Strategy in TECH...
On Monday, a federal holiday, VOXX International’s Premium Audio Company (PAC) announced that Oscar Bernardo, its Chief Operating Officer, left the company on December 31, 2022. The company says – in this kind of strange, after-the-fact announcement – that Bernardo left to relaunch the Mirage speaker brand. Mirage is owned by VOXX International, which acquired it in 2006.
Hop on I-70 and head East out of Indianapolis for around forty-five minutes or so and you’ll arrive in Spiceland, a quiet, rural village of under 1,000 people that with its brick church, quaint bandstand in the park, and a picturesque running stream, feels as country-style homey as you could imagine. What brought me to Spiceland? I came to visit the town’s largest employer and Henry County’s (named for patriot Patrick Henry) second-largest employer – Draper, a manufacturer of leading projection screens and roller shades.
Draper, Inc., a leading manufacturer of shades and projection screens, announced this week that it is continuing to turn up the heat on the residential channel by appointing a sales team focused solely on the residential market. This new team will zero in on resi with the company’s extensive line of shading, projection screens, and other AV-related gear.
Parasound is a unique company. A long-time specialty segment stalwart, the company has been delighting audio enthusiasts for more than forty years! That is no small achievement when you consider the twists and turns of the specialty segment over that time frame.
And the credit for that success is largely due to the commitment to quality – and, frankly, just the bulldog temerity – of founder and CEO Richard Schram. So it is a development worthy of note that, yesterday, Schram announced his retirement from the company and its sale to a new owner.
Savant Systems, Inc. (Savant) announced on Monday it’s Savant Power division has partnered with heavyweight energy solutions and services provider Sunnova Energy International, Inc. (Sunnova) (NYSE: NOVA). This is the kind of deal that can turbocharge Savant’s growth in the energy monitoring and control segment – a segment in which they are already a leader in the custom integration space.
Snap One (NASDAQ: SNPO), a major player in the custom integration/smart home channel, recently reported its fiscal 2022, third-quarter results last month, showing both revenue gains and reduced losses. The company says sales are slowing and they revised their forward-looking guidance for yearly performance downward.
Since this earnings report was released, the value of Snap One stock has really struggled, dropping 19% and setting several new 52-week lows.
This has to rank up there with one of the most spectacular product failures in tech history. According to leaked documents acquired by Insider, Amazon’s “Worldwide Digital” unit – the unit that includes Echo smart speakers, Alexa voice technology, and Prime Video streaming – lost over $3 billion in just the first quarter of this year. It is on pace to lose $10 billion for the year and the company has announced its largest layoffs ever – cutting more than 10,000 jobs…many targeted to hit this division specifically…as Amazon reorients their business strategy.
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…
Sources are telling Strata-gee that movie media server specialist Kaleidescape is undergoing a new round of turmoil, terminating manufacturer sales representatives and executives. Reports from multiple sources indicate the company is undergoing some type of transformation. However, details are sparse as to just exactly what is transpiring there. I asked Kaleidescape for comment and they responded.
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…
