One of the Netherlands’ most successful event production companies, Generations is also a one-stop solution provider for live audio events, from theatre productions to corporate events, for theme park shows, government installations and sports events, and is among the first to add the Sennheiser EW-DX wireless mic systems to its audio inventory.
The company’s 40-strong team of experienced technical personnel is headed by Sander Koers (Operations & Technical Director), Joey Quak (Commercial Director) and Chantée van Amerongen (Personnel and Financial Director).
‘What is probably special about us is that we offer more programmes than just rental or sales,’ says Koers, ‘we also do pay-per-use. A couple of our customers have an event site or venue, which we fully equip with our technical solutions, and they can opt to pay per use. So the equipment is there all year round, but they only pay if and when they are actually using it.
With this programme, our customers only have to invest in the venue itself and not in the technical gear – and we can change it whenever needed. I think that will be the new form of business that everybody will be adopting going forward, hardware as a service, and not just hardware but the whole solution.’
Besides the technical production crew and the sales team, Generations has a technical department tasked with fixed installations, a repairs workshop and a warehousing team. In the warehouse, 48 EW-DX receivers, a combination of two- and four-channel models, are ready to be used on the next job. The EW-DX receivers are regularly used with handhelds and bodypacks, but the wireless table stands are a welcome solution, too, especially for Generations’ government business.
‘The foremost reason for investing in EW-DX is its reliability,’ Koers says. ‘We have projects out there that are running for two to three months without any technical support. An example would be a theme park show. That has, say, three or four actors, but no technician on site. And the only technical problem that we’ve had so far was that actors had forgotten to recharge or change the batteries. The advantage of EW-DX is its integration into our Q-Sys environment, so we can see this remotely. This saves a lot of labour for the tech support.’
Coming originally from the theatre world, Koers made his first foray into the event industry 25 years ago, when he founded Generations Drive In Show. In the same year, he entered a partnership with theatre colleague Gaby van Amerongen, and the two of them started operations under the business name Generations Light & Sound in Maasdijk with Red Bull as their first major customer; a little later, they added the first music festivals to the roster.
In those days, Generations used the professional Sennheiser VHF models, and the then-new evolution wireless systems that had first hit the market in 1999. ‘This was a big change, because there were many productions that simply didn’t need or couldn’t afford the high-end stuff but still wanted reliability and a lot of channels. With evolution wireless, we were able to set up more than 80 channels in productions that normally wouldn’t have had the budget for that. I think that was the biggest change for us where Sennheiser helped us grow our business, enabled us to do more things wirelessly but still in a reliable way and also very acceptable sound-wise.’
By 2014, the company had expanded so much that it needed to operate three sites to store equipment. It was time for another move, this time to ’s-Gravenzande, where all operations were re-united under one roof.
In 2018, the team sadly lost co-owner van Amerongen to cancer. Koers set up a management team with Joey Quak and Chantée van Amerongen. As a tribute to Gaby van Amerongen, the the company’s new CI, which was introduced a year later, included a white G in a red circle.
In 2023, another move brought Generations back to Maasdijk, into a yet larger and more functional building. ‘I’ve known Generations for four years now,’ says Ivo Dousi, Generation’s direct contact at Sennheiser. ‘They were still in the “old” building then, which was already impressive. But where they are located now is really next level.’
Customers sometimes require something that is not a standard solution. ‘We very often find ourselves sitting in special projects, where a director says, “I want to do this but I don’t know how – can you do that? Can you fix that?” And then we usually create something wireless, like recently in a theme park, where two cars had to move around with the same in-sync sound. Our clients often prefer to have time code, too, these are the solutions we’re creating for them.
Koers also mentions the challenge of going green. ‘We need to reduce our logistics movements. There might also be a change in venues’ event policies, probably they are going to say, “it’s more interesting to have our own system again” instead of having it brought in on a daily or weekly basis, because we will need to reduce the transfers in a city or wherever we are. You can see it starting in all the government-related contracts we get, where we are asked to deliver with an electric vehicle. This limits us regarding space and the amount of gear we can bring. Reducing the volume and weight you are transporting will be one of the challenges that everybody in the live event industry has to tackle.
‘With EW-DX now having four channels in a rack unit, we save a lot of space in transport,’ he adds. ‘It’s probably not the most common thing to think of, but when we are adding up all the small things for a production and we can save 50 rack units with all the products we are bringing, this will help us to win truck space.’
Generations is well equipped for the future, and ready to bring live events to remember to diverse audiences, always in close and pleasant collaboration with its customers.
More: www.generations.nl