An Interview With Craig Fraser, Chief Executive Officer At BEACN

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Below is our recent interview with Craig Fraser, Chief Executive Officer at BEACN:

Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to BEACN?

A: BEACN was born out of a desire to bring together a passionate and skilled team with vast experience creating audio products with a directive to make deep connections with content creators, making the best solutions possible. When the team conceptualizes and creates products we engage directly with creators – experiencing what they experience.

We consider ourselves “a startup that’s not a startup”. We’ve all worked together in some capacity for upwards of 15 years, so we were able to hit the ground running when we started in 2020 and put a whopping 6 products into the market when we launched in 2022.

Looking to the future, we see the online world as a place where everyone deserves great sounding audio. The human voice and how it sits in the mix is the most sacred aspect of perfect sounding audio. We want to make sure everyone can have tools that seamlessly deliver great sound.

Our roadmap of technologies and products, which we’re very excited to bring to market, will continuing to help creators be heard.

Q: Any highlights on your latest announcement?

A: This fall has been a significant turning point for the company. The first stage was launching our first products BEACN Mic, Mix and Mix Create. We enjoyed incredible success at launch, which supported an strong direct to consumer revenue base for on our own store, beacn.com and on Amazon.

The next stage was building up our B2B side of the business to make sure BEACN’s products were available at the retailers where streamers, gamers, content creators and work-from-home customers shop. The opportunity to be represented at major retailers is massive. The challenge is that many retailers don’t specifically focus on our customer segment. We’re working directly with our partners to assist in bringing content creators into the store, opening a brand new market.

The recent announcement about London Drugs, a large western Canadian retailer with a major consumer electronics customer base, selling our products is significant. The opportunity to be in dozens of stores and online in a significant North American market is fantastic for our brand. More importantly, London Drugs shares our passion to go after the content creator market. Their investment in us is also an investment on the content creator market in general.

We have a lot of work ahead of us to get our products in front of content creators, but the strategy we’ve taken with customers such as London Drugs, Micro Center, PowerGPU and B&H, combined with myriad relationships with other businesses and top creators in the industry is proving to be successful.

Q: Can you tell us about your products?

A: The BEACN family of products include our DSP powered USB microphone – BEACN Mic, and our two Desktop App Mixers – BEACN Mix, and BEACN Mix Create. We also have a number of accessories including BEACN Mic Stand and extras like various colours of foam wind screens.

The combination of our products lets any content creator get studio quality audio for their voice and their whole mix with ease. When you hear a typical podcast or gaming stream it either sounds bad, or often a professional sound engineer – with many different tools, has spent time polishing the sound of the voice and the overall audio mix. With our products, anyone can get a fully produced sound and control their mix just by plugging in our products.

Q: What can we expect from BEACN in next 6 months? What are your plans?

A: Every day our customers and our team generate ideas for products and how to serve our customers better. But we say no to more things than we say yes to. We really like to pick the right opportunity.

In 2024 you’ll see some exciting things come to market that will let us further reach creators and offer them new ways to benefit from our core technologies.

I can’t speak to specific products, but I can say that we will continue to serve the creative needs of anyone who streams or creates content. In reality, almost everyone streams today. A Zoom or Teams call is essentially a stream.

BEACN Mic Stand is an accessory we just launched that speaks to our strategy. For people working from home, or creating videos and podcasts, the right stand is a requirement, especially if you’ve invested in a quality external mic like BEACN Mic. Initial feedback on the stand is very positive.

From “KRONIC KRAK3N” on our 11K user public Discord server:
“for anyone wondering, the new mic stand is a W. soldi build quality and sleek. 100% recommend”

Q: What is the best thing about BEACN that people might not know about?

A: We are our customer. We game, we make podcasts, we produce videos, we stream things. We also personally follow many of the influencers who love our products. We also take time to use our products before and after we launch them.

We don’t just order a pre-built design from a manufacture we’ve never visited. BEACN Mix and BEACN Mix Create are actually built in British Columbia, Canada. For a startup company, manufacturing in our own backyard gave us great control over making sure it was built the way we wanted it.

Anything we make is, and will always be, made with purpose.