Strategy in TECH...
In the days leading up to the recent CEDIA Expo in Dallas, Nationwide Marketing Group, one of the largest buying groups in the U.S., announced that former ProSource VP Andy Orozco would be joining Nationwide as its Senior Vice President of Custom Integration. That news grabbed my attention as it came less than a year after Nationwide’s acquisition of one of the top custom integration buying groups, Azione Unlimited, back in October 2021.
Nationwide Marketing Group (Nationwide) continues to hit the accelerator pedal as it seeks to build upon its plans to expand the custom integration segment for the group, first indicated when it acquired another CI-centric group, Azioned Unlimited, back in October of 2021. Now Nationwide is announcing that Andy Orozco, a former top (and long-time) executive with ProSource, has joined the organization as its Senior Vice President of Custom Integration.
This week, ProSource announced that it was expanding its leadership team by adding well-known retail industry executive Jim Pearse as its new President. The duties of the president were once part of CEO Dave Workman’s role, but the group says this management team expansion is now necessary to support the group’s continued growth.
Azione Unlimited announced today that it has partnered with Nationwide Marketing Group, a group representing more than 14,000 storefronts made up largely of appliance, furniture, and electronics retailers. While Nationwide may not be an immediately obvious choice as a partner for Azione, the custom integration specialist group maintains that it makes perfect sense as they say integrators must be able “to address all of their clients’ needs, no matter the room in the home.”
On Wednesday, Emerald emailed a letter to exhibitors that appears to be an attempt to stem the outflow of companies that have canceled their participation in the CEDIA Expo 2021 – 42 brands according to Strata-gee’s tracking – and encourage those exhibitors that have not yet abandoned the show from leaving. Signed by Emerald executives Brian Pagel and Jason McGraw, the letter declared “the show is still very much on as planned.”
A few months ago, I unexpectedly became unemployed. There had been occasions in my career when it was clear that I needed to get the hell out of Dodge —but this wasn’t one of them.
A new job would not appear overnight; that was obvious. I was up to my ears in fearful self-absorption.
Then things changed…and the world was in upheaval.
Sound United LLC, the parent company to brands such as Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, Classé, and Boston Acoustics, announced on Tuesday that they have joined forces with Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA), a leading trade consortium of custom integration dealers. This new partnership will expand availability of some of the top specialty audio brands throughout North America, thanks to HTSA’s extensive network of top dealers.
ProSource wrapped up their annual Summit, this year known as Summit 2020 on March 11th. The event had barely wrapped up when within days many other organizations began canceling their events due to the rapidly propagating coronavirus epidemic sweeping across the U.S. ProSource barely got their event completed just as health authorities around the country began restricting gatherings such as conferences like theirs which congregate a lot of people in one place at one time.
And now we know that there was another attendee at the ProSource Summit 2020 – coronavirus COVID-19, an uninvited guest, visited the group’s annual event..
SnapAV, a leading provider of custom integration brands and products, announced today that it has acquired Volutone, a respected California-based distributor with seven locations throughout California and Nevada. The move expands SnapAV’s local touch points in a key market, a strategy that first emerged with their earlier acquisition of another large regional distributor in March of this year, Chicago’s Allnet Distributing.
As we reported last week, the world learned that the private equity group that owns AVAD has made another deal, acquiring Houston, TX-based WAVE Electronics, another major custom integration distribution company. After an initial ripple of excitement over the deal, most of us went back to our daily lives – looking at this deal as nothing more than just another private equity acquisition. But there may be more here than meets the eye…
