Happiness is a scratch for every niche Find and own what makes you and your company special by Scott Harkless
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un fact: Did you know that Laserdisc players came out four years before CDs? It’s true! They first shipped in 1978, only two years after the launch of VHS and four years before CDs were a thing. This isn’t common knowledge mostly because VHS became the popular choice for distributing content to consumers in the 1980s. It did the job well enough by storing feature-length movies, allowing people to record episodes of MacGyver, and coincidentally the VCR slot was also the perfect size to insert a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
there were no control solutions on the market that enabled system integrators to synchronize more than one of these players – something theme park attractions needed to do often!
As we all know, what works well for the consumer world doesn’t necessarily work well in themed entertainment. There’s just something about the concept of “Be Kind, Rewind!” that didn’t fit with our incessant need to run attractions nonstop, day after day, for years on end, with as little maintenance as possible. For that reason, film projectors continued to be the primary method for presenting visual experiences in attractions for quite some time.
Then along comes this spirited group of theme park engineers with experience designing custom control systems that do oddly specific things for theme park attractions. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there at the time because I was obviously too busy watching MacGyver, eating PB&J, and getting dragged to the VCR repair shop by my very disappointed mother. In my imagination, though, what happened next resembles a stereotypical ‘80s montage of engineers pointing at chalkboards, drawing schematics, soldering circuit boards, and high-fiving each other to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger.” Although it probably happened a little differently in real life, the V16 16-channel Laserdisc Controller was born, and Alcorn McBride suddenly became known as the industry experts on “synchronized A/V.” We had officially established ourselves as a niche company.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s that digital alternatives like Laserdisc players started to gain popularity in our industry. They presented a low-cost, low-maintenance alternative to the more complex film projector systems. There was a hiccup though. At the time,
A niche company is geared toward a very specific aspect of a larger market. They understand their strengths, respect their limitations, and know how to apply laser-like focus to their specialty…whatever it may be!
A vintage Magnavox Laserdisc player Photo by Marcin Wichary, courtesy of Creative Commons
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Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are for eating, not VCR slots. Photo by Matias Garabedian, courtesy of Creative Commons
There are numerous advantages to operating a business this way. When a company consciously decides that they want to be the experts at doing a specific thing, it provides their staff with a crystal-clear mission. Product designers and engineers know exactly what they are trying to create and are motivated to work hard to make their company the best at what they do. Marketing and sales team members can craft a very specific message to share the company mission and devote time to the customers that will benefit most from that message. The ability to finetune the company’s specialty also gives owners and leaders some control over how small or large they want the company to be, allowing the organization to operate efficiently and profitably, minimizing financial risk.
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