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‘It’s like we bought a company and launched four more’: Ross Video strikes gold in Vegas

April 29, 2024
4:20 PM
ET

“Ross socks,” from Ottawa-based video production and live event company Ross Video, have become something of a sartorial staple at the annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas.

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After 50 years in business, Ross Video is still knocking customers’ socks off. Indeed, while its main focus is manufacturing live event and video production technology for some of the world’s biggest broadcasters and stadiums, the Ottawa-based company occasionally likes to dabble in foot fashion. In fact, “Ross socks” have become something of a sartorial staple at the annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas – so much so that Ross Video majority shareholder and CEO David Ross jokes they’ve become an even more sought-after commodity than the electronics that made the company famous. “The buzz that happened in real time when we launched our socks was bigger than any product we launched,” Ross told Techopia with a chuckle last week after returning from NAB 2024, where he announced the eighth edition of the coveted Ross socks – dubbed “Ross Socks 8.0” – and then capped his keynote address by calling Ross chief marketing officer Jeff Moore out to unveil an even more exclusive offering: gold-coloured socks emblazoned with “Ross 50”, only 50 pairs of which were produced. “The only way you can get a gold sock, it turns out, is to convince me to give you one,” Ross deadpanned. “I have people begging for socks, lobbying for socks.” Including, it seems, top executives at some of the world’s biggest broadcasting companies. “Half of them are planning to frame the socks, not wear them,” Ross said with a grin. “It just adds this huge other dimension of craziness to this marketing campaign that we’ve been doing. It’s just too much fun.” The head of one of the Ottawa manufacturing powerhouse is clearly in a good mood, and who can blame him? After hitting a bit of a speed bump last year when it laid off more than 100 employees as economic headwinds slowed sales growth, Ross Video appears to be back on track. Ross says the company, which now has a head count of about 1,300, is hiring again, albeit more slowly than in the past. Orders rose 12 per cent in fiscal 2023, and revenues increased slightly more than that to surpass $400 million as Ross Video’s sales grew for the 32nd year in a row. Ross describes the company, which does most of its manufacturing at a state-of-the-art facility in Iroquois, just east of Ottawa, as a “well-oiled machine” that continues to expand its product lines and customer reach through a savvy combination of acquisitions and in-house innovation. To be sure, it wasn’t just its glittery socks that had Ross Video turning heads in Vegas. The company also announced a series of new products tied to its $236-million initiative to develop a cloud-based video production platform, including a new switcher and system for displaying on-air weather graphics. Ross also used his keynote address to introduce Artimo, a next-generation robotic camera that can autonomously roam studios with the help of LIDAR remote sensing technology, as well as a big-screen video processor that can scale live images of up to 50 million pixels on the giant LED walls found in modern arenas. Those innovations were all dreamed up in-house, a regular occurrence for a company that prides itself on investing heavily in R&D.

20th acquisition

But Ross also has a keen sense of knowing when to look outside the organization for innovations that might be cheaper and easier to buy rather than create inside its own walls. That was the case with the firm’s 20th acquisition, which Ross also announced in Vegas. Ross Video’s latest purchase, Bannister Lake Software, specializes in cutting-edge HTML graphics technology that smoothly renders complex graphics such as news-feed “crawls” on mobile devices and smaller, WiFi-enabled screens in stadiums and other venues. Despite having fewer than 10 employees, the southern Ontario company is a global leader in its field. Ross Video has been reselling some of Bannister Lake’s products for years, Ross noted, and decided the time was right to bring the whole operation under its umbrella. “It opens up a whole new area of user for us and a whole new type of customer,” he explained. “Sometimes it’s more quality than quantity when you do an acquisition. It’s often the smaller, strategic acquisitions that you get the right people with the right tech, you attach it to a company with the breadth of market verticals and sales capabilities and brand of Ross, and you can make it grow by 10 times, 100 times from where it is now. Those are my favourite acquisitions if you know where to look.” To stand out in a town like Vegas, you’ve got to make a splash. Ross Video did exactly that at NAB 2024. “It’s kind of like we bought a company and launched four more,” Ross said. “To me, that’s a sign of a really healthy company. It shows there’s a lot of vibrancy going on at Ross and a lot of reinvestment happening. All the pistons are firing.” Now, as it heads toward $500 million in annual revenues, the pieces are “falling into place” for Ross Video to launch an initial public offering in 2025, Ross explained. It would seem to be the next logical step for a company that, its CEO believes, is more vibrant than ever as it enters its sixth decade. “The challenge is taking advantage of all the opportunities we have, which is a good problem to have,” he said.