The ethereal sounds of Steven Spielberg's ET at Adelaide's Hindley Street cinema and the thriving synth of the Flashdance soundtrack at Sydney's George Street theatre, were first heard through Krix speakers.

The global financial crisis

Exports took off in the 1990s, but then the global financial crisis, which first killed offshore demand and then sent the Australia dollar skyrocketing, almost crippled the business.

Krix was forced to streamline its production and business approach to remain competitive.

"We developed new software programs for our CNC machines to make the products more efficient, better and stronger. We improved all sorts of things and then we started pushing ourselves harder to develop new markets," said Scott Krix's younger brother Ashley, the company's sales director.

"In a way we're glad we went through it, although we don't want to go through it again, because we learnt so much."

Krix will not disclose revenue but Ashley Krix said every year since 2015 had been its best on record, with exports increasing from 30 per cent of revenue in 2015 to half of turnover today.

The export renaissance has been driven by the Middle East, thanks to a combination of luck and the durability of a particular set of Krix's handmade speakers.


Old speakers, new markets

Krix had sent sound systems to four Greater Union cinemas in Dubai through its local contacts at that chain in the late 1990s, then heard nothing more of it for 15 years.

Then the region's VOX cinema chain approached Krix in 2012, because its technical manager was the same Australian ex-pat who had been involved with the Greater Union sale.

VOX staff visited the original Dubai cinemas and, as Ashley Krix recalls, found the old Krix systems still in excellent working condition.

"If they'd fallen apart, they wouldn't have wanted our product again," he said.

The resulting partnership with VOX led to Krix installing systems in more than 300 cinemas across the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon and Qatar in the past three years, with another 200 planned for the next two years.

China also emerged as an important market, Ashley Krix said, with about 30 cinemas carrying the Australian sound systems.

Krix is self-funded and still based in Adelaide's southern suburbs. Its 25 staff include the five Krix brothers and four people devoted solely to research and development.