The National building was designed in 1907 by Daniel Burnham.
Photo credit: Blue Star Properties

MAY 14 I SHURE I TOUR
Shure Opens Chicago Office

Shure opened its 35,000-square-foot Chicago office in early March. Located at 125 S. Clark Street, the office takes up one floor of The National building, a 20-story office tower. More than 80 employees from Shure's sales and marketing, customer service and technical support divisions have relocated from the company's corporate headquarters to the new office.

"There were two primary reasons for us to make this move downtown," global marketing director Mike Lohman said during a tour with Music Inc. "One, we were outgrowing our space in our corporate headquarters in Niles, [Illinois]. "[Two], we've got microphones that you really can't appreciate until you experience them in their natural habitat."

Global marketing director of digital content Mike Lohman and global media relations manager Allison Dolegowski

The customer experience center serves as a demonstration space for Shure's corporate clients and it includes displays of new products, such as the MXA310 Table Array Microphones and MXA910 Ceiling Array Microphones.

Customer experience center
Photo credit: Shure

"We can bring in customers for a demo; have them call some of their colleagues and let the folks on the other end experience how good they sound," Lohman said. "The [Voice Lift System] picks up everything — like papers shuffling or a pen dropping — but the great thing is that through software, you can direct the microphones to pick up what you want to hear, which is the people speaking so that you end up having a great sounding conference call."

Shure's listening bar in the lobby
Photo credit: Shure

The new location also features a hands-on product training room, a listening bar, casual meeting spaces, as well as a video production studio.

Shure's engineering department will remain at the NIles location.

— By Kasia Fejklowicz