Anders Apelgren, Visual Art

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT So many companies in the digital signage ecosystem are all about the technology, still, so it's interesting to come across a tech company that functions as a turnkey provider, but leads with the creative aspect. It's even in the name - Visual Art. The Swedish company started roughly 25 years ago, and has steadily expanded its footprint and operating base. It is now active in 32 countries, though northern Europe is still its busiest territory. One of the interesting aspects - and I don't think I'ver seen this - is how it is owned, in part, by an out of home media company, UK-based Ocean Outdoor. Ocean bought the media wing on the business back in 2019. But ad networks are not the main focus - with much of Visual Art's business in retail and QSR, through whale clients such as McDonalds. I spoke at length with the CEO of Visual Art - Anders Apelgren. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Andres, thank you for joining me. You're in Stockholm. Is that the main office for your company?  Anders Apelgren: Yes, the whole company was founded in Stockholm. So Stockholm is still our biggest place.  And where else are you located?  Anders Apelgren: We have companies and offices in 8 countries. It's all in the Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and we’re also quite big in Germany and Spain. We also have a small company in the US.  Okay. So is expanding beyond the Nordic region something that's happened recently or has that been evolving since you started?  Anders Apelgren: We have two different business areas before, so we were in the nordic countries before, but we sold half the company two years ago. Now, we're expanding again, outside the Nordic countries, and to be honest, Sweden is quite a small country, so the market is so much bigger in other countries like the US and Germany.  It's interesting with Sweden and the Nordics in general, it seems to be something of a hotbed for digital signage. Anders Apelgren: Yeah, I think we are quite good at it in northern Sweden both in software, and also with the audience, since we understand technical things. So I think it's quite easy to sell to Swedish people and companies. So we are at the forefront, at least in mass deployment, maybe not in having these huge, big things like in Times Square, but I think most deployment of screens are in Swedish.  That's interesting. Is that just a particular mindset?  Anders Apelgren: No, but I think, on average, people see that they can earn money on the screens even by selling more or by selling commercial space on the screens and they are seeing opportunity with the price going down with screens, more and more companies are doing it. Okay. So can you give me a rundown on what Visual Art does and the breadth of services? Anders Apelgren: We are a one-stop shop so we can give the clients everything they want. But of course the big foundation we have is our tech part. So we have our own CMS and we also have our media player. The media players can work on any platform so that's a big strength we have, and we are selling that software to competitors as well as a white label product, that is the foundation of the company.  But since many other companies don't have a one-stop shop partner, we can help them with content, strategies, sell hardware and do installation as well. Yeah, that seems to be almost the default demand now of larger companies. They're basically saying that they want to stick to what they're good at, and they'd like to outsource all of this to a company that is good at that. Anders Apelgren: Exactly. And that's why we are expanding to so many countries, because we need to be close to the customer otherwise we won’t get the business. Did you start as an integrator or a solutions provider and then add software? Or did you start as a software company?  Anders Apelgren: We started as a production company, so we have a very go