Some of the "golden moments" of my career are when I am invited to a trade seminar. More often than not, these are judged afterwards by how good the food, drink and snacks were. Occasionally, however, the lecture content can eclipse the hospitality.

Recently, I had the good fortune to attend a technical seminar by Metz. Now before I hear you say "Metz who?", Metz is a small German family company that has been producing TVs since 1951. Its products are marketed locally by Audio Products Group Pty Ltd through 50 dealers around Australia. In fact, I had attended another course held by them in 1999, with the same German lecturer who has a real sense of humour!

What makes this all the more amazing is that Metz is one of only about five TV manufacturers left in Europe and the only one besides Loewe left in Germany. So how does a small company like Metz survive while much larger competitors go to the wall? I can only speculate that their small size makes overheads low. In addition, they have a relatively small but up-market, high-quality product range and the company is customer and service orientated.