X Vision Audio basks in virtual success

The business moved out on its own after 18 months of growing up in the Youngstown Business Incubator.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
BOARDMAN -- Picture a top-of-the-line digital sound recording studio with enough bells and whistles to cover the walls of an average-size room.
Now, imagine turning a standard home computer into a "virtual" version of that same high-performance studio at a fraction of the cost.
Virtual recording studios are X Vision Audio's specialty, and the niche business has helped the fledgling company to multiply its sales by 400 percent in three years.
The marketing and distribution company started out in the basement of founder and president Tom Sailor's Boardman home, then spent about a year and a half in the Youngstown Business Incubator before moving out on its own in October.
Now based in the ROCO Building on Market Street in Boardman, X Vision Audio sales will top $1 million this year, Sailor said, and the company has eight full-time employees.
X Vision Audio's new headquarters includes a second-floor suite of offices and a large warehouse where it can store and test equipment.
Exclusive distributor
The company is the exclusive North American distributor for several computer hardware and software developers, most based in Germany. It has 200 dealers in North America whose customers range from broadcasters to professional musicians, from military communications officers to churches and theater groups.
A New Castle native, Sailor, 37, has a broad background in music and computers.
His late father, John Sailor, owned Process Control Systems in New Castle and built some of the earliest industrial computers for major companies such as Rolling Rock Beer, Coca-Cola and Heinz.
The younger Sailor was more interested in music in his early years. He was lead singer, guitarist and business manager for Illuminatus!, an alternative punk rock band that played with the Goo Goo Dolls and the Violent Femmes in the early 1990s.
Rocker friends
Two friends he met during his rock musician days, Brian McCall and Dan Sebastian, work with him in the business. McCall, former lead singer, guitarist and business manager in the Fabulous Flashbacks, is U.S. sales manager for X Vision Audio, and Sebastian, a drummer, is in charge of inside sales and shipping.
Sailor worked in sales for a radio station, then joined his wife, Kristin, in business when she founded Maggies Magic Muffins, a successful retail bakery in Boardman.
He made deliveries and did odd jobs in the muffin shop, but Sailor wasn't ready to discard his dream of a career in some aspect of the music business.
He spent hours on the computer, communicating with computer music experts, musicians and recording buffs around the world. When he saw a technical question posted online, Sailor would hurry to research and report an answer, determined to develop a reputation as a computer recording expert.
"My wife would complain because I didn't get paid," he said, remembering the countless hours spent communicating and researching online. "But I was improving myself for what I thought I was best suited."
The effort paid off.
Important call
In 2000 Sailor got a call from the owners of a small German software and hardware developer who had met him over the Internet. The company flew him to Europe and hired him as its new North American distributor. Sailor set up an office in his basement and started selling.
Their expertise, McCall explained, is in combining the products of several developers, after extensive testing and experimenting, to produce a "seamless solution" for the customer.
"There are lots of products, and they don't always work together," he explained.
Disney and Sony Pictures are using the equipment X Vision Audio sells, he said, and its hardware and software products were used in several recent Oscar-nominated films.
With just two product lines at first, X Vision Audio sales were close to $400,000 the first year. "We were still in the basement, working around piles of laundry and fighting off spiders, and it was cold," Sailor remembered with a grin. "We needed to move."
X Vision Audio moved into the business incubator in December 2000, and the professional office environment was a welcome change, he said.
"It was very good in the beginning. It gave us a polished look and a level of self-esteem that we didn't have when we were operating out of my basement."
Time to go
Sailor estimates the incubator's free rent saved the company about $12,000 during its stay. When the company's sales and staff grew, incubator officials advised the company that it would be charged rent, $8 a square foot, for the office space. The business started looking for new digs.
He considered buying a building in downtown but decided instead to lease space in Boardman, where employees would benefit from the free parking and would pay no city income tax. The building is owned by a family member who gave him a good deal, Sailor said.
"The incubator helped, but in no way shape or form is the incubator responsible for our success," Sailor said. "Success in business comes from self-sufficiency."
vinarsky@vindy.com