Strategy in TECH...
This week, AudioControl said it has awarded Market Share, a manufacturer sales representative firm, its 2020 Rep of the Year for their home audio products division. Market Share is based in the Pacific Northwest and covers the entire region, including Alaska.
Vanco continues to impress me with their wide assortment of solution products needed and used by integrators every day. But they aren’t just an outlet for useful tools and gadgets – they also know how to push the envelope in core product performance. No better example of that exists than their latest announcement of the launch of a new line of Ultra High Speed HDMI 2.1 cables.
These cables aren’t just fast…they are certified fast by HDMI themselves.
By now you most likely have heard that Fry’s Electronics, a large electronics retail chain that featured big-format store footprints and often dramatic designs in a variety of wacky themes, has officially closed their doors. Since almost all of their stores were west of the Mississippi River – 31 in total across nine states at its high water mark – most of those bemoaning this loss are westerners…especially Californians.
But the fact is this is hardly surprising news as Fry’s has been basically a zombie for at least two years now.
That an exposition company lost money in 2020 is not surprising. That an exposition company (Emerald) that has cancellation insurance to cover lost revenues on every show they own that was cancelled during the year – and still lost $633.6 million in fiscal 2020 – is surprising.
Since Strata-gee began tracking the story of our stressed-to-the-brink supply chain last year, the situation has only become more dire. Not only has the pandemic caused a once-in-a-hundred-years impact on the supply chain, but adding to that whipsaw from the collapse of demand to then off-the-charts demand, we can now add fires, earthquakes, and snowstorms to the mix.
It all adds up to a concerning level of stress to our supply chain that will impact product availability in multiple product segments, including residential and commercial technology.
Crestron formally announced today (Wednesday) the details on the 2021 iteration of its famous Crestron Masters training event, a highly popular deep-dive training initiative offered to “the AV industry’s premier programmers, designers, and salespeople.” All the cool kids will be there, and you should be too. See more below…
Expo promoters are truly itching to get their industry back on track after getting absolutely trounced by COVID-19 quarantines and shutdowns in 2020. And from the looks of it, that description includes Integrated Systems Europe (ISE), a longtime international integration industry event taking place this year in Barcelona, Spain, for the first time and running from June 1 – June 4, 2021.
On Wednesday after the close of markets, Sonos announced that it had turned in a record first quarter in their current 2021 fiscal year with revenues up, profits up, long-term debt down and new records set in several performance categories. In fact, actual performance came in so much stronger than the company had originally anticipated, that after just this first quarter of the year they announced they were revising and raising their guidance for their anticipated revenues and profits for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Amazon.com Inc.’s secretive tech innovation development center, called Lab126, is said to be working on a more robust, step-up smart home control solution designed to be mounted into the wall, in a bid to take share in the custom integration channel. The move, first reported by Bloomberg News, is designed to take on major players such as SnapAV’s Control4 and other “professionally installed smart home control” providers.
At the end of January, Savant held their popular annual Integrator Summit – its 15th summit ever…but its first such summit held online as a virtual one. In a Zoom meeting with industry media following the summit, President J.C. Murphy recapped the event which is held privately with only Savant integrators in the room.
Savant had a lot to talk about.
