Located just four and a half blocks from the site of the original Shure Loop office, Shure Chicago City Center is designed to welcome up to 150 employees across sales, marketing, customer service, and market development. It’s also home to their exciting new Customer Experience Center. Designed to showcase a wide variety of Shure technology in a real-world environment to customers and integrators, the Customer Experience Center features a full range of products in a functional evaluation environment.
The new office occupies an entire floor of The National Building in Chicago’s Loop district. Built in 1906, aspects of the National’s construction, such as its extremely high ceilings, created acoustical issues as soon as employees moved in. The Customer Experience Center takes up one corner of the space, with the rest occupied by the sales, marketing, and tech support teams in a collection of low-partition cubicles, private offices, conference rooms, and open-office collaborative spaces. It was imperative that cross talk from the office space didn’t interfere with demos occurring in the Customer Experience Center. Additionally, it was important for employees to both focus without overhearing other conversations and to have private conversations in conference rooms without being overheard.
SOLUTION
Shure’s acoustical consultant, Arup, suggested installing sound masking from Biamp’s Cambridge line to improve the space’s acoustics. Sound masking is the process of adding a low level, unobtrusive background sound to an environment to help cover up speech noise and improve the overall office ambience. The sound is similar to that of airflow, but specifically engineered to cover up human speech, making affected environments more comfortable, private, and free of excess noise distractions. The integrator on the project, AVI-SPL, installed sound masking from Biamp, the world’s leading provider of sound masking solutions, throughout the open office. The system enables different masking volume levels across different zones, allowing Shure to address noise distractions more aggressively in the open office areas. Automatic ramping was also programmed into the system, allowing masking noise to be slightly louder at the times when the office is at its busiest.
CONCLUSION
After eighteen months of planning, renovations, and relocating staff, the Shure City Center Chicago welcomed customers, integrators, and associates. “Sound Masking is a big part of what makes the space acoustically comfortable and functional,” says Jim Schanz, Vice President of Global Sales, Integrated Systems for Shure. “As an audio company, we knew how important it would be to have good acoustics in our new office space. Sound masking from Biamp ensures a comfortable working environment for both our employees and visiting customers. It really works.”
A graduate of DeVry Institute of Technology, Doug has been in the Technology industry since 1976 and actively oversees Fearing’s daily operations. Along with his wife, Lois, and three others, Doug started Fearing’s in a 600 square-foot facility in Portage, Wisconsin. In the 25 years since, the company has grown to over 30 employees with offices in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Doug likes to say he’s a “TV Technician with a dream� going back to his history with the family’s original business-Fearing’s TV and Appliance.
Doug values time with family, watersports, hiking, snowshoeing and skiing. In addition to being a devoted member of his church, Doug serves as Board President for Kinship Mentoring of Columbia County, Board member of Schools for Haiti and Scripture Chair of the Gideons-Portage camp.
A graduate of MATC, Lois oversees Fearing’s daily book keeping along with various HR responsibilities.
Along with Doug, Lois is deeply connected to community outreach, serving as a Board member and Fundraising Committee Chairperson for Kinship Mentoring of Columbia County. She also serves on the Schools for Haiti Fundraising committee. In addition, Lois’ ongoing passion and commitment to provide care for the elderly comes from her 10-year history of working in a Reedsburg, Wisconsin Nursing home.
Lois enjoys singing, hiking, sunny days on the pontoon, and spending time with her 4 grandchildren.
Ehren drives Fearing’s technology by continually seeking out trends to enhance capabilities while supporting Sales, Engineering and Installation teams. Throughout his years with Fearing’s, Ehren’s talent and vision have joined forces to create a wide variety of projects and strategic solutions that exceed expectation.
Ehren loves music, family time, movies, nature, sustainability efforts and electric vehicles.
With 10 years with Fearing’s and over twice that long in the industry, Ben continues to lead, coordinate, and develop the Commercial AV team.
By consistently delivering an outstanding experience and outcome, Ben contributes to the Fearing’s legacy of long-lasting partnerships that truly make a difference. Whatever the Commercial AV need may be, Ben and team deliver at the highest level.
Ben is an avid fisherman and photographer. He enjoys coaching his sons and other youth.
Chris has been with Fearing’s for 20 years and in the industry for over 2 decades. As a Certified leader in Sales Acceleration and trained in EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating Systems), Chris successfully utilizes his skills to lead the Fearing’s Salesforce. Chris and team are motivated and driven to develop new client partnerships while continuing to reinforce loyal long-term relationships with ongoing Service excellence.
Married for 19 years with 3 children, Chris enjoys skiing, hiking, fishing, boating, hunting, camping and golf. He’s also been actively involved as a Youth Football and Softball coach for his family and others.
