Strategy in TECH...
SnapAV announced today that it has engineered an all-new version of their popular OvrC remote monitoring and management system (RMM). This new version, launched in the wake of their acquisition of Control4 last year with its competitive Pakedge networking, as well as BakPak and Ihiji remote monitoring solutions, is said to combine the best of all of these systems.
Emerald Holding Inc., formerly Emerald Expositions Events, Inc. (NYSE:EEX), has released their fiscal 2020 first quarter results and the organization makes no bones about it – it has been hit, and hit hard, by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company announced that in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 – the period ending March 31, 2020 – sales declined 27.4% to $99.7 million and the company had the biggest net loss in its history, losing $570.1 million.
Joel Davis of JD Events (JDE) announced a little more than a week ago that AXPONA, the high-end audio exposition scheduled to take place in Schaumburg, IL in August, is now canceled. Citing the health and safety of attendees, Davis’ letter said “we do not feel 100% confident that we can provide a safe environment for all of our customers and press…” But in a separate communication to exhibitors, Davis informed them the that JDE was in dire financial straits and unable to return their deposits – further angering the still unhappy AXPONA exhibitors.
Sonos Inc. announced Wednesday the results of their fiscal second quarter, a quarter that CEO Patrick Spence called “challenging.” The company saw a double-digit sales decline of 17% to $175.1 million from $210.2 million in the same quarter in 2019. Worse, net losses more than doubled to $52.3 million – 129% worse than the net loss of $22.8 million in Q2 last year.
Still, Spence sounded upbeat in a letter to investors and says he is “confident that the actions we are taking today will set us up for long-term success and the continued tremendous opportunity ahead.”
Crestron Electronics announced today that it is returning to the CEDIA Expo show for the first time since Strata-gee broke the news of their surprising exit from the event four years ago in 2016. This announcement marks a triumphant return for a company that has seen its residential business soar over the last few years, particularly with the launch of their Crestron Home software solution.
Today, Savant Systems launched its latest remote control, the Pro Remote X2, which it says offers users “an unprecedented smart home experience from a hand-held remote.” Along with this, the company is simultaneously launching an aggressive new advertising campaign targeted at consumers and designed to drive business to Savant integrators.
Now completed, Strata-gee’s COVID-19 Impact on Tech II Survey is a follow-up study to Strata-gee’s original survey, COVID-19 Impact on Tech. If you haven’t read those original results yet, I would suggest you start there by clicking on this link as it will add context to the follow-up survey discussed here. And this time we learn that things have definitely changed in just five short weeks. In a nutshell, survey respondents report that the impact of COVID-19 this time around is much greater than in March.
The DaVinci Group (TDG), a specialty supplier of custom integration gear including architectural speakers, amplifiers and more, has taken extraordinary steps to offer their dealers responsibly sourced personal protection equipment (PPE), such that their work crews can safely continue to access job sites and clients’ homes fully protected. An example of creative thinking, TDG used their sourcing prowess to find a reliable resource for a range of PPE gear that is desperately needed by integrators…many of whom report a lack of local supply.
Crestron Electronics has launched a handy new Configurator for their Creston Home system that gives integrators the ability to pre-configure systems in-house prior to deployment. This new configurator helps integrators efficiently setup and test their Crestron Home systems configuration and cuts deployment time dramatically.
Strata-gee reported last week that a group of 20 exhibitors had written an open letter to petition Joel Davis of JD Events – the producer of the AXPONA high-end audio show – calling for the cancellation of that event. The exhibitors making that call included some of the more prominent names in the specialty audio community – and their argument for a cancellation was well-articulated in their petition.
Now, several dozen more exhibitors have joined that original group to also call for its cancellation.
