A personal recollection from Jan Sandri

FSR began its business designing electronics including small modules like our LDR-1 and LDR-2 (audio attenuators), a multiplex four wire control system for the Wilke Organization, and then Jan and Bill met Jeff Loether.

Jeff was in charge of all AV for the Marriott Hotels. He needed a ballroom audio combining system for divisible ballrooms. Bill and Joe tackled this unheard-of system (with directions on a paper napkin) and the ML-132 system was launched at the Marriott in San Diego California, with Jim Colquhoun (now with Avidex) as the lead installer! We continued with the ML-116, ML-112 and ML-104. While electronics were in full swing a new question popped up.

The Wilke Organization was having a guy in his garage in Long Island making AV Floor Boxes. They asked me if we would make them and Jan loved the idea of metal products. We designed a box they loved, had a metal shop make them and then purchased the metal shop.

With the metal shop in full swing, and our ML Systems going into Marriott Hotels around the country, Bill, Joe and John worked on video switchers in a card cage unit as custom units for IBM. They were installed in dozens of training facilities. That led to IBM asking us to design classroom keypad systems that would work on actual scores, not percentages. We received a contract for thousands of units, purchased a large building for the production lines and delivered the first few hundred to perfection. IBM pulled the plug on the project! That nearly cost FSR its existence. Resilient and determined, we developed additional products and went after a wonderful opportunity to work with Allen Bradley.

As we continue to move forward, it’s fun to look back.

Back in the day when no computers graced our desks, cell phones weren’t imagined, Selectric Typewriters were the hottest office gear and women were wearing hot pants, Jan Sandri and Bill Fitzsimmons met one another. A job interview in a Clifton, NJ restaurant, where 3 martini lunches were the norm, Jan was hired as Bill’s Admin at the ITT Avionics Division in Nutley, NJ. Bill was head of PR and Advertising (with a BS and MS in Physics, and an MBA in Business). He was dynamic at the job, putting on the best parties ITT has ever seen, but always loved to create.

At this time, NSCA didn’t exist and Infocomm was a miniature size of today’s organization that had several different names along way. All this to say the AV world of consultants and integrators was young and growing. Wanting to get into the AV installation market, Charlie invited Bill to join AV Services as a partner, and surprisingly enough Jan was also offered a position. AV Services started bidding and winning projects from the Hubert Wilke Organization and the company took off. The Wilke Organization was the largest AV Consultant probably in the world with offices in NYC, CA, and England. Their consultants were talented, adventurous, and dedicated to the growing AV world. If you remember names like Irv Wood, Otruba, Catalano, Ryan, Parks, you remember a few of the greats of our industry. Tasked with doing a large Division presentation to Geneen (then head of ITT Global), we went to Charles Rodriquez, owner of AV Services, at that time an AV Rental Company. Bill was planning on using several slide projectors and needed to dissolve and fade images. Charlie said, "there is no equipment that will do that." Bill replied, "I can make those in my basement!" He did just that, the presentation was remarkable, and Charlie went back with several dissolve units to put in inventory. Clients liked the idea of the dissolves and Charlie came back for more units. Bill designed and built a few more, but before he gave those away, Jan wrote up an invoice and charged for them and all future units.

As AV Services began doing more and more integration work, Bill was creating more and more custom products for the different jobs. Jan had a daughter and son by then and was able to do the purchasing from home, and in the summer, next to the pool. AV Services was an early adapter of working remotely. Getting busy both with designing new products and watching over the integration of the projects, Bill, Charlie and Jan sat down and formed FSR. AV Services would do the integration and FSR would engineer and manufacture products. That was back in 1981, and the journey is still progressing today.