Strategy in TECH...
Home Technology Specialists Nationwide (HTSN), part of the Nationwide Marketing Group’s stable of dealer/integrator buying organizations, announced today that it is rebranding its group, signifying an all-new image and an expanded mission to welcome an underserved class of dealers as part Nationwide’s “path to 1,000” members. HTSN will now be known as Oasys Residential Technology Group (ORTG).
On Thursday, Azione Unlimited wrapped up its spring conference, this year known as the Didactic Dovecote in the Desert, which took place in Scottsdale, AZ from March 7th to March 9th. Although this is the first Azione event I have personally attended, it was an impressive display of solidarity, sharing, learning, and planning with a lot of enthusiastic participation by the organization’s members and vendors.
Perhaps most importantly, as part of the Nationwide Marketing Group’s family of companies, the association announced two major new initiatives: the Azione Academy, an online self-paced education program; and the Drive to 1,000 collective membership drive. This initiative by Nationwide is their plan to drive collective group membership to 1,000 members overall.
CEDIA has launched a new workforce acquisition initiative called CEDIA NextGen: Smart Home Career Toolkit. Designed to provide integrators the tools they need to improve and expand their outreach to attract new candidates to the smart home industry, the association has created an impressive series of multimedia tools to grease the skids in getting new recruits through integrators’ doors.
WiSA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: WISA) has been on a wild and rocky ride over the last few days as it scrambled to head off a delisting action by the Nasdaq stock exchange designed to force its stock listing off the exchange. At issue, the company’s business struggles that contributed to its declining stock bid prices have put it in violation of specific exchange rules governing maintained minimum pricing levels. This led the exchange to begin the delisting process, which WiSA appealed in order to buy itself some time.
The company then quickly embarked on a strategy – a mad dash really – to inflate its stock price artificially via a reverse stock split. But this tactic appears to have failed to impress investors, causing its stock bid price to collapse like an out-of-control toboggan ride down a cliff.
The trials and travails of WiSA Technologies (NASDAQ: WISA) appear to be continuing, if not accelerating, as the company said it has received a new notification from the Nasdaq stock exchange informing the company that its stock has violated yet another rule of the exchange, triggering a new instant delisting process. And this all took place in the wake of it just having won an additional 180-day extension period to try and cure a previous violation of a different rule from 2022. So what happens now?
CEDIA held its annual member meeting just a couple of weeks ago in mid-December. The version offered this year was decidedly different than those in the past. This is likely due to the professional association management style of the organization’s new Global President and CEO Daryl Friedman.
CEDIA and staff offered members a slick marketing package of largely pre-recorded content and carefully controlled live content. But was it too slick? Did it really brief members with a balanced picture of both the successes and the challenges that CEDIA is facing? Or was it just a form of advertisement for the association?
WiSA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: WISA), a developer of spatial, wireless sound technology for smart devices and home entertainment systems, announced recently that it has received an additional 180-day extension of the compliance period by the NASDAQ stock market. The purpose of the extension is to give the company additional time, until June 20, 2023, to regain compliance with NASDAQ’s minimum bid rule.
WiSA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: WISA), “a developer of spatial, wireless sound technology for smart devices and next-generation home entertainment systems,” announced recently that it has successfully closed on a $7.6 million public offering…breathing new life into the struggling organization. The offering was made pursuant to an S-1 filing with the SEC, which declared the registration as effective on November 29, 2022.
About five seconds into our phone call, before I even had a chance to explain myself, AVIXA CEO David Labuskes suddenly burst out: “Oh! I know why you called me!” This reaction caught me off-guard as we’d never spoken before. But when he went on to tell me why he thought I had called him, he was right on the money. It was a clue that he is a deeper thinker than many executives I reach out to, and as we spoke further, that impression only got stronger.
Another surprise was that Labuskes knew me (and Strata-gee) better than I realized…
Emerald Expositions (NYSE: EEX), the national B2B trade show company that owns CEDIA Expo, CE Pro, and Commercial Integrator surprised the industry at the recent CEDIA Expo 2022 by abruptly announcing that next year they will be “co-locating” a show for commercial integrators at the same time and in the same facility. Reaction to this announcement was…to put it mildly…mixed. Is Emerald trying to imitate the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) show – an event for both residential and commercial businesses – by launching an ISUS (Integrated Systems United States) event??
Do you wonder why there was a mixed reaction to Emerald’s move? Read on…
