50 Moments From 50 Years of ET Group
50 Moments From 50 Years of ET Group
With roots in Toronto dating back to 1976, we’ve grown alongside the technology that shapes how people communicate, collaborate and connect.
Over five decades, a lot has changed — the technology, the projects, the places we work and the scale of what we do. Along the way, we’ve welcomed new people, built lasting relationships and continued to evolve with the needs of our customers.
Behind every milestone are the people, projects and ideas that have helped move us forward.
To celebrate our 50th anniversary, we’re looking back at 50 moments that have shaped our story — and helped create the foundation for what comes next.
Our Roots and Evolution
1. Our Story Begins in 1976: Our history traces back to Pistil Enterprises Ltd., founded in 1976, and its later evolution alongside Sound Power Luminescence. In 1991, Pistil Enterprises Ltd. took over Sound Power Luminescence, helping create the foundation for who we are today. That history is why 1976 remains the starting point in our story — marking 50 years of growth, change and evolution in 2026.
2. From Traditional AV to More Connected Technology: In our earlier decades, our work included installed sound systems, amplifiers, speakers, wired microphones, projection screens, slide and film projectors, and early video and television systems. As the technology advanced, meeting and presentation spaces began bringing more of these tools together. Projection gave way to digital displays, laptops became part of the meeting experience, and interactive presentation and collaboration technology created new ways for people to share and work with content.
3. Expanding Into Hospitality and Entertainment: Our portfolio also grew across Toronto’s restaurant, nightlife and entertainment scene. We supported recognizable hospitality brands with audio, video, displays and control systems designed around the guest experience. From walls of screens showing sports and entertainment to custom AV control behind the scenes, these projects showed how technology could become part of the atmosphere and experience of a space.
4. Growing Into Integrated Corporate AV: As workplace technology evolved, our corporate projects evolved with it. Boardrooms and meeting spaces increasingly brought together videoconferencing, displays, presentation technology, room control, tabletop connectivity and dedicated AV infrastructure. Rather than operating as separate pieces, more of the technology in the room began working together as one integrated system.
5. From Individual Installations to Enterprise Scale: As our capabilities and customer base grew, the projects got bigger too. What might once have involved a single system or location can now mean designing, deploying and supporting hundreds of spaces across offices, campuses and multiple locations. At that scale, consistency matters — from how rooms are designed and deployed to how they’re supported long after installation.
6. Our Toronto Roots: Our home has changed a few times over the years, with each location marking a different chapter in our growth. Our Toronto and Etobicoke addresses have included 500 King Street West, 90 Thorncliffe Park Drive, 500 and 524 Front Street West, 29 Booth Avenue and, since 2022, 130 North Queen Street in Etobicoke. From our earlier downtown locations to where we are today, the spaces we’ve worked from have grown and changed right alongside us.
7. Built on Long-Standing Relationships: Some of the relationships behind our work have lasted for decades. Several team members have built long careers here, with some approaching 40 years with us, while customers and technology partners have continued to grow alongside us. That shared history has created a depth of knowledge and familiarity that can only come with time.
8. Trusted in Complex and Mission-Critical Environments: Over the years, we’ve built deep experience in justice, government and other environments where technology simply has to work. Courtrooms, correctional facilities, command centres and other highly regulated spaces come with requirements around security, reliability and day-to-day performance that go well beyond a typical meeting room.
Building a National Presence
9. Growing Beyond Toronto: We started in Toronto, but our footprint has steadily grown across Canada through acquisitions, new offices and a more distributed team. Today, we have employees based in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
10. Welcoming CONTI and Forte: In September 2022, we acquired CONTI Electronics’ audiovisual design and integration business assets, including the CONTI and Forte brands. The acquisition brought CONTI and Forte employees into our team and established a Vancouver presence, supporting our continued growth in Western Canada.
11. Expanding into Atlantic Canada: In 2023, we opened a new office and technology demonstration facility in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Now known as the Fredericton Experience Centre, it gives customers and partners a place to experience workplace technology firsthand across collaboration, personal, social and justice spaces.
12. Extending Our Reach Through Ricoh Canada: Joining Ricoh Canada in 2026 added a broader Canadian office and service network to the footprint we had already built, giving our teams access to additional resources and support across the country.
Behind the Work
13. A Home That Reflects the Work We Do: Our current North Queen headquarters is more than office space. It brings together people working across different parts of the business with areas for collaboration, staging, service and the hands-on technical work that happens before and after a system reaches a customer site.
14. Building and Testing Before We Reach Site: A lot happens before an installation ever reaches a customer. Our in-house staging and pre-build process gives our teams space to build, configure, label and test systems ahead of deployment, helping catch issues early and making onsite work more predictable.
15. The Service Work Customers Don’t Always See: Installation is only one part of the lifecycle. Behind the scenes, our service and onsite support teams troubleshoot issues, prepare equipment, maintain systems and help keep technology working once it is in use. Some of that happens at customer sites, while some happens from our own service and support areas.
16. Different Specialists, One Project: A finished space can involve people across strategy, design and engineering, programming, project delivery, installation, unified communications and ongoing support. Each sees a different part of the project, and complex environments often depend on several of those disciplines working together from the earliest design conversations through deployment and support.
17. Thinking About Virtual Work Before It Became the Norm: Flexible and virtual work were already part of the conversation well before hybrid work became commonplace. In 2017, Dirk Propfe was featured on the cover of Ivey Business School’s Intouch magazine for a story on “Virtually Virtual,” reflecting on virtual teamwork and why it could work for organizations. It’s an interesting snapshot of how early questions around remote collaboration, trust and the workplace were already becoming part of our story.
18. Bringing Human-Centered Thinking Into Our Technology Work: The way we thought about our own workplace also began influencing how we approached technology for customers. Rather than starting with products or equipment, the focus increasingly shifted toward the people using a space — how they work, how they need to collaborate and what the technology needs to make easier. Dirk later shared that approach through Human-Centered Technology Design for a Hybrid World at WORKTECH Toronto.
Recognition Along the Way
19. Seeing the Transformation Take Hold: The changes weren’t limited to organizational structure. Collaborative workshops, ET Connects and other opportunities for people to contribute ideas became a more visible part of how we worked together. By February 2022, we reported a 95% employee retention rate and an employee Net Promoter Score consistently above 50. We also reported profitability at 2.5 times the industry standard and four times the growth we had experienced in 2016.
20. Recognized for a Different Business Strategy: In 2018, we received an NSCA Excellence in Business Award in the Differentiating Strategies category, recognizing our move toward design thinking, participatory leadership, self-management and a more consultative approach to workplace technology.
21. Named Pexip’s Most Agile Partner: In 2021, we were named Pexip’s Most Agile Partner of the Year at the Pexip Americas Partner Leadership Summit, recognizing our ability to adapt quickly and find collaboration solutions around specific customer needs.
22. Receiving the Inaugural Tony Hsieh Award: In December 2021, Dirk accepted the inaugural Tony Hsieh Award in Las Vegas on our behalf. The award recognized the work we had done to explore more empowering and participatory ways of working. (Read the story behind the transformation and its impact.)
23. Taking Our Story to a Global Stage: In 2024, we received the Zero Distance Excellence Award for Emergent Excellence. Mark Chen represented us at the Zero Distance Excellence Summit in Qingdao, China, where he accepted the award and joined organizations from around the world in conversations about self-management, decentralization and customer collaboration.
24. Building a Multi-Year Record as a Best Workplace: Since becoming Great Place to Work® Certified in 2023, we’ve received recognition across several workplace categories. In 2025, our growth placed us among Canada’s Best Workplaces for organizations with 100 to 999 employees, where we ranked #15 in Canada. We were also recognized among Canada’s Best Workplaces in Technology, for Mental Wellness and with Most Trusted Executive Teams. In 2026, we ranked #30 and received the Fairness Award, alongside recognition for Inclusion, Technology and Most Trusted Executive Teams. (Explore our workplace awards and recognition.) 
Projects Across the Years
25. Supporting Justice Environments at Scale: We have designed, implemented and supported secure AV systems across courtrooms and correctional environments, and by the end of 2026 that footprint is expected to exceed 1,000 justice spaces. The work supports remote appearances, interpretation, evidence presentation, accessibility and other functions where reliability and security are critical. (Explore our justice technology solutions or see the case study behind this work.)
26. Growing with GreenShield Across Seven Cities: Since 2017, we have completed 57 AV projects with GreenShield across seven Canadian cities. The relationship has grown across executive boardrooms, hybrid rooms, multipurpose environments and other workplace spaces while supporting greater consistency across locations.
27. Building a Nationwide AV Standard with Sobeys: In 2024, we partnered with Sobeys on more than 12 AV projects across Canada. Through discovery sessions and stakeholder engagement, we developed repeatable designs for executive rooms, training spaces, huddle rooms and town halls, creating a more consistent hybrid meeting experience across locations.
28. Supporting Hybrid Learning and Collaborative Research: Our work in education has included a range of approaches to teaching, learning and collaboration. At BCIT, we helped connect existing video technology with newer collaboration platforms to support campus-wide hybrid learning. Our work with York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering included an interactive virtual classroom, while at OCAD University we supported collaborative research spaces designed around accessibility and participation.
29. Technology Across the Campus Experience: Our education work also extends beyond traditional classrooms. At the York University Student Centre, technology helped create a more connected social and community space for students. Our work with a leading Canadian independent school has grown across more than 25 projects and two campuses, spanning classrooms, gymnasiums, a swimming pool, boardrooms, multipurpose spaces and shared areas.
30. Bringing the Cisco Innovation Centre to Life: At Cisco’s Toronto Innovation Centre, we helped create a flexible environment for demonstrations, training and global collaboration. The project brought together cross-platform videoconferencing, intelligent cameras, ceiling microphones, touch control, wireless content sharing, digital display pillars and a multi-panel video wall.
31. Creating an Immersive Digital Experience at B6: At Bentall GreenOak’s B6 building in Vancouver, we helped transform a large architectural surface into an immersive digital canvas combining a large-scale video wall, custom content and discreet audio. The installation also created a platform for showcasing work from local artists.
32. Designing Around Sagamok Anishnawbek’s Council Circle: We partnered with Sagamok Anishnawbek on a hybrid-ready Council Chamber built around the Nation’s circular Council layout and governance practices. Microsoft Teams Rooms, Televic Plixus and individual uniCOS units were brought together alongside custom nameplate overlays and VR design work to support the unique environment.
33. Standardizing 176 Rooms Across 40 Locations: For a leading Ontario utility, we designed and deployed AV across 176 rooms spanning 40 locations. The work ranged from smaller collaboration spaces to executive environments, with standardized room templates, centralized conferencing and remote monitoring helping make a large distributed environment easier to deploy and support.
34. Connecting Technology Across an Entire Headquarters: For a leading Canadian dairy provider, we helped create a Toronto headquarters where technology extends across huddle rooms, boardrooms, collaboration spaces, digital signage and larger Town Hall and streaming environments. The project also used CAD and VR planning and incorporated existing equipment where it continued to serve a purpose.
35. Supporting Infrastructure Teams Across Eight Locations: Since 2022, we’ve delivered more than 10 AV projects across eight locations for a leading Canadian infrastructure organization. Standardized meeting environments connect executive leadership, regional offices and project teams whose decisions can directly affect active job sites.
36. Building an 8K Centrepiece at GreenShield: At GreenShield’s downtown Toronto office, we helped deliver a 10-foot-high, 27-foot-wide video wall with 8K native resolution. People-tracking cameras add an interactive element, allowing content to respond as people move through the space. The installation is another chapter in our long-standing work with GreenShield.
37. Modernizing Secure Collaboration at RBC: Our work with RBC has included modernizing executive and meeting environments to create more intuitive, hybrid-ready collaboration while meeting the reliability and security needs of a major financial organization.
Learning and Staying Connected
38. Bringing Global AV Insights Back from ISE: Our teams attended Integrated Systems Europe in Barcelona in both 2025 and 2026, meeting with global manufacturers and partners while exploring developments across unified communications, LED, audio, workplace management, immersive AV and smart-building technology.
39. Staying Close to the Collaboration Technology Ecosystem: Enterprise Connect and Cisco WebexOne have given members of our team a closer look at developments in AI, collaboration platforms, room systems, security, governance and interoperability while strengthening relationships with the partners behind many of the technologies we work with every day.
40. Sending Our Largest Team Yet to InfoComm: In 2026, we sent our largest team to date to InfoComm in Las Vegas, with people representing Growth and Innovation, Design and Engineering, Customer Engagement, Project Delivery and Vendor Relations. It gave people from different parts of the organization a chance to explore new technologies, meet partners and bring ideas back into their own areas of work.
Supporting the Full Lifecycle
41. Managing More Than 200 Rooms Proactively: For a major Canadian financial institution, we introduced Remote Monitoring and Management across more than 200 meeting rooms nationwide. The program reduced average issue-detection time by 98.7%, lowered support-ticket volume by 75% and produced more than $100,000 in annual support and energy-related savings.
42. Embedding Technicians Across 135+ Spaces: Our Meeting Room Technician programs place dedicated AV specialists directly within customer workplaces. For one global financial client, our embedded technician team supports more than 135 spaces across Toronto, London and other global locations, including executive boardrooms, hybrid classrooms and mission-critical environments.
43. Expanding Our Work in Justice and Corrections: As our justice work grew, so did the range of environments we supported — from courtrooms to correctional facilities. That included purpose-built solutions such as Video Remand Cabinets, designed to support secure virtual appearances and communication, alongside courtroom collaboration, remote monitoring and ongoing AV support.
44. Seeing a Space Before It Exists: We’ve used immersive VR design reviews to let customers experience proposed spaces before construction or installation begins. Stakeholders can walk through layouts, assess displays and sightlines, review camera coverage and make decisions while changes are still much easier to make.
45. Connecting Old and New Technology: Not every modernization needs to begin with replacing everything. Across projects in education, energy and enterprise environments, we’ve helped customers connect existing video systems with newer platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Webex. For one Ontario energy provider, interoperability allowed existing systems to work with newer cloud collaboration platforms without requiring an immediate rip-and-replace.
46. Building Sustainability Into the AV Lifecycle: Our approach has included maintaining and reusing equipment where it still has value, replacing individual components where possible, reducing unnecessary site visits through remote support and directing end-of-life equipment toward responsible reuse or recycling. (Read more about our approach to a more sustainable AV future.)
47. Staying Involved After the Installation: Many of our customer relationships continue long after a room goes live. Help desk support, onsite technicians, preventative maintenance, remote monitoring and ongoing optimization all play a role in keeping spaces working as technology, workplaces and customer needs continue to change.
The Next Chapter with Ricoh
48. Beginning Our Next Chapter with Ricoh: On February 2, 2026, we announced that we had joined Ricoh Canada as a wholly owned subsidiary. It marked one of the biggest changes in our 50-year history and the beginning of a new chapter — one that allows us to build on what we’ve created while becoming part of a much larger organization. 
49. Preserving Who We Are: We continue to operate under our existing brand and leadership team, with customers working with the same people and teams they already know. As we move forward with Ricoh, we’re continuing to build on the relationships, experience and specialized expertise developed over the past 50 years.
50. Combining Our Expertise with Ricoh’s Scale: Our next chapter brings our AV design, integration, unified communications and managed workplace expertise together with Ricoh’s broader resources, digital capabilities and service coverage. Together, we can support more of the workplace technology lifecycle while continuing to bring the hands-on approach our customers know us for.
Looking Back — and Moving Forward
Our story has been shaped by five decades of people, projects, customer relationships and turning points.
Some of that history can be seen in the finished spaces. Some of it lives behind the scenes — in old project photos, equipment racks, design drawings, staging work, service calls and the people who have spent years learning how to make increasingly complex systems work.
Together, these milestones show just how much has changed, from our early Toronto roots and individual AV installations to projects spanning hundreds of rooms and locations across the country.
As we begin our next chapter with Ricoh Canada, we’re carrying that experience forward. Technology will keep changing, and the spaces where people work, learn and connect will change with it.
The next 50 years will build on the projects, relationships and people who brought us here.
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Building a virtual culture
How do you maintain and build a strong virtual culture in a pandemic?
By T. Smitten
Creating a Culture That Thrives
Over the last year a vast majority of organizations have transitioned to some form of a hybrid workspace, where team members have the flexibility to work remotely for most, if not all of the time.
Mark Bystrek is the head of ET Group’s People Development. He works to maintain an enriched company culture of human connection, co-creation and collaboration while using virtual technology. Through our expertise in virtual technology, ET Group has built an effective hybrid work environment and developed a company culture that thrives in it.
The Importance of Company Culture
Mark admits maintaining company culture isn’t easy, but he highlights the importance of it , “It’s going to be a challenge for all organizations, how do you connect and keep that team spirit together? Remotely? It’s something we can never let go of. We always have to keep that in paramount, no matter how busy we are. “
Mark and the ET Group leadership team have worked to find the right balance of technology, and collaboration to create a well-connected agile work environment for team members within virtual space. But how did ET Group do this?
Mark has has found the keys to successfully maintaining company culture are:
- Definition
- Sharing Your Culture
- Open Communication
Define Your Team Culture
At ET Group Mark and the leadership team have outlined the ET Group way, this is a document that is posted with the details of the company’s values, code of conduct and best practices. You want to make sure your company values are clearly outlined and easily accessible.
Share Your Team Culture
Post, post, post! Mark post videos, links, and announcements in the company’s web messenger channels for all staff to easily access. You want to make sure you are continuously sharing items the highlight, support and outline your company culture.
Open Communication is the Foundation
Communication is the foundation of a successful virtual team. Company culture should encourage communication and welcome feedback. ET Group has found using web messenger channels for announcements, surveys and to share info has been an effective for team members to share their ideas, reactions, and responses easily and openly. You want to create and allow for dialogue around your company culture posts and messages.
Ideas for Staying Connected
Communicating workplace culture in a virtual environment can seem a daunting task but it can be done using the technology we have today. It can take a little strategizing and some tech savvy but once that work is done, organizations can easily maintain organizational culture and real human connection amongst their members. Mark often will use WebEx (A web conference and message application) to share company updates. ET Group schedules company wide video conference meetings for all to attend. As part of the company culture the team is encouraged to use “video first” to hold “face to face” conversations to help maintain connection.
Mark is continually finding ways to develop virtual teams. He’s found the company to be far ahead of other companies working virtually in 2020 citing the various creative ways they have brought the team together. “We did weekly townhall meetings, we have a water cooler chat, – we were far ahead of a lot of organizations as such and that was keeping us connected.”
Mark also schedules virtual Team building events for the team such as:
- Virtual Team Lunches
- Virtual Escape Rooms/ Games Nights
- Virtual Company Townhalls / Team Connect Meetings
- Company Message Boards/ Communications Channels
Please see our company handbook where we share open information about how our company works together. This includes unique approaches, processes, and practices such as self-set salaries and decentralized decision making.
What we learned from our first design sprint
Over the last several years we have had a burning desire to build out our Advisory Services after many years of working with clients that need a fully baked A/V Strategy prior to undertaking massive office change. Many companies pull in A/V technology companies after offices are nearly complete. A/V Strategies are critical in the early stages, often informing how offices should be laid out and how technology can be used to help people collaborate, innovate, and be more efficient.
Chris Wheeldon from Two Raven Consulting Services was brought on board to help us undertake our Service Design Sprint. This is an interview we conducted with Chris on his experience hosting our sprint and what was learned.
What is a service design sprint?
The short answer is that it’s a way for a team of 4 to 7 people to create a new service for their business in just five days. It was designed to be a fast and inexpensive way to innovate.
The longer answer is to unpack the term into three parts:
Design is a people-oriented approach to creating. Done properly, it steps back and looks at the big picture realizing that the whole, is more than just the sum of the parts. Putting oneself into the shoes of others is a key element. In a workplace, these others include the occupants, the service support people and those who approve changes – financial, legal, managerial, etc. Thinking like a designer means considering an ecosystem of people, not just one or two.
“Service design, as the name suggests, specifically creates new services and improves existing ones. It thinks about the journey of the customer and the touch points that people encounter as they interact with a service, and looks for ways to improve the effectiveness and experience of those touch points. Service design changes negative or neutral experiences into positive ones by remembering that services are parts of a system and that people who use a service do so because they want to get something done.”
How does it differ from a more traditional process?
Design sprints differ in several ways from conventional methods of innovating.
They deliver results quickly – solutions can emerge in as little as a week – and rely on the members of the team to do the work of understanding the problem and creating a solution. Because of this they are much less expensive than the traditional consultant model. Most companies can learn how to run sprints on their own. This reduces the cost of innovation and dependency on outside consultants.
Design sprints can be an effective way to bond siloed departments around a common challenge. Their co-creative approach builds an enduring sense of ownership and empathy within the team – they understand one another better and care more about shared concerns.
Sprints enable companies to work like startups, who have what’s often called a “fail fast” mentality. What this really means is that through a sprint process they start with a minimal solution, learn quickly what works and what doesn’t and can easily adjust course to suit. This lets companies move towards the right outcome with smaller investments of time, energy and money.
Can you talk about the process you undertook with ET Group?
It started as a conversation – to understand what they wanted from a sprint and whether it was the right model for their stated objective of building an advisory business.
The sprint was run over four workshop days plus an interview period and looked something like this:
Defining the challenge
The first day was about framing the initial problem to be solved. The team started by sharing what each person knew about the challenge and its environment. This is the start of empathy within the team – sharing what everyone knows and assumes. This helped them decide who they needed to interview.
Insight-gathering interviews
The team conducted several interviews over the next week and a half, mostly with visionary leaders that they knew. They were exploring what these people experience now and what their struggles are when planning for AV services. The team amalgamated all this learning into an overall map of customer experiences, including the most painful parts.
Co-creation +first test + lean start-up
Building solutions came next. Each person on the team came up with a solution to address one or more pain points, then shared it with the others. Then, each person added their own thoughts. No critiquing was allowed. After everyone had shared their ideas, each person drew a final version of their solution. Then they all voted on what they liked about each proposed solution.
With these ideas fresh in their minds, the team developed their Minimum Valuable Service. The MVS is unique to Service Design Sprints and is a map of how they want the customer to interact with their new service. In contrast to other types of mapping – value stream, swim lane, etc. – it starts off by identifying what the customer is trying to achieve at each step, then describing the tools they are going to apply to meet those needs. It’s minimal because everything not essential to addressing a pain point is parked for later.
Finally, the team ran a test of the new service and gathered feedback. This is really an on-going process but at this early stage the question is whether the customer even values the solution. If not, then a new solution can be quickly built and tested with the information they already have on hand. By designing and running simple experiments that become more sophisticated over time, the team will get to the right solution that they would not have seen from the outset.
Was there an “a-ha” moment that led to surfacing their goal?
What’s interesting is that at the beginning the team doesn’t know exactly what their goal is – only a general one. The process encourages them to have questioning minds and discover those unmet customer needs that are the source of true innovation.
Why would you encourage others to try it?
Service design sprints are akin to project management in that they aren’t specific to any industry – they’re a way of looking at re-building services with an outward-facing, questioning mindset and using a team-based approach to create better ways of doing things. By applying an approach that uses experiments to produce the evidence that decision-makers need to perceive the value of an innovation, it can potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on a new initiative.