SME Universe | Things are going well for SACO Technologies

The ball, planted in the hot ground of Las Vegas, is immense. Called MSG Sphere, it is 516 feet in diameter, 336 feet high and will light up the gaming capital from 2023, thanks to the expertise of Montreal’s SACO Technologies.

Isabelle Masse
The Press

The contract – “SACO’s biggest” – arrived in 2018: to fill the outer surface of the sphere (580,000 square feet) to form a huge luminous screen. An interior contract – 160,000 square feet of high resolution LED tiles – followed.

The company was among the major design suppliers for the US$1.8 billion MSG Sphere (Madison Square Garden) project that features an 18,000-seat theater under a wraparound curved screen connected to the Venetian Resort exhibition center . “Interior assembly will begin shortly,” said Jonathan Labbee, CESO’s co-CEO. The inner surface screen will have a resolution 100 times higher than a high definition TV. A hundred employees are dedicated to interior assembly. »

For the exterior, SACO has developed a lighting system composed of numerous LED luminaires (S-POK) firmly anchored to aluminum extrusions which will form a huge curved screen. “Everything that is technological in the sphere comes from here,” says Yanick Fournier, senior vice-president of business development at CESO. The vast majority of our products are made within a radius of 30 kilometers, because we like to control quality and support the local economy. »

SACO will design what management calls a nocturnal identity in the lit landscape of Las Vegas. “We found a way to integrate the product to create something magical,” says Jonathan Labbee.

In order to arrive safely, SACO teams have redoubled their ingenuity and patience, in the midst of a pandemic. “The semiconductor crisis has also affected us,” explains Yanick Fournier. We use components found in electric cars. We had to redesign the items two or three times with electrical products that we were able to get our hands on. »

rock star of the screen digital

A visit to the company’s headquarters in the borough of Saint-Laurent, Montreal, leaves no doubt about CESO’s talents of wonder among those who attend arena concerts, stadiums or who visit towers like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, Backstreet Boys, The Rolling Stones, Michael Bublé, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, U2… The list of star clients is long in the company’s “brilliant” curriculum.

The journey of Jonathan Labbee and Yanick Fournier, who chain anecdotes in interviews, is enviable, because they lived almost hand in hand with our favorite singers and groups. One of many? When the company moved its innovations to new 218,000-square-foot offices in 2019, a long, lived-in green marble table followed in the new meeting room. SACO’s co-founders, Fred and Bassam Jalbout, will never part with it. “It was on this one that Bono signed a contract with us for the tour PopMart of U2,” says Jonathan Labbee.

“We were able to promote our screens with one of the biggest groups in history,” adds Yanick Fournier.

SACO is unknown to the public, but not to the stardom. The company made a name for itself in 1997 after inventing LED digital screens. Until then, the big screens, both on rock stages and in New York’s Times Square, were made up of jumbotrons, a cathode ray tube technology similar to that of traditional tube televisions. “It was a turning point when SACO arrived with its new technology,” says Yanick Fournier. Otherwise, instead of mobilizing 22 trucks and 2 days of assembly before each show on the tour, to PopMart, we only needed two trucks and a few hours of assembly. This was the end of the jumbotrons. »

The curved NASDAQ screen in Times Square, which we saw from 2000 to 2017, was SACO. “The phrase media building was born with this screen, because it envelops the building”, notes Jonathan Labbee.

“We don’t just sell tiles and LED video lights, but an integrated solution, thanks to our engineers and architects,” continues Yanick Fournier. When we enter a project, we find a way to facilitate the installation, the maintenance, the weight reduction as much as possible on a stage. »

More than 90% of CESO’s revenues, whose turnover has grown by 30% in the last year, come from outside Canada. “We are all over the world, confirms Jonathan Labbee. We like to develop and innovate. We target unique projects, which have a little complexity. »