Strategy in TECH...
In yet another twist in the long and winding saga of Bowers & Wilkins (B&W), it was announced late Friday that the company has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Sound United, the parent company of several audio brands such as Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, HEOS, Classé, and Boston Acoustics.
Boulder, CO-based PS Audio, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketer of higher end audio electronics products, announced this week that they are launching a record company called Octave Records. The company says Octave “is dedicated to preseving the art of high-fidelity recordings and compensating musicians fairly.”
It seemed as if 2020 was destined to represent a year of hardship, illness, and death in the wake of a still simmering COVID-19 pandemic – not to mention its impact on the economy. Then, a white police officer in Minnesota was filmed with his knee on the neck of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, who died. That officer, along with three others present, was charged with murder. And a fuse was lit that erupted into street protests which were largely peaceful with some acts of violence in cities around the country.
This scenario – white police officer killing an unarmed black man – is an all-too familiar one here in the United States…but this time, people took to the streets both here and around the world. And a growing list of powerful brands, including a few in our industry, are stepping forward to take a stance on the issue.
Wow, surprising numbers from a new research report from Parks Associates shows that control system adoption jumped a full 38% in 2019 as compared to 2018. That’s a really big jump in a really short period of time.
No doubt about it, Crestron is on a roll. They have recently had a series of announcements – not of the ho-hum type, but of the more meaningful, perhaps industry-changing type. Now we learn about another new partnership being announced – Crestron is working with Logitech and Zoom to deliver HomeTime, an upgraded home video conferencing solution perfect for this strange new work-from-home (WFH) world in which we all find ourselves.
On Wednesday, we learned that Savant Systems Inc. (Savant), has acquired the lighting business from none other than the mighty GE. Terms of the transaction were not released, but the Wall Street Journal reports that “the transaction valued the unit at around $250 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.” GE has been a major lighting provider for over a hundred years.
Telling me, “I’m just taking some time to do those things I’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” Sandy Gross, renowned² founder of three major speaker brands (Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, GoldenEar Technology), has stepped down as President Emeritus from his most recent one – GoldenEar. In a telephone interview this week, Gross shares with Strata-gee readers his reasons for making this announcement now, and reminisces on his nearly 50-year career building three popular speaker brands now in the homes of many thousands of consumers.
OK…I don’t want to overstate this, but over the last few years, integration industry giants Crestron and Lutron have been…shall we say…a little competitive with each other. Maybe not directly so, but certainly there have been skirmishes over several lines of products. Over time, the two companies’ line extensions have been progressively encroaching more and more into each other’s territory.
Well, that’s over now, as Creston announced last week that it has forged “an alliance” with Lutron – integrating several of the lighting company’s products into the Crestron Home ecosystem. Dealers who sell both brands are undoubtedly rejoicing – Hallelujah! Peace has come!
I’ve been saying for a while now that really, really tough economic data was coming. Even though it was obvious to many of us that the economy was crashing – thanks to COVID-19 – it takes time for backward-looking statistics to catch up. Well, now they’re starting to catch up and with overall residential housing construction starts dropping an eye-popping 30.2% in April…they are ugly.
But read on to see why one piece of data seems to suggest that a housing turnaround make be lurking in the near future – or is even already here…
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.
