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Sound Technician


	
21 November, 2018
Director of audio logistics company
Store and premises
£1001-2500
101-150 m²
£76-100
£2501-5000
> £100000
After office (17-22)
Flexible
Late night - Early morning (22-6)
Normal office (9-5)
Weekend
Not public facing
Leaseholder (individual)
15 years
24 hour

“This [arch] was fully prepared for us, yeah, so as in a way, I’ve got 5 [arches], and each one is better than the last one, sort of thing. Yeah, they [Network Rail] know how to do it now, cause I mean you can get rats that run all the way round inside the lining. So they now put metal plates all along the bottom, so that rats can't like get up there, and that sort of thing.”

1/12
  • Ecology
  • Cleanliness
  • Space
  • Found conditions / Suitability

“I am not necessarily limited [in making spatial alterations], but the council charges business rates on the square footage of the premises . So if you’ve got two floors, you'll pay business rates on the floor space [...] there’s ways around it, if you’re going to have shelf racking like that, then you just don’t put the floor in between, so that it becomes just sort of tall racking.”

2/12
  • Finance
  • Other charges
  • Space
  • Adaptation
  • Ownership / Management

“In a way, it's [the space] not suitable for the type of work we do […] you know, if you have a client, and you’ve got a lot of gear for a client […] you can create a sort of cage and put everything down in one place. Well, you can't do that here because, you know, the ceiling prevents you from doing that. […] some of this stuff is far too heavy to put up top so you know, we have to work around it. So we have to put, what we can, up, and stuff down, whether it fits in there or not, whether it's the right place for it or not.”

3/12
  • Product / Work mode
  • Space
  • Found conditions / Suitability
  • Interior modification
  • Materials
  • Use
  • User experience

“We can do an economic service to look after clients in London hotels. I’ve got a little job at the business zone centre, I’ve got another one up at a hotel on Old Street, and there'll be another one tomorrow morning at the Waldorf Hotel. Because we're so local, we can do it [...] I built my business on the fact that I’m so close to the city. You know, and we do conferences at West End hotels all the time […] you have to charge the client a lot more too [if you’re located far] because you have to spend so much more time on the job. And if you employ people to do it, then obviously they’re on the job for a lot longer. That does make a big difference […] If we were based out of London, beyond the M25 then you've got to get people in earlier in the morning […]. So, I’m still sticking with this location, because it's so convenient. […] You may be paying more in rent but you'll get the clients.”

4/12
  • Operation
  • Internal structure / Management
  • Professional network
  • Space
  • Physical accessibility / Location
  • Urban context

“We'd tailor what we do to the space we’ve got, because it's more valuable to be here than it is to try and move somewhere bigger but further out of town.”

5/12
  • Space
  • Ownership / Management
  • Physical accessibility / Location
  • Urban context

“We are open whenever we need to be. we're often here till midnight, or come in at 6 in the morning to see guys out; we open up when we have to.”

6/12
  • Operation
  • Time
  • Working hours

“There's another company like us down there [...] they’re London Audio, they do staging and sound and plasma screens and that sort of thing […] then there’s next door, there is a Chinese lady who has sort of seamstress business. She's the daughter of the man who has the big Chinese restaurant on the corner [...] she's sewing stuff.”

7/12
  • Operation
  • Local community
  • Urban context

“There’s no [sense of] community; not really cause it's London. ”

8/12
  • Operation
  • Local community

“When I first came here [15 years ago]... it [the rent] was probably about £3,000 a year [in 2003] or so, […] Maybe it was £6,000, but now That’s like 7 times. Now they asked £24,000 [plus rates] for the one [arch] that’s empty and they sort of offered it to me for about £20,000. cause I was a long-standing tenant in the area, but anybody new who comes would take it, would have to pay 24,000, plus rates.”

9/12
  • Finance
  • Rent
  • Time
  • Period

“Business rates here are about £4000, something like that, but a shop is fantastically expensive. [...] the rates they pay are phenomenal! They'll pay sort of £30,000 a year.”

10/12
  • Finance
  • Other charges
  • Urban context

“I’m not even a member of the Chamber of Commerce because I don’t do anything in Southwark […] because it's [this street] a private road - it belongs to Network Rail- there’s no traffic wardens, or the like, they do have some parking regulation on it, but they give us permits, and we can use it, but unfortunately I’ve 30 vans parked round here.”

11/12
  • Public relation & communication
  • Regulation
  • Physical accessibility / Location
  • Physical visibility

“Security wise, I haven’t got my name up here, and London Audio hasn’t - they’ve got plasma screens and all sorts of things in there, and they don't want advertising. it's very quiet around here, it seems, but they’re not going to advertise it. It's just word of mouth that you’re doing it.”

12/12
  • Operation
  • Professional network
  • Public relation & communication
  • Physical visibility