Their area of operation has now been extended to embrace the entire Balkans region – adding Bosnia & Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Montenegro to their list.

Avolites and LSC Control Systems – also Robe businesses – have chosen to go with LSD distribution to stimulate their presence throughout the Balkans and additionally in Albania, together with all the strategic advantages this will bring to LSD’s customers.

LSD is a stocking distributor, and for speed, efficiency and quick turnaround will always aim to have a large stock of Robe moving lights in the warehouse, ready for immediate dispatch. The reason for this ‘classic’ structuring, Milan explains: “We serve multiple territories and believe in a hands-on approach, so we like to be able to show what exactly is being proposed to clients, so they can test, see and feel for real what each product is and how it performs. Also, our clients appreciate us doing the education and training, and having everything in stock, ready for immediate delivery.”

Business in the region tends to involve short lead times, so it’s important to be proactive and be able to respond quickly. LSD’s 4000 square metre – with 15 metres of headroom – HQ offers full testing facilities in addition to holding the stock ready for immediate action.

Being centrally located in the Balkans is another advantage, as LSD is ideally geographically placed to supply efficiently throughout the Balkans, and on the other hand, customers can visit for demonstrations very fast.

LSD has boosted Robe sales in the region since 2023, and Milan observes that there is great enthusiasm for pushing up show and performance production values with so many international artists and tours now visiting, as well as local engineers and technicians working more frequently across wider Europe.

“This movement in both directions is partly driving the demand for high quality products and reliable well-respected brands,” he noted.

To achieve the initial goal of boosting sales in Serbia, LSD made a major investment in Robe products and organised two highly visible and successful open days, one in 2023 and one in 2024. The last one was amazingly well attended by 650 visitors from 7 countries and 3 schools/faculties. Thirty-three brands were exhibited during these events, together with their representatives covering over 1100 products on display and demo. On top of that, there were 19 presentations on two parallel stages and 12 hands-on workshops. Basically, a first fair in the Balkans aimed at production professionals.

This was free to visitors and financed by LSD with the goal of presenting premium brands to interested parties from across the Balkans in their native languages.

Additionally, the LSD crew undertook many case-by-case on-site and in-situ product demos over the years to communicate and get brands in front of people.

With the success of Robe in Serbia, Robe’s sales management team saw real potential in LSD’s ability to open up and develop other Balkan markets.

Robe’s PAINTE is currently the most popular product in the region for sales. “It’s like a Swiss Army Knife,” says Milan, “It simply does so much, and people love the expedient size, the number of features, the CMY colour mixing, the shutters, amazing gobos and of course the great reliability and overall potential of such a compact unit.”

He adds that PAINTE is doing well for TV productions, concerts, festivals, and numerous events.

“We have had zero service requests after 2 years of constant sales… PAINTE packs a lot of punch for a compact light that is so easy to set up in the studio or a hotel conference room.”

PAINTE is closely followed by LEDBeam 350 and 150, T1 Profile and ESPRITE in sales. Robe’s legendary MegaPointe is still much in demand here as elsewhere – and Spiider LED wash beams are another favourite.

Recent sales include to rental company Prosound in Belgrade, now in their third consecutive year of Robe investment, making them currently the biggest Robe house in the Balkans with their latest purchase of 12 x iFORTES, 18 x iESPRITES and two RoboSpot base stations and cameras.

Production Pool from Ruma have just invested in PAINTES and ProMotion moving light/video projectors, and Inovations from Belgrade has purchased PAINTES and iSpiiders.

Photo Credit: courtesy LSD