Strategy in TECH...
Azione Unlimited announced that it has elected Savant Senior Vice President of Services & Customer Operations Angela Larson to its advisory board. Unique to the buying group scene, Azione’s advisory board consists of five dealer members and five vendor members who all work together with the goal of “creating, expanding, and implementing the organization’s mission.”
Parasound announced this week that it has hired well-regarded audio engineer Darren Myers to its team. An expansion of the company’s engineering group, it struck me immediately that with this announcement new owner David Sheriff was already delivering on his promise to expand the company’s product design and engineering team.
Origin Acoustics announced this week that Jeff Coombs, founder of respected brands James Loudspeaker (now owned by Sonance) and Ambisonic Systems (now owned by Origin Acoustics) died on Monday, February 20, 2023. Coombs, age 69, passed away from cancer surrounded by his loving family.
Parasound announced today that it has appointed Larry Bennett, a well-known audio industry veteran, as its Vice President of Sales and Marketing. The company says that this is the first step in new owner David Sheriff’s plan to revitalize the company.
AAMP Global announced today that Alex Camara, CEO of AudioControl for the last decade, will leave the company “to pursue new opportunities.” This change in Camara’s status will be effective on March 1, 2023.
Robert R. (Bob) Gullo, founder, President, and Chief Creative Officer of influential East Coast integrator Electronic Design Group, Inc. (EDG) died on Wednesday, February 1, 2023. According to several sources, the cause of death was cancer. A creative, energetic promoter of the then-nascent custom installation, now custom integration, industry, Gullo played an influential…even outsized…role in the development of the industry and was an oft-cited inspiration for many others to follow his path and embrace the industry.
Sonance announced this week that it has appointed well-known manufacturer sales representative firm Strateres as its representative for the New England region. This agreement includes the representation of all of the company’s brands, including Sonance, James Loudspeaker, and IPORT.
After several years of dizzying growth, the technology sector is now experiencing a notable downturn, as the post-COVID era has brought a combination of higher prices (inflation) and lower demand. In response, 2022 saw significant job cuts at major Big Tech brands that have continued on into 2023. That includes this Wednesday when Microsoft announced it was cutting 10,000 jobs – after a 1,000 job cut in October 2022 – another big blow to Tech.
But what about the more specific segments like consumer electronics and custom integration?
Trinnov Audio announced on Tuesday that it has created a new position at the company of Customer Support Manager and appointed Chrisanne Rhodes to the role. For a company offering highly sophisticated technologies and products, this new role is likely to be an extremely important addition to the company’s support of all levels of the market from dealers to end-users.
Sonance announced today that it has made tremendous progress in building out its new company-direct sales structure for the residential channel in Canada. Within days of launching the shift away from a national distributor based approach to an HQ-driven network, the company says it has already signed up multiple new manufacturer sales representative firms in key Canadian regions.
