Strategy in TECH...
SnapAV announced today that it will begin distributing Sonos wireless music systems beginning next month in October. The company says it will offer the entire line – including the Sonos Port, Sonos Move, and Sonos One SL – as part of its extensive assortment of gear targeted to the professional custom integrator.
A new AV-over-IP solution popular in the pro channel is launching at CEDIA Expo – Dante by Audinate. According to the company’s announcement, Dante “dominates the world of professional audio.” The company also claims that it is rapidly being adopted by several manufacturers of residential gear as well. A fact which brings them to CEDIA.
The assimilation of the custom integration industry by the once-reviled, now embraced soundbar is almost complete. And on the advent of another CEDIA Expo, yet another round of announcements of new soundbar products came rolling out. While this fact is now an accepted reality, what is remarkable is that some of these new soundbars are from companies that no reasonable person would have predicted would enter the category just a few short years ago.
Savant announced this week that it has broadened access to more of its models through its existing partnership with the AVAD & WAVE distribution centers across the country. This expansion is for all of the existing 25 distribution centers that AVAD/WAVE have throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Sonance announced today that they have entered into an agreement to acquire Minden, NV-based James Loudspeaker. This is the first major acquisition by Sonance since the purchase of Sound Advance in 2005, and is truly a marriage of two companies with a strong resonance in their approach to the custom integration industry.
MQA, a leading provider of technology that helps deliver music that is authenticated to be master recording quality but with a small enough file structure that can be easily streamed or downloaded, announced today new partners, products and music in time for the 2019 CEDIA Expo show in Denver, CO next week. Visitors to their booth at CEDIA can expect to see the new products and audition the new music.
“You are WAY too excited about this news,” Jason Sloan, Sonance Chief Sales Officer joked when first telling me about their rebranding plans a few weeks ago. But I was excited – these plans put forth a major shift in the position of the Dana Innovations, Sonance, iPort, & Trufig brands. To Sloan and CEO Ari Supran, this was more of a refocus than a rebranding – a return to their largest and most beloved brand after a long and at times frustrating period of trying to establish another overarching entity.
But to me, it was much more than that.
San Clemente, CA-based Dana Innovations announced today that it is launching a major rebranding effort, the results of which will better reflect their business initiatives, clarify the meaning and positioning of their various brands, and assert new brand “pillars” to better convey who they are and what they represent. It will also reassert the prominence of the Sonance brand.
The company will no longer be known as Dana Innovations thanks to a “back to the future” decision to elevate Sonance – the brand under which they were founded. Company management has granted Strata-gee exclusive access to this story, including to behind-the-scenes information revealing the depth and detail of the thinking, discussions, and even arguments of the last year and a half or so that were behind this major – and some would say somewhat risky – decision.
AudioControl said today they will introduce the greatest number of new products they have ever launched at a show at the upcoming 2019 CEDIA Expo taking place next month in Denver, CO. A specialty electronics supplier of high-performance residential, automotive, and commercial products, the company will show all-new home theater products, 70-volt amplifiers, and more.
This is Part 2 of Strata-gee’s series on my recent visit to Crestron. In some ways, as much fun as I had at their Research Center, I can almost say it was eclipsed (if only slightly) by a visit to, at that point, their yet-to-be-officially launched factory that was actually a couple of miles away from the main Crestron campus at a facility in the state of New York.
They call it their “Factory of the Future,” and after touring it…I can see why.
