Multimedia business takes off at Windmill Lane

There are things that Windmill Lane Pictures will not do for the customer, admits its new managing director, Mr John Ingram. When rock and blues star Terence Trent D'Arby demanded 100 condoms from support staff, for example, they told him to go and buy them himself. But in general, Mr Ingram's business philosophy revolves around flexibility, and he believes the future is bright.

Windmill Lane began in 1976 as a film editing business, offering the post-production facilities needed by the advertising industry. Its young founder, Mr James Morris, was the bass guitar player in a band, and felt there was an opportunity to bring musical talent to Dublin. Led by U2, Windmill Lane became one of the hippest places to record music in the 1980s. "But by 1990 the sound recording business was changing, it was becoming less viable. The lock-out concept, where people would go into a studio for six months and record an entire album was over," Mr Ingram says.

The company sold its recording equipment to the management of the sound studios, but because its name was so well known as a music studio, it continues to enhance its reputation for quality abroad, he adds. It remained in the television production business, and has been growing steadily. The company now has around 110 employees, and is changing its strategy for the decade to come.

"New media is where we've put everything together that we've done in the past for other people, and we're doing it for ourselves," he says.

"We have three main businesses. There is TV post-production and special effects, which is well-established and we would have been the first player in that business. The interesting thing about effects and computer graphics, is that it is more about content than it is about post-production - and the future is going to be about content creation and content ownership.

"Another business is parliamentary broadcasting. And while it is a very predictable thing - we started nearly 10 years ago and we're still in situ. But it helps from a credibility point of view, when people want to know who you are you can say `We are the parliamentary broadcasters in Ireland', and that counts for something.

"And then there is the multimedia business, which emerged from our corporate video work. We knew we had to move towards multimedia with the convergences just over our shoulder. We had never produced `for multimedia', but we had been working in multimedia all our lives - we knew how to design interfaces, to record music, to write stories," he says.

This part of the business is really taking off, he adds, and Windmill Lane is increasingly finding itself advising company boards on their multimedia strategy.

Turnover, which was £2.5 million (€3.17) in 1993, was £6.5 million last year. The company is working on a number of projects across Europe, has an office in Luxembourg, and is planning to open another soon in Brussels. It is all driven by what he terms a "relentless, evangelical sales force".

The flexibility of Mr Ingram's approach to his new job is reflected in his own CV. He worked on an oil rig off Kinsale, as a travel guide for trade unionists and arts lover in Dresden, drove a van carrying butane gas (it went on fire destroying everything except his packed lunch), hawked insurance, imported photocopiers, sold sports equipment.

Eventually, in 1988, he moved to Windmill Lane as a salesman.