Strategy in TECH...
Premium networking systems and services specialist WhyReboot announced this week that they have set up a national network of independent specialty manufacturers sales representatives. The company has appointed nine top rep firms across the country, expanding their local presence for both sales and support.
Melrose PLC, the private equity turnaround expert that purchased the entirety of Nortek back in 2016, unceremoniously let it slip in a bullet point of a report on financial results, that it has found a buyer for the last remaining piece of the Nortek puzzle they have struggled to turn around over the years. Although they did not name the buyer, Melrose says a contract has been signed for a $285 million deal – remarkably low considering all the brands included in this transaction.
Snap One Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SNPO) announced the results of their fiscal second quarter, the period that ended June 25, 2021. This is the first official report to investors for the newly public company, and Snap One executives were excited to talk about all the positive milestones they achieved in the quarter – first and foremost, launching a successful public offering. Aside from a technical glitch in their conference call with analysts, it was all good news from the company.
Moody’s Investors Service, one of the top global credit and bond rating agencies, announced last week that it has raised the credit rating on Wirepath LLC (dba Snap One) based on its successful completion of an initial public offering of shares of the company’s stock. This is good news for Snap One and potential investors.
Last Friday, Amazon founder and now former CEO Jeff Bezos woke up the richest man in the world. He has been the richest man in the world for quite some time now. Yet when he went to bed Friday evening, he was no longer. And the reason that’s so should serve as a warning to you and all of us in the tech biz in 2021.
Snap One Holdings Corp (Snap One) – formerly SnapAV – has filed an S-1 registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in preparation for an initial public offering (IPO) of its stock on a public exchange. In this S-1 filing, we learn much about the company’s current position and what its plan is to grow the operation to even loftier heights.
Ever since Crestron launched Crestron Home it became obvious that there had been a sea change in the company’s go-forward strategy. The new Home operating system was easier to program and deploy, more visually attractive for end-users, and more clearly differentiated from their more robust high-end programming solutions. But also, the company’s style of operation changed as well, from doing it all in-house to opening itself up to partnerships.
Now we learn of two more in a long line of technology partnerships as the company continues to evolve and propel Crestron Home down the path to becoming the dominant smart home OS in the industry. The new partnerships are with Josh.ai and Somfy, both well-regarded technology players in the custom integration channel.
STRATA-GEE – This is the fourth and final installment of our contemplation on the controversy swirling around MQA. I want to start by thanking Bill Leebens for the many, many…MANY hours he spent interviewing, speaking with his editor (me), writing, and rewriting these pieces. It was a lot of work that for him, I’m afraid, will largely be thankless, as one side or the other will decry his work. At the same time, Bill and I end up in a slightly different place and you can see some of my thoughts at the end of his piece. But none of that takes away from the herculean effort this topic represented and I am eternally grateful to Bill Leebens for his thoughtful approach.
Voxx International has announced that they have finalized their agreement to partner with Sharp Corporation to acquire the Home Entertainment Division of Onkyo – news that Strata-gee readers knew about last week. The news comes as a result of Onkyo shareholders voting last Friday to approve the sale of the company to Voxx’s subsidiary known as the Premium Audio Company. Not much was new here on the Onkyo front, as we already told you about the deal only covering the Onkyo and Integra brands. However, we did learn some more interesting details on the company’s attempts relative to the Pioneer and Pioneer Elite brands.
Recently, in a special Zoom presentation for Strata-gee by SnapAV executives Jeff Hindman (Chief Revenue Officer) and Kordon Vaughn (VP Marketing), I was about to learn about the company’s new brand strategy going forward. Ever since SnapAV acquired their largest division, Control4, there has been much speculation about how to address the market with two strong, well-known brands. I joked, “So what’s it going to be…ControlAV or Snap4?
It turns out I wasn’t that far off, as the executives shared with me that they would be rebranding the organization as Snap One.
