Stage Directions: ETC and Daktronics have announced that ETC has acquired the Vortek rigging division of Daktronics. All Vortek rigging products will be integrated into ETC's rigging portfolio, and operations will be consolidated with ETC's primary manufacturing locations in Wisconsin by the year's end, the companies noted.
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I have never seen our very own Jonah Camiel quite as flustered as I he was when showing this article to me. "What's ETC doing buying up a rigging company", he asks, unable to fathom the unspoken ramifications of such a bold and unbelievable purchase. ETC, however, bends not to the will of a 17 year old, and they will go forward with buying Daktronics' rigging division. I believe that this is an important way for ETC to expand their grasp of the lighting sector. In the past few decades, lighting and rigging have become so interlocked with the advent of truss in conjunction with moving lights, and it makes sense for the biggest name in lighting to see this and take the opportunity to capitalize. If the other lighting companies hope to stay in the game, we can expect to see more purchases like this from Apollo and Lee in the near future, bet your bottom dollar. Assuming the game isn't rigged.
I’ll start off by saying that ETC is not and has never been a big rigging company. ETC has been a part of some corporate buyouts such as Selador which now brings in huge sales for ETC but they have never bought out a rigging company like they just have. This will be an interesting new era for the company. If ETC is looking to expand their rigging market than we can surely expect some great and interesting new products from the stage systems all star. As for the financials, ETC can only handle a couple buyouts every now and then. So the question looms, did they choose the right one to get them started in expanding their rigging offerings. Well Daktronics really has nothing to do with theater. In this deal ETC shoved their foot in the door of a new market, Arena rigging. It will surely be an interesting first couple of quarters to see how the sales of ETC’s new acquired products go and more specifically in which market they are sold.
The further expansion of ETC’s presence in the entertainment industry can either bode very well or very poorly for technicians, depending on how things play out. The positive e part of this situation would be if ETC further standardized equipment and sealed in the gaps left by equipment lines that can’t collaborate, such as a light not working on a certain console. Perhaps ETC may even add modifications to Daktronics’ previous design to specialize it for solely ETC lighting, possibly even improving the ease in which things can be rigged. The downside to this situation is that it’s corporate expansion. ETC is already an enormous company and if anything can be inferred from the past, it’s that as soon as a manufacturers owns the market of a product, it’s only a matter of time until a monopoly is established. Only time will tell where ETC goes with this, and we can only hope the best for their new business endeavors.
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