Strategy in TECH...
Always one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving is one of the few times where it is socially acceptable to completely stuff your face with a big, delicious meal, and veg out on the sofa watching football all day long. What could be better than that??
PS Audio, a specialty manufacturer of affordable audiophilia, announced today that it is suspending sales of its products through local specialty retail stores and online retailers to focus on direct sales only. While the company has always sold products directly to end-users, it had a complementary channel of approximately 65 local specialty dealers, and a few online retailers supporting the brand as well.
When Strata-gee broke the news last week on Bravas Group being sold to a private equity firm, a buzz erupted around the industry as different constituencies tried to digest the meaning of this development. While other groups of integrators have made similar efforts in the past, this type of roll-up has usually failed. If this attempt by Bravas works, just what would that mean for the CI industry in general. And is this an emerging competitor to buying groups?
I surveyed top buying group executives to get their take on just what this move by Bravas meant for the industry…and for them.
Have a Happy Memorial Day and take time to remember all those who sacrificed so much to preserve and protect the freedoms all Americans enjoy…
KB Home, one of the largest home builders in America, has unveiled a concept home of the future they call KB Home ProjeKt: Where tomorrow Lives, that features both smart home and integrated health and wellness technologies. Originally shown at this years Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, KB is announcing that many of the features of this futuristic home is available now at a new community in Irvine, CA called Genoa at Orchard Hills.
Emerald Expositions Events, Inc. (NYSE: EEX), owner of the CEDIA Expo and many other shows, reported their fiscal 2018 fourth quarter and full year results on Thursday and it was a dramatically mixed picture that suggests the company is still working through problems on many of its largest shows. Revenues in both periods increased nicely, largely thanks to acquisitions – but the company reported a large net loss as it was forced to take an impairment charge against earnings to write down the value of some of their shows as carried on their books.
I recently visited Russound up in Newmarket, New Hampshire, a bucolic community of less than 9,000 residents that is rich in history – it was established in 1727 – and situated near the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The town’s rich history is an allegory for Russound itself, a company that is also rich in history – established in 1967 – but finds itself streaming into the future.
As part of my visit, the company gave me a sneak peek at what it is showing at ISE in Amsterdam this week.
NAD Electronics, the specialty manufacturer of primarily custom integration products, announced today it will show a new multi-channel distribution amplifier targeted squarely at the custom integration channel at next week’s Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) show in Amsterdam. Called the CI 8-120 DSP, this amp is packed with attractive features in a compact, easy-to-install package.
