"To run a technology company you not only have to know perfectly the present of it; we also have to project the future, since it will probably be with other products and perhaps with other customers, "says Edgardo Boqué.
By Richard Santa
Due to the political situation that Argentina was experiencing at the time of his university studies, Edgardo Boqué declares himself a self-taught within the lighting industry, who managed to get ahead and create his own company despite the situation.
"Self-taught because at the time of the Argentine dictatorship the universities were in charge of teaching assistants and mediocre professors who had neither voice nor vote. This had a greater impact on the engineering faculty and especially on electronic orientation, where curricula were very outdated."
He added that in the fourth year the electronic emission of the vacuum valve was studied, while the students experimented on the outside with transistors, the first linear integrated circuits and microprocessors.
But his interest in electronics comes from high school, when along with math and physics classes, he began on his own to study the principles of solid-state electronics, assembling circuits for hobbyists with germanium transistors.
Despite wanting to study, the political situation in his country, which was controlled by the military and after several shootings, which fortunately he only heard from afar, led him to make the decision to leave the university at the end of the fourth year.
Doing business
"The university base was very useful to me in the following years since from then on I dedicated myself to studying specifically the topics that interested and needed me in my working life, which was always oriented to new technologies."
In 1975 he began to earn money from his developments when he built his first 40+40watt amplifier for personal use. This led to the manufacture of amplifiers and home acoustic systems on a small and medium scale.
Then began a more professional stage in nightclubs, which in its moment of furor the sound went from two speakers and a home amplifier, to huge triamplified sound systems of several thousand watts.
In addition, lighting took center stage, driven by the film "Saturday Night Fever" that propelled these types of lighting effects and also the entry of Boqué to the lighting of the controlled type, in which the sequences and effects began to take a fundamental role.
"My first jobs in lighting date back to 1978, also in the field of nightclubs and always with my own company. In the field of professional sound, in addition to the above I worked leading the technical department, from 83 to 87 in Holimar SRL, HiEnd sound company".
In 1987 he founded B&B Systems S.A., a lighting company. They began manufacturing "robots", so called because it was a lighting equipment that allowed to control the color, the figures and the movements of the light, from a remote console with a joystick.
As an anecdote he mentions that in all the projects he undertook he heard phrases such as "that cannot be done", "it will not work", "that is impossible", but he faced them as a challenge and transformed them into "it could be done", "it worked", "it was possible".
The head in two companies
With the arrival of the 90s, and seeking the growth and development of his company, Edgardo Boqué and his partners replaced their own products with more evolved European systems.
"At that time we took the representation of Martin Professional, equipping several leading companies in lighting services for shows. In 2000 we partnered with Martin Professional A/S and founded Martin Professional Argentina S.A.";
With the great development we had in lighting, both shows and architecture, we gradually moved away from professional sound and more than five years ago we founded RGB Lighting Systems S.A., a company dedicated exclusively to lighting with new technologies, where LED is the great star of the moment.
Since then, he has presided over Martin Argentina and RGB Lighting Systems, and between the two companies he divides his working day, which normally goes between nine in the morning and six in the afternoon.
He emphasizes that each of the areas of his companies are in charge of very trained people who know their work very well, therefore an activity that occupies a lot of their time is meetings with clients.
He also maintains that "when running a technology company, the greatest responsibility is to be able to maintain a permanent growth of the capacity of the company in general, to realize projects and developments that have never been carried out before, minimizing costs, times and risks."
"Managers must keep in mind that if we talk about lighting with new technologies, we should not try to summarize everything to a traditional lighting with a new component, such as LED, because that leads to an imminent failure."
He assures that the appearance of LED in the field of lighting has greater efficiency and stability every day, especially at a time when energy savings, not only due to energy costs but also due to the decrease in pollution, makes the industry have an almost exponential growth.
Argentine not a football fan
At 53 years old, Edgardo Boqué says that with the same intensity that he developed his professional activity, he has worried that this is also the case in his personal life.
"I have been married for 23 years to Claudia Schegtel, with whom we have three children, Nicolás, 21, Sofía, 16 and Tomás, 14. Claudia is responsible for the administration and finances of our companies and our children are in the student stage."
It indicates that his social life is quite active, both with his family nucleus and with a very large group of friends. "I also enjoy making a delicious meal and watching movies in the quiet of my home during the weekends."
Due to work activity, you must travel frequently, both to visit suppliers and customers. Sometimes he takes advantage of these trips to make them in the company of his wife.
"Whenever time and work allow, we extend ourselves for tourist purposes a few days; we also do it only for pleasure and with our children during study breaks. Therefore I could say that traveling is one of my main hobbies, which allows us to know tourist attractions, museums, attend shows, a little diving, etc. ".
Sport is not very present in his life, neither to practice it nor as an amateur. But he takes advantage of the free time he can devote to jogging, and for there is right he meets some friends.
"Despite being Argentine, I am not a fan of any football team, but it is still a sport that is very attractive to me."
