Stuttgarter Zeitung 14 March 2008

LOBO electronic GmbH from Aalen considers itself to be a global market leader for laser shows
The market is small, but the entire world is the stage. With light effects, soundtracks and water screens, a company from southwest Germany stages events around the globe.
By Ulrich Schreyer. Aalen
Lothar Bopp is dressed all in black. The large desk in the conference room is black, the drawers, in which all kinds of devices are stored, are black. Brightly, the light-flooded glass facades, the granite tabletop and the glittering stainless steel chairs are set apart. None of this is a coincidence, but rather a message: At LOBO, an abbreviation of Lothar Bopp, something is staged.
Bopp puts himself and his company building into the right light – but in particular, he often sets the stage for others: LOBO is in high demand at national holidays, in amusement parks or on cruise ships. “We are operating in a small niche,” Bopp says, “but have been a global market leader with our laser shows for years.” In fact, the company merely has 30 employees, only a little more than ten years ago. And a turnover of eight million Euros, as expected for this year, is also achieved by some larger handicraft businesses. Still: sales have doubled within the last 15 years. About 80 percent are generated abroad, half of that even outside of Europe. Obviously, Bopp does not claim that Aalen in the Ostalb region is the ideal location for such a company. “We pick up our visitors in Frankfurt,” the company founder, who still is managing shareholder today, tells. When the company expanded some years ago, Bopp also looked elsewhere. “We did not find anything fitting in Stuttgart and Ulm also would not have been a significant improvement,” the maser of laser light tells. “Therefore, we stayed in Aalen.”
In any case, he is able to find employees. Some are graduates of the University of Applied Sciences Aalen, but others also come from Vienna. LOBO employs electrical engineers as well as designers, and the Ostalb does not seem to deter creative heads. “Our industry attracts people,” Bopp says. “Furthermore, they travel a lot around the world. They get their cosmopolitan flair during work.” Be it on cruise ships like Queen Mary 2, in a Chinese Jurassic Park or even close by, in the Europa-Park Rust – everywhere, LOBO has installed light and sound effects. The man in black recalls one colorful spectacle with particular fondness: At the Asia Games 2006 in Doha, he created the right atmosphere with light and music, “watched by 3.4 billion people on TV.”
Among the clients are countries celebrating their national holidays – even the 40th anniversary of the GDR was once staged by LOBO – but also companies that want to demonstrate that laying a carpet or mounting mudguards can be something sexy. Simply showing a film is no longer enough – mudguards and carpets revolve through space as three-dimensional construction designs or finished products, accompanied by music that would also be fitting for a nightclub.
Many clients of the company are based in the Middle East. “While the roads there are not paved with gold, these countries are willing to spend big if they want something,” Bopp says. For example, he equipped an amusement park near the Dead Sea for a Jordanian client. While Bopp his happy to have supplied the Jurassic Park in the Chinese city of Changzhou with laser light and music, his experiences with the Middle Kingdom were not all positive: “In my opinion, there is still too much copying going on there.”
In 1992, Bopp began supplying discotheques with electrical equipment for the creation of light effects and equipping them with laser shows. After his studies of precision engineering – a combination of optics, electronics and precision mechanics – at the University of Applied Sciences Aalen, he took the plunge and became self-employed. Dance halls have long since ceased to be among the most important clients, as LOBO’s productions have simply become too complicated and therefore often too expensive. “Previously, we only had lasers, but now we have also added music, can generate wind and are even able to offer scents.” And if an actual storm is to be simulated with specifically developed software, the company can even offer a floor vibrating under the feet. Lobo has decorated starry skies in planetariums such as those in Stuttgart and Hamburg, while in Bayreuth a virtual backdrop with a blood-red sky was created for the Wagner Festival, with bright lightning flashing across it.
Lightning also lights up the skies when LOBO puts its time machine into motion. Electronically, one is transported back to Ancient Egypt, with the Sphinx and the Pyramids making an appearance. Later on, Greek pillars, Romans and scenes from the Middle Ages can be seen – these scenes are not depicted as in a history movie, but rather as architectural blueprints: For example, the outline of the Sphinx is shown with illuminated lines of laser light – an alienation, similar to Romans and Gauls celebrating merrily in an Asterix cartoon. And when the colored laser beams then shoot into the room from a kind of “screen” made of water, which conveys a three-dimensional image, the visitors are exactly where Bopp wants them to be: right in the middle.