CORPORATE HISTORY

In 1972, I formed Sigma Systems Engineering to engage in the development, design, manufacture and sales of professional mixers and other audio products for studio and remote broadcast applications. Since then, we have pursued technical innovation under the KAMESAN trade mark, symbolising our motto ‘slow but steady progress'.

Together with NHK, Japan's national broadcasting company, as well as private stations nationwide, we began to develop unique, custom designed audio equipment for broadcast, which we also installed for these customers.

In the past, equipment used for Japanese broadcasting tended to be large, heavy and expensive relative to performance. We considered this as a design challenge and by keeping our efforts focused on this area, created compact, light and multi-function products to custom specifications.

At that time, equipment such as broadcast cameras was large and heavy and had to be mounted on massive tripods. Then the revolutionarily compact Betacam for broadcast was developed, making it possible for a remote crew to shoulder a camera and move around. This in turn led to requirements for light, compact and multi-function audio equipment. We had also entered a period for audio innovation.

Our R&D capability was gradually increased and within 5 years, we launched an extremely compact 3 channel audio mixer. It was the first product of our own design and was rapidly accepted as an exceptionally compact, light and multi-function audio mixer for broadcast. Today, we proudly enjoy a large market share of Japan's portable mixer market, which is in the region of over 95%.

With continual support from broadcast stations and more recently formed production houses, we have introduced many new products which are developed within the same design criteria and achieve steady business. We have also gained very high credibility in the industry which calls Sigma 'the company representing compactness' and the company with the mark of Kamesan.

Having recently been alerted to production efficiency, we now undertake product development with a broadened design concept which includes, in addition to 'light and compact', ‘time saving set up’ and ‘easier to work with’ when going ‘on-air’. A good example is the product named the 'Commentary System'.

The Commentary System is powerful typically when broadcasting international sports events which often take place in Japan nowadays. It's a remarkable system from which you can conduct both program and talkback feeds with commentators from multiple guest countries. For instance, Japan hosted 100 guest countries for the Winter Olympic Games. The system aims at reducing work and stress by providing broadcasting facilities from the host station to each country’s booth as well as supporting the host engineers efforts.

In 1990 we were fortunate to acquire a piece of land near Shinjuku in Tokyo and built our head office there. We moved into the new premises to work together more closely and respond to industry expectations, that there is no other company but Sigma which leads audio for broadcast.
I believe our mission for the future should be to continue product development reflecting our unique ideas and close customer ties, an advantage which a larger company does not have, whilst making steady progress.