9 minute read
THE BIG INTERVIEW
from MONDO-DR 32.5
MONIKA SMETONA AND RALPH HEINZ
President and CTO, Renkus-Heinz
Pictured: Harro Heinz, Monika Smetona and Ralph Heinz.
Earlier this year, Renkus-Heinz co-founder Harro Heinz announced his retirement in a move that saw him move into a board of directors role, with Monika Smetona promoted from CFO to fill his position and Ralph Heinz continuing as CTO, set to lead the company. Together, Monika and Ralph are in a good place as they continue to steer themselves away from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have a clear vision for the future – which will lean a little bit on the past. “I do, and will continue to, consult Harro – he is a massive inspiration to everybody at Renkus-Heinz and remains our cultural north star,” Smetona commented. “It would be wasteful in the extreme not to capitalise on the resource that we have in Harro, because there is no substitute for experience.” The pandemic presented the leadership at RenkusHeinz with numerous headaches across all facets of the business, but with diligent decisions, they remained proactive, meeting challenges head-on. “Our leadership, specifically Harro Heinz, instilled a culture in our organisation that prepared RenkusHeinz optimally for the pandemic,” said Smetona. “We kept a calm and resilient corporate head on our shoulders, stayed in direct touch with channel partners and customers to gauge the mood of the market, and to understand the challenges channel partners and customers were facing. We were always prepared to change and adapt if and when required. “We had to internalise the challenges our customers were facing and produce sound solutions that worked for each customer vertical, with their respective audiences, regulations and restrictions in each territory. We had to listen, process and then be creative and agile in the commercial and technological solutions we provided.”
Supply chain management
Supply chain issues affected technology industries around the world and the AV community was certainly not spared. However, Renkus-Heinz’s approach to supply chain management saw them continue trading throughout the pandemic. “As we are a private, independent business, we have always applied our own approach to supply chain management,” noted Smetona. “We manufacture in our facility in Foothill Ranch, CA, and always maintained control of our inventory. “Traditionally, we maintain a conservative number of raw materials on hand to have at least six months to a year’s worth of supply in reserve. That’s not to say we weren’t impacted by supply chain issues, but our strategy has been successful so far. Thankfully, we have been shipping consistently throughout the pandemic and the resulting supply chain crisis.” Smetona has undertaken numerous roles since joining Renkus-Heinz 23 years ago as part of the finance Above: Monika Smetona, President, Renkus-Heinz.
- MONIKA SMETONA
- RALPH HEINZ
team, working her way up through the company before eventually becoming President. “My degree is in Business Administration and I began my career in accounting in the motorcycle and ATV safety industry, then I joined Renkus-Heinz when a position opened in the finance department,” said Smetona. “I grew in that role; I became involved in a wide array of disciplines and decisions within Renkus-Heinz. I held the position of COO, then became CFO, and finally succeeded my father as president. It has been an evolution, I have learned, acquired muscle memory (and a little scar tissue!), made friendships and helped steer the Renkus-Heinz business.” Steering the business is something Smetona will do alongside Heinz, as they look to continue to grow in the professional audio market, and she is confident that Ralph’s skills will help them achieve that. “I believe one of the most important milestones in the company’s history was when Ralph joined the business,” said Smetona. “He is our visionary and contributes so much brilliance. As CTO, Ralph has helped shape and solidify the culture of Renkus-Heinz. He has helped our business maintain solid family values and one of his most significant contributions to Renkus-Heinz was bringing his son, Brandon Heinz, as Product Manager to our team. Brandon is a third-generation Heinz and an extremely enthusiastic, capable audio engineer in his own right. “We strive toward being a better business partner to our distribution sales channels and end users,” Smetona continued. “You are seeing the tip of the iceberg with products like our new PCX passive columns that expose Renkus-Heinz IP to new price points and opportunities.” For Heinz, his relationship with Smetona will not change as
they embark on this new chapter in the company’s history. “We know who we are, we know one another’s strengths and we respect one another deeply,” he commented. “I’m delighted to see her take on this role as President, and I’m confident she will be exceptional. I am equally pleased to concentrate my time and attention on the CTO role with the engineering team, contributing to the executive committee and advancing sound solutions with new and innovative products. Our relationship is rock-solid and that won’t change one bit.” Heinz’s background is in mechanical engineering having studied at San Jose State University and he joined RenkusHeinz after graduating in 1989. Three years later, he became the principal loudspeaker designer and in 2016 he was named CTO, becoming the first person at the company to assume that role. “When I was younger and my father, Harro, said he was going to start a loudspeaker company, I was over the moon,” said Ralph. “While my education was in manufacturing and mechanical engineering, I was, and still am, a huge audiophile and musician. All my training and interests came together nicely when I joined Renkus-Heinz. “Over the years, we have developed many ground-breaking products and technologies in the areas of powerful, small-foot-print arrays, sound control and beam steering technologies. And even today, I’m thrilled to learn how integrators and end-users use our systems as solutions to their problems. “From some of the world’s most recognised stadiums and theatres, to concert halls and nightclubs to classrooms,
Above: The audio solution provided by Renkus-Heinz at Church of St. Katharina, Zurich, Switzerland.
Left: Ralph Heinz, CTO, Renkus-Heinz.
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boardrooms and houses of worship – even global transit hubs like LAX airport – everyone needs excellent sound that is flexible, controllable, and unobtrusive in its deployment.” The Renkus-Heinz team remain committed to research and development as they seek to continually improve both their products and their professional relationships with customers and endusers alike. “There is so much that makes Renkus-Heinz unique,” said Heinz. “As Monika noted, the ownership structure affords us independence; our culture provides us with depth and strength; our product and application engineering team enables us to produce meaningful solutions, and our channel partners and customers trust us for those professional-grade solutions that other loudspeaker manufacturers cannot match.” Freshly launched in 2022 is the new PCX Series, a range of passive columns “with a twist” that complement their existing steerable systems. Available in three different sizes upon launch – PCX4, PCX8 and PCX16 – the combination of the included wall mount bracket (with optional pan and tilt bracket) and Passive Unibeam will enable flush mounting in most applications. This results in the lowest possible architectural intrusion without compromising audio coverage. “This launch brings our industry-leading steerable technologies, precise audio coverage, high intelligibility, and renowned sound quality to passive columns – making our solutions available to more partners and more installations worldwide,” commented Heinz. “Steerable sound solutions are popular because they can address a vast range of challenging and unique acoustic space applications. As these systems continue to advance in their effectiveness and morph in their form, we will continue to maintain our leadership in the ‘steerables’ category by extending our technologies into larger and smaller systems, and by developing tools that make these systems easier and faster to design, specify and deploy.”
Evolving technologies
While Heinz is always looking forward as technologies evolve and demand increases, he’s keen to highlight a favourite development he was involved in during his early years at the company. “Choosing a favourite product is like choosing a favourite child,” he laughed. “That said, the first loudspeaker I ever designed, the C-2, is still a favourite. I’d also have to say the development of our advanced beam steering technologies holds many career high points for me. “We were deep into the science of sound, generating asymmetric beams and utilising an entire array for all frequencies. Our team was chasing a new level of sound control and sonic excellence and basically redefining the concept of the loudspeaker. RenkusHeinz was doing something very different from Above: The West Gates at Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, featuring Renkus-Heinz Iconyx loudspeakers for controlled audio coverage And intelligibility.
Above: The Roberto Meléndez Metropolitan Stadium, in Barranquilla, Colombia, recently upgraded its audio capability with T Series loudspeakers.
Far left: The new PCX series, which was unveiled at ISE in May.
Left: The ICLive X steerable array module.
other manufacturers and that solidified our position as trailblazers in the industry. “Our decades of research and development work have culminated momentarily within our ICLive X series – which is no bigger than a typical 8-inch, two-way loudspeaker – yet it’s capable of steering sound away from reflective surfaces and toward the audience with excellent fidelity and coverage. I’m very proud of what we have been able to accomplish.” Having rode the storm of the past two years, Renkus-Heinz is well placed to accomplish more as the company enters this new chapter with new leadership, and Smetona is relishing her responsibilities as the company’s President. “The fact that I assume this role with great confidence, but also great humility, is important,” she said. “I have been here for over 20 years and have worked with all our partners and many of our customers for more than two decades, but I also understand that I still need to listen – I am a better listener than interviewee. I still need to learn, and I realise not every decision will be the right one, but I will learn from those missteps.”
