- In December 2006, Marty Waverly and Scott Oosthuizen sat down and decided to form an integration company that would service all the major cities in the Southwest U.S. After working hard for other companies, the partners decided to form their own business based on the hard work and customer service that they had come to embrace from years of experience.
- Waverly and Oosthuizen formed AVDB with two other principles, Richard Heuer and Nathaniel Hall, with the intention of opening three offices. Waverly, president of AVDB, explained, “We wanted to start two other offices besides the main one in Phoenix, but we didn’t expect it to happen. But now we’re up to three offices, one in Las Vegas, one in San Diego, and the headquarters here in Phoenix. The first project we did was the Barona Casino in San Diego. It was a 500k showroom job.”
AVDB integrated the showroom in the Green Valley Ranch casino in Las Vegas, NV.
Waverly mentioned the company’s positioning in the industry. “When we originally had the idea for this company, Scott and I sat down and brainstormed,” he said. “We primarily wanted to be a design-build firm, instead of going after all the bids. We still do a couple of jobs with consultants we trust, and we talk to them about things we can change to make a system better. Most of them trust us and let us do our thing.”
Starting an integration company is impossible without the right manufacturer support, as Waverly noted. “We’ve all always made sure to go to tradeshows, a lot of the manufacturers know us already from our old positions. When we started AVDB, we knew that there were certain key manufacturers we had to have with us to even start the business, like Christie, Yamaha, and Extron. And with the relationships we’ve built of over the past 20 years, we were able to get almost everyone we wanted. We keep in close contact with them.”
AVDB is no stranger to newer technologies, as Waverly said. “A lot of our audio systems are digital, and most of our video systems are all HD/SDI. It helps to play with the gear and getting demo equipment helps too.”
AVDB works in many of the major markets in the Southwest, as Waverly noted: “30 percent of our market is house of worship, 30 percent is casino showrooms. We’ve done a few restaurant/showrooms, and we also do some high-end boardrooms. It seems when one market’s business goes down than another goes up. Like if the church market goes down, then casinos are up, and vice-versa. When the economy is bad people go to church more, but when it’s good they go to the casino more.
“In the Southwest, all three states are really growing markets, between Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California,” he continued. “I’ve been in the Southwest since way back when, and I’ve retained a lot of my old clients because they trust me and know I’ll be there to service them after the install is done correctly.”
Waverly emphasized the importance of being involved with a project to its end. “The two main partners, Scott and myself, we’re very involved from the beginning of every job. We sit down with the client and we’re the last ones out the door. We train them ourselves and we make sure they’re fully comfortable. Being the president of the company doesn’t mean you won’t see me out there pulling wire either. We all still do all that type of work.”
AVDB also goes the extra mile when putting a system together to make sure the clients understand what they’ve just bought. Waverly explained, “We do full-blown binders for each job. Instead of just giving them the manuals that come with pieces of gear, we actually convert them to PDFs and print them out into a binder. So the owner’s manuals are a complete set of everything, including the AutoCAD drawings, with a complete set of prints. And we also label everything well. For example, it’s a casino job and there’s a fiverack bay, we’ll put up a print behind Plexiglas to show which wire is connected where, and we constantly update that drawing.”
