you will regret buying it after three hours of holding it out on a three-metre boom pole. And it also has to be robust. I often deal with engineers who work in Mongolia or Greenland in temperatures of -40 or -50 degrees, and if the plastic in your product is not of good quality, it will just crack or shatter at those temperatures. And there's nobody out there who can help you mend it once it's broken...! It's at extremes like this that quality brands like Rycote prove their strengths. If people want a cheap solution, they can have that, but they shouldn't expect it to work well.

"Some people might look at the Zeppelin shape of the Rycote Windshield and think it looks the same as it did when I first saw it in the 1970s, but Rycote's designs really haven't stood still; there have been some fantastic innovations. And that's also the only way to survive, to come up with cost-effective designs that are more efficient than what anyone else is doing. These days, if you create something successful but mainstream, it will be copied. So I've been very pleased, for example, to see Rycote's suspensions evolve first from elastic bands into 'O'-rings, and then into the new Lyres, which are really innovative. There's a lot of price pressure in the market at the moment, but Rycote still delivers fantastic value for money and always has, since they started. That's why they're still the best."