2014 - the laser year and its milestones in review

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Created: Wednesday, 31 December 2014 09:11

2014 was another great year for Laserworld, so I wanted to do some short summary of the most important facts and occurrencies in this past year.

As every year, the first three months were packed with exhibitions all around the world. We had a show concept adapted from the one of 2013, but easier to multiply and to fly to other areas in the world. We used the Prolight & Sound in guangzhou to test the new show concept, and it worked out very well. The new ATTO and FEMTO proved their flexibility and reliability at this show.
Shortly afterwards, Prolight & Sound in Frankfurt took place, as our main show in 2014. We presented two shows there: One showing the more affordable lasers of the Club Series and the Proline Series as well as some of the new RTI Femto and Pure Micro Systems, displaying a basic show. The professional show (similar to the one shown in Guangzhou) was displayed with RTI PIKO and RTI NANO gear and focussed on spectacular beam show effects combined with some smaller graphics.

Show Laser development milestone 1: RTI ATTO Series
The newly developed ATTO Series from RTI were another important step in the downsizing of show laser light systems. These lasers were already developed as Pure Diode platform and thus could respect all the technical requirements that are slightly different in diode-only laser systems. Laserworld always tried to give their products a nice design. So in my opinion the design adaption from the FEMTOs together with the selected quality materials made the RTI ATTO lasers also a nice piece of "art" - independent of the really great power they have.

Show Laser development milestone 2: RTI PIKO RGB 18
Laserworld presented the brand new RTI PIKO RGB 18 at the PLS show for the first time. This product really beats the bush and showed it's capabilities more than well. The good portion of red really serves this unit very well.

At 2014 Prolight & Sound in Frankfurt, Laserworld also tried to find new ways for being able to directly offer affordable show laser light gear at the exhibition and provide a collection point where the products could be collected. To achieve this, a stock of our low to mid range products was set up just about 2 streets away from the exhibition halls in our Frankfurt Warehouse, so it was very easy for everybody to buy the products at the exhibition booth and then collect the products when having left the show in the evening.
It would be much easier to do the deals just at the booth and hand out the products immediately, but the exhibition organizers do not allow this kind of sales on their premises - so we were creative.

Show Laser development milestone 3: Beam NET Series
Single laser beams are the most basic "laser show" application -  however, if used the right way, they can be used for creating spectacular effects. With the new Beam NET Series Laserworld published a laser product range that is fully controllable over ArtNet and even runs on power over ethernet. The BeamNET units either project a fan of beams ("laser comb") or just single beams. As they are very easy to set up and work on DMX basis, they can be hooked up to existing lighting infrastructure, which eases things for lighting designers.
The BeamNET Series was also presented at Prolight & Sound for the first time.

In March, Phoenix Showcontroller released the long desired Version 4.2 of their professional showcontroller software. This updated fixed all remaining bugs so far and added some small additional features. Enhanced features of the MicroNET Slim were supported with this new update too.

Show Laser development milestone 4: Diode Series
In June, shortly after Prolight & Sound 2014, Laserworld announced the launch of the new Diode Series. This product line was already very promising on launch, due to the very good specs for the price point, however it even exceeded all expectations in the following months. With this new product Series Laserworld managed to bring diode-only laser show systems to the broad public - and the gap between professional laser show systems and basic products was closed.

In July, Laserworld USA supplied gear and staff for the main stage laser show at Electric Daisy Carnival in Laser Vegas (EDC Las Vegas). We did EDC events several times in the past, but this one was outstanding due to it's scale and reputation.  https://www.laserworld.com/en/references/large-events/1867-edc-las-vegas-2014-electric-daisy-carnival-en.html

Also in July, Laserworld published the Pangolin ScannerMax Compact 506 scanners for their show laser light systems. A professional integration for RTI and Swisslas systems was offered. Now, many systems of the Siwsslas, HB-Laser and RTI product ranges either have these scanners as standard or offer upgrade or downgrade options. The Scannermax 506 are a good choice on the level of the former XScan 60 scanners, so many customers that don't want to afford the CT scanners go for this cheaper alternative.

Show Laser Industry Milestone: HB-Laser merges with the Laserworld Group
In Spring and beginning of summer 2014 the biggest impact to show alser light industry in 2014 was prepared: HB-Laser joined the Laserworld Group in July 2014, meaning that one of the largest show laser light companies joined forces with Laserworld, the world leader in the field of manufacturing and distribution of show laser light systems. The synergectic effects already pay off, but there is much more to be expected for 2015. I'll post more details here as soon as there are news on this.

In August, the Laserworld BeamBAR was introduced. The product is similar to the Beam NET 10, but way moe basic and just on DMX. However, the price point also is much more attractive. Laserworld offers this product in sets of 10, as the effect of this laser type requires a number of units to play together.

Festival Season with Laserworld Systems: Many festivals and big stage shows relied on the professional and high end product lines of the Laserworld portfolio, and many customers also take the opportunity to extend tehir own equipment pool with our rental lasers for those big events. Just some names where our gear was in use in 2014 and we know of:
EDC Las Vegas, Nature One, Mayday, David Guetta, Global Gathering,  Hardwell Tour, Manchester United football game, Katy Perry, Infiniti Brand Festival, Echelon Festival, Digital Society 7th Birthday, Diesel, Dollenacht Festival, State Horticultural Show Gmuend, Festival of Light Chartres, The Levellers, Parklife Manchester, We are FSTVL, Mercedes Benz Vans, Helene Fischer + James Blunt - Echo,  Kylie Minogue - EchoRENNtech, Ghana Commercial Bank, Electric Love, FM4 Frequency Festival, Big City Beats World Club Dome, Dominator,  Geovol, Crossfaith, KatyB, Vevo, State Museum Wuerttemberg, Syndicate, and many more!

In September, Laserworld exhibited together with HB-Laser for the first time: At BPM show / PRO show in Birmingham not only the Laserworld booth showcased the products of the Laserworld Group, but also many other booths in the halls. Our UK retailers presented their products to DJs from the UK and from all over Europe (even some Americans came). Even direct sales were allowed at this show, so there were many attendants and a very familiar atmosphere.
As there were so many partners in the halls, although the exhibition was very small, I thought it was a good idea to make a short walk through the halls and stop by at our partners' booths. Denis did some explanation and I filmed - you remember? https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152665922406210
And: I also did a fast-forward clip of our stand build-up -  haven't done this for any other show yet, but mabe will at next year's Prolight & Sound? Don't know yet, but see the one from BPM here: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152665193106210

In Spring/Summer 2014 we decided to change our website in design and infrastructure. So besides a re-design and many new features we moved to a more flexible shopping engine, so we switched from Virtuemart to Magento. This was a good and efficient step. These new systems brought new challenges, but the whole web-infrastructure was optimized more and more and the newly built data-interfaces, XML datafeeds and automated processes really bring significant advantages to customers that work on standardized processes.
We were also able to use our data interfaces for the re-developed landing pages for the different countries/languages, so our products with their respective descriptions are displayed in the very language depending on the target page.
With a closer view on the web part, 2014 was the year of automation: Many more, better and faster data interfaces and data sharing was one central point.
I hope you enjoy what we did. Please contact me directly if you want to learn more about our data interfaces, information databases or system links. There is very much we can do and provide now.

In October there were 14 Laserworld DS-3300RGB on stage with David Guetta in Belgium, acompanied by4 RTI NANO systems, and I think these super low priced DS-3300RGB did an awesome job!

Show Laser development milestone 5: RTI NANO RGB 30
In summer 2014 Laserworld published another spectacular milestone for show laser light industry: The new RTI NANO RGB 30. The spectacular thing about this unit it the 10-10-10 setup, meaning that tghere is an equal portion of power per source color. This wouldn't have been that spectacular, if not the red laser color would consist only of 638nm bright red (without mixing it with 658nm!) . AND: The laser beam is still in such a good shape that it fits on small scanner mirrors and thus achieve [email protected]° ILDA. This was a massive blast and will definitely drive the high end show laser market further within the next months.

Show Laser development milestone 6: RTI NANO Rainbow 110
The consecutive development of the NANO RGB 30 was the stronger brother: The RTI NANO Rainbow 110. Over 42W red (!!!) as a combination of 20W/638nm and 22W/658nm make this unit outstanding for sure. With special scanners it is possible to achieve 30kpps @ 8° ILDA still - which is incredibly good at that power level.

Show Laser development milestone 7: SwissLas PM-8200RGB
The Pure Micro Housing has proofed to be efficient and well-accepted by the customers. Many hundreds of systems have been sold already, and Swisslas drove their development further: The limit for the maximum possible power in the super small cube was raised to 8.2W RGB. This was possible due to a redesign of the laser diode array modules and an intelligent combination of different components. The Pure Micro is still only a "laser that fits on one hand" - but with much more power!

Show Laser development milestone 8: HB-Laser LightCube LC-851
The existing solution for IP68 under water laser show systems at HB-Laser was completely re-worked and redesigned, so higher powers became possible. The LC-851 is completely submersible and especially suitable for heavy duty outdoor installations. I saw one installed at the main plaza in Stuttgart, Germany, and it's really doing great!

End of October 2014 the development work on diode laser arrays paid off:

Show Laser development milestone 9: RTI PIKO RGB 11 Pure Diode
The RGB PIKOs were equipped with green OPSL sources and red and blue diode arrays in the past. RTI managed to create a strong enough green diode array module with sich good beam specifications, that it could substitute that OPSL green source. The result was the new RTI PIKO RGB 11 Pure Diode.

The SEMA is the most well-known tuning show in the US, maybe world wide. RENNtech and Mercedes benz Vans built a special DJ Van for this show. Laserworld supplied two DS-1800RGB lasers for this show car, and they were integrated into the whole concept. Mercedes Benz Vans has announced a competition at SEMA where four specially tuned Vans competed against each other for Social Media votes for their car designs. The DJ Van was one of them. In the end, it won this competition with their #DJVan - they even trended at position 6 in Twitter USA the last day of SEMA.
https://www.laserworld.com/en/references/advertising-product-presentation/1951-laserworld-show-lasers-in-djvan.html

December was quite a stressy month - customer stocking up on gear, project requests for next year and rental enquiries for next year's festival season. I'm happy that this all wored out well and explicitly want to thank all our staff for the good work in 2014.

Special thanks fly out to the logistics and the QC team -  we wouldn't be able to deliver our great products at such a good quality level without you. And I know that shipments went out as soon as it was possible and to the rightd estinations :-) Thanks for the nights you worked through doing all the QC checks and make the shipments happen in time.

Special thanks to the accounting - without you we would keep on spending and spending and spending and spending ...
Thanks for always reminding us of facts and figures!

Special thanks to the development team of our Group: Nine milestone product launches in 2014 show your great work. Keep on going, i know you already have a bunch on new developments going o and I know that there are big things to come.

Special thanks to the after sales team: Thanks for helping the customer in solving problems. It's not always easy, I know that, but as I see that customers could solve their problems by themselves (Interlock connector plugged in? Key turned? ;-) )  in more than 90% of the cases, this shows your good communication.

Special thanks to the Repair Service team: Although there was not much work for you in 2014, you perfectly teamed with the after sales team and  helped our customer quickly and professionally.

Special thanks to our marketing team: It was a tough year 2014 and you did a great job: We achieved our goals and showed another time that "good marketing is inbound sales"

Special Thanks to the sales team: I really appreciate you having got into closer connection to our customers and the market knowledge you show. Although the team is international and the members have different native languages, the team worked great and showed their force especially when the going gets tough (e.g. before Christmas)

Special thanks to all the other colleagues around the world that I might not have mentioned above. Our whole company group did a good job in 2014 - you all did that!

Finally, my thanks fly out to our partners and valued customers that supported us in 2014  - not only with buying our products but also with valuable feedback, new ideas and great media from events they did with our products.


We're looking forward to a good start into the New Year and wish you a successful 2015!