As Commercial Integrator’s #AVLivingLegends series continues, we’re excited to honor John Ivey, president and CEO of AtlasIED, as our 94th inductee.
His commercial AV career started behind the wheel of a truck. Ivey was running Xtant, a car audio company, when his father’s company, MiTek Corporation, acquired Atlas Soundolier. Rather than hand him the president’s office, his father sent him to start at the bottom — as a truck driver. Over the next 25 years, Ivey worked in almost every position in the organization before becoming president and CEO.
Along the way, he helped transform Atlas Sound, then known for inexpensive ceiling speakers and microphone stands, into AtlasIED, a technology company that engineers its own hardware, software and firmware. Today, his focus is on bringing AV, security, life safety, notifications and entertainment together in a single system.
In his #AVLivingLegends interview, Ivey recounts a construction elevator scare and a harness-free walk across the Superdome ceiling, reflects on letting frustration cut short a conversation that deserved more patience and shares the remark from CTI’s John Laughlin that sparked the AtlasIED rebrand.
Read on to learn more about AtlasIED and John Ivey and then visit our hub page to explore past #AVLivingLegends honorees.
#AVLivingLegends Interview with AtlasIED president and CEO John Ivey
Commercial Integrator: What motivated you to join the commercial AV industry?
John Ivey: My introduction to commercial AV came when my father’s company, MiTek Corporation, acquired Atlas Soundolier. At the time, I was running Xtant, a car audio company.
When he bought Atlas, he told me, “I want you to go work at Atlas.”
My response was, “OK, I’ll go run Atlas.”
He quickly corrected me, saying, “No, you don’t know anything about commercial audio. You’re going to start at the bottom.”
He meant it. I started as a truck driver and spent a couple of years doing that. Over the last 25 years, I’ve worked in almost every position in the organization, eventually becoming president and CEO.
It wasn’t a glamorous introduction, but it gave me an education I couldn’t have gotten by walking straight into the president’s office. I learned the business by doing the work.
CI: What kept you motivated and engaged in the decades that followed?
John Ivey: I love technology. MiTek was already an electronics manufacturing company, primarily serving consumer markets. Atlas Soundolier (aka Atlas Sound), when we acquired it, was known for inexpensive ceiling speakers and microphone stands.
What has kept me engaged is helping turn the Atlas Sound people knew into the AtlasIED we’re building today: a technology company developing products from the ground up. We engineer our hardware, software and firmware in-house. Being able to imagine something and then create it ourselves is exciting to me.
Today, I’m especially motivated by technology that can help save lives. My focus is bringing AV, security, life safety, notifications and entertainment together in a combined system. Making those capabilities work together, especially when people need them most, keeps me looking ahead.
CI: Reflect on your role as both a mentee early in your career and as a mentor later in your career. Who helped shape the trajectory of your professional life? How have you tried to help shape others’ careers?
John Ivey: I’ve been fortunate to learn from very good people in both car audio and commercial audio. The two biggest influences were my father and Hardy Martin, one of the founders of IED [Innovative Electronic Designs].
Their management styles were completely different. Each had strengths, and each had things I might approach differently. I like to think I learned something from every interaction with both of them. Those different examples helped me develop my own judgment about leading people.
As for how I’ve shaped others’ careers, you’d probably have to ask them. I try to be myself, be honest and give people opportunities to succeed. I also try to help them avoid failure where I can. I hope that has made a difference, but they’re better qualified to answer that than I am.
CI: What’s the most memorable story/anecdote of your career in commercial AV?
John Ivey: Two immediately come to mind, and both involve heights — which have never been my favorite thing.
The first happened at the former Enron building after Chevron bought it. We were deploying the first large-scale Atlas Sound VARIZONE system with MCA, the integrator, and a very smart technician named Nathaniel. It was an active construction site, so I’d completed the required safety training, drug testing and everything else.
Around 10:30 p.m. one night, we decided to go to the top. Near the upper floors, the exterior construction elevator jumped its tracks and dropped what felt like a floor and a half. I honestly thought I was going to die. I’ve been uncomfortable in elevators ever since.
AtlasIED Leader John Ivey on Walking the Superdome Ceiling
The second happened on a sales trip to New Orleans. Tim Landry offered to show me around the Superdome and the arena next door one evening.
At the arena, he climbed onto the speaker cluster above the basketball floor and invited me to join him. I declined, explaining that I was afraid of heights.
“Oh, I can fix this,” he said.
His solution was to take me through a janitorial closet and up into the Superdome ceiling. Soon I was walking along metal beams in dress shoes, without a harness.
What looked like a floor beneath us was actually the ceiling. Tim pointed out a memorial marking and told me someone had stepped off a beam, fallen through and died. That was when I fully understood where I was standing.
We continued to a small suspended disc near the center. Below, crews were preparing for a monster truck show. The front-end loaders looked like Matchbox toys.
Tim thought this would cure my fear of heights. It did the exact opposite.
CI: What has been your greatest professional accomplishment?
John Ivey: I’d like to think I haven’t accomplished it yet.
I believe launching AtlasIED AIX, our next-generation AI-based IP speaker platform focused heavily on school safety and automated lockdown, will be the greatest accomplishment of my career. It is certainly the most expensive, most time-consuming and most stressful undertaking we’ve pursued as a company. My hope is that it will justify everything we’ve put into it by helping save lives.
If I have to choose something already accomplished, it would be convincing my father to bring Atlas Sound into the electronics business.
When we acquired Atlas Soundolier, there were no amplifiers, TSD products or DSP offerings. Getting into those categories took some convincing. That decision helped create the foundation for the company we are today.
CI: What has been your biggest professional regret?
John Ivey: This one is easy, and I talk about it at YPO summits.
In my early to mid-20s, I had completed deals to put our MTX brand into Best Buy and Walmart. My father returned from a medical sabbatical and wanted to cancel them.
I got angry. Instead of spending another week or two calmly explaining the strategy and where I believed the industry was headed, I essentially said, “Fine. You’ll see.”
I still believe my assessment was right. But being right didn’t spare us the consequences, and the aftermath became my responsibility.
When Circuit City went out of business, we were still predominantly a consumer electronics company. We lost 70% of our corporate sales in one day. Having those other retail relationships would have made that situation much easier.
My regret is letting frustration end a conversation that deserved more patience and effort.
CI: What’s the best advice or pearl of wisdom you either received during your career or came to realize on your own?
John Ivey: Three conversations have stayed with me.
Jim Ford once told me, “John, you keep telling me you’re a technology company. But you’re really in the construction business.”
I’d never thought about it that way. He explained how much our business depended on buildings being built or remodeled. That pushed me toward products, including IP speakers, that could be added to existing buildings with less infrastructure and without a full remodel.
Another integrator told me, “Remember, we get paid for parts and smarts. No one wants a single-solution system.”
My response was that some customers absolutely do. Airports, for example, often want a complete solution from one company. That conversation reinforced my commitment to complete systems. With AIX, capabilities that once required multiple boxes in an equipment rack — DSP, power sequencing, microphones, speakers, displays and video connections — are coming together in the endpoint itself.
AtlasIED Leader John Ivey on the Push to Rebrand
The third conversation was with John Laughlin from CTI. He and [CTI’s] Eric Snider visited our factory outside Dallas. After the tour, John said, “Boy, Mr. Ivey, you really have a big problem.”
“What’s my problem, Mr. Laughlin?”
He explained that the company he had pictured and the company I’d shown him were completely different. He’d seen exciting technology and products, but that wasn’t what the Atlas Sound name brought to mind. We needed to fix our marketing.
I asked why he’d come if that was his impression. He said he’d come to discuss buying a rental company we owned.
That was the day I decided to get serious about rebranding and remarketing Atlas Sound into AtlasIED. We could make the greatest product in the world, but if people didn’t know about it — or still associated us only with the old Atlas Sound — they might never give it a chance.
