At the recent 2024 Oasys Summit, I had the opportunity to meet with top Nationwide Marketing Group executives who were all directly involved in the birth of the Oasys Residential Technology Group, as well as the greater strategy of the Nationwide Drive to 1,000 initiative. I spoke with Dean Sottile, Andy Orozco, and Hank Alexander, each of whom offered interesting insights and perspectives on the progress of this grand adventure they have collectively embarked upon.
See excerpts of our conversation, edited for length and clarity…
For those who have not followed my coverage of the emergence of the Oasys group, let’s start with a quick summary of what attracted me to this story. It was more than a year ago that I received an invitation to attend an Azione Unlimited member conference. At that conference, group leader Richard Glikes announced that Azione – which was newly part of Nationwide Marketing Group – would be participating in Nationwide’s “Drive to 1,000” members initiative.
The group outlined a new strategy in which it would seek to have at least 1,000 member dealers spread over three of its buying groups – Azione Unlimited, HTSN (eventually reconfigured and rebranded as Oasys), and an as-yet-unnamed commercial buying group (now known as Ellipsys). It was an ambitious plan – and within just a matter of weeks, Nationwide began executing on it.
The Unique Concept Behind Oasys
In the case of Oasys, the organization had a unique concept. Up to now, a dealer had to meet certain minimum requirements to join any buying group. In other words, for any group to consider them for membership, the integrator had to already establish themselves with a high enough level of revenue to qualify. But Oasys would seek to find those promising new, young, and emerging dealers to join its group and help drive further expansion of the industry.
No other group was doing this, and it was truly an innovative concept. In speaking with vendors, they loved the idea of someone making a concerted effort to expand the industry…and they wanted to support that. Think about it this way, the largest most successful integrator at one time got his start as a new and unproven business…now there was a buying group to aid them on their path to successful business growth.
After One Year, the Difference was Stunning
Not long after that Azione Meeting, I attended the inaugural Oasys meeting in Nashville in which a relatively small but enthusiastic group of charter members attended. It was the first taste of where this new group, with a new name and a new focus (custom integration), was headed.
Now, a year later, I attended the 2024 Oasys Summit, and the difference was stunning, as I reported to you a couple of weeks ago. I took advantage of my attendance at that event to meet with and interview Andy Orozco, Nationwide’s Senior Vice President of Custom Integration; Hank Alexander, Director of Oasys; and Dean Sottile, Nationwide’s Chief Operating Officer.
Andy Orozco, Nationwide Senior Vice President of Custom Integration
Strata-gee – As I look out on this packed conference hall, what am I seeing here? Are there actually more members, or did you just do a better job of getting existing members to attend this year?
Orozco – That’s mostly growth you’re seeing out there. There are many new members this year. Also, there are approximately double the number of vendors attending this year. But we always want to make sure that we are doing our job to encourage ongoing member engagement. And I would measure engagement by event participation, interacting with group vendors, connecting with our Corporate Solutions, interacting with our services, and learning about the products and technologies – because somewhere down the road, if you’re not doing that, you’re not going to see the value in any group.
Strata-gee – So the group has grown substantially in number of members – that’s a significant difference this year. What other differences are you seeing now a year later?
Orozco – I see the confidence level of our team really growing. When you are first starting out, there’s a lot of challenges – such as setting up the CRM system and other such details – and there’s a piece of confidence missing. Until you start growing, adding members, and holding big successful events such as this one – then confidence starts to build…and I see the confidence building in our team.
Strata-gee – Can you think of anything else you feel is different?
Orozco – When we start witnessing some of the stuff that’s going on in that room [the conference hall], where you really see how you’re helping a business owner become better, that for me, is really, really satisfying. Just facilitating those introductions and watching them just start talking – like last night at dinner – that makes me feel really proud.
Strata-gee – Can you think of any examples of what you’ve learned this past year? Perhaps things that you discovered that varied from your initial planning?
Orozco – Number one, we learned to lower the expectations of the company, because we discovered that it took longer to onboard new dealers than we originally anticipated. [Orozco explained that because they were reaching out to new or emerging dealers, they learned that they had to do more education on what the benefits are of joining a buying group – any buying group – and then they had to sell the benefits of that prospect joining their group.] So expectations [and approaches] changed.
Strata-gee – Can you give an example of anything else you changed based on this learning?
Orozco – We changed our marketing approach. We figured out that there were a lot of misconceptions among prospective member companies about buying groups in general. So our original marketing approach led with our branding and was not focused on educating about buying groups. Now you’ll see a more cohesive story being told, with more focus on ‘Hey, if you don’t know what a group is, this is what it can do for you. And by the way, we have a good one here.’
Hank Alexander, Director of Oasys
Strata-gee – I’m curious to hear your perspective on the first year of Oasys that you just closed out. What are your thoughts on where you are at this point?
Alexander – If you told me a year ago that for the second conference we’d have over 200 people from 90 members and 40+ vendors. I would have said ‘I’d love to think that’s going to happen, but I don’t know.’ Yet here we are. That being said, the year was a bit more of a challenge than we thought it would be. Recruiting is going really, really well, but it’s always a little slower than what we all want. And some of it is because we need to do a little bit of an education on what a buying group can do for the dealer.
Strata-gee – So is it only an education issue? Is there any other chokepoint?
Alexander – So, the whole process of getting to a ‘yes,’ is really not as hard as it sounds. It’s getting the paperwork done. Listen, we try to make the paperwork part of the process as easy as possible. Like literally it’s a five-minute thing. But the issue is the dealers are just so busy running their businesses that we have to constantly follow up with them to get the paperwork completed and submitted. But we adjusted and now things are happening at a pretty good pace. In fact, we had a really good first quarter and if we repeat our Q1 numbers this quarter, we’ll hit our goal for the year.
Strata-gee – In your mind, what does success look like for Oasys?
Alexander – Success looks like 400-450 members by the end of the year and continued growth in vendor count. We doubled the number of supporting vendors last year, and I’d like to keep the growth going there as well. Finally, it’s working to make sure that the Oasys members focus on the brands that are inside of the group and for them to be valuable to those brands.
Strata-gee – Are there any structural things in the works for Oasys in 2024?
Alexander – Yes. We just hired a new admin dedicated to the custom integration group. And we are in discussions to add another one. And we will probably look at building out some more field team in the near future.
Strata-gee – How about Oasys programs? Are there any new options being looked at there?
Alexander – We have quite a few things we’re working on. First, we’re working with Synchrony to offer a CI-focused client project financing loan package that integrators can draw down when they need to lay out cash at key waypoints of the project. This tool will be especially helpful on the larger projects. We are also in the process of leveraging Nationwide’s One Shop marketing resources to create CI-specific marketing assets for Oasys members. Not only is One Shop going to create websites, email, and social media marketing tailored for the custom integration channel, but they will actually have separate employees dedicated to our CI segment.
We recently introduced a program with D-Tools which not only offers Oasys members a better project design and management solution, but they can save nearly $4,000 in a special Oasys program. In addition to this, we are leaning into our relationship with CEDIA, and our members will now be able to attend in-person CEDIA training at convenient locations around the country at a special Oasys rate. This will augment our extensive online library of CEDIA training as well. You know, sometimes in-person training can be more effective, especially on deeply technical issues.
Dean Sottile – Chief Operating Officer, Nationwide Marketing Group
Strata-gee – From the Nationwide management perspective, how did the organization decide to really go for it with the custom integration business?
Sottile – Well, as you know we had HTSN for years, so we’ve always been in the CI business, but we knew we weren’t really in the business. It was when the idea of looking at potentially acquiring Azione Unlimited, that the picture began to emerge about really getting into building a serious custom integration business. The plan further evolved when we added Andy Orozco, a good friend of mine from ProSource, who brought a lot of ideas to the table. And once we got to this point, it came together pretty quickly.
Adding Azione with Richard Glikes and their group members was really a revelation. There were so many great guys, idea guys…thought leaders. Like the way Richard engaged everybody – that whole vendor/member board thing. That’s just not something we’ve ever done before. All of this really opened the door for us – we knew that in the past we had never been really serious about CI, but now the time was right to focus on CI seriously. So, then we added Andy Orozco…built out a field team for a direct in-market presence…and really set to synchronizing around who we are and what our messaging is.
And now we’ve added Frank Sterns to help us continue our journey to improve our member support as we scale and grow.
Strata-gee – So I know you’re only a year into this, but how do you feel it’s going? What’s going well? What’s more challenging than you expected?
Sottile – Well, I think what is going well is that we are finally serious about the business. When I say we, I’m talking about the whole entity [Nationwide MG] – this is a very high-priority thing inside our walls. We want this to be successful, but we’re also going to be patient. We’re doing a longer-term plan here. So we think there’s a lot of runway in this space to not only just sign up dealers, but to add a lot of value to them and really help these guys do better.
I think that you asked about validations [signs of progress] – I think that the validations are the engagement level here at this event…the number of dealers attending here…the general growth path is very, very good right now. And then our ability to attract high-quality people like Frank Sterns, just to give his input on this – it’s a good momentum builder. Things feel really, really good right now, so I’m very excited.
I think we sat down with you the first time a little more than a year ago when it felt like all we had was a plan. But you know, it feels good now to have it off the ground.
Strata-gee – Did any challenges emerge, from your perspective?
Sottile – I think we probably underestimated the needs that we would have around, you know, creating a very clear definition of what each group was going to look like. And really making sure that that was clear to the industry and to our vendors. So we stubbed our toes a couple of times – just really talking about how we were going to differentiate the groups. I think that’s something that we learned from, but it’s something we talked about every day. How do we define these dealers? How do we help them find the right space in our universe? And, how do we help them the most? So we’re still going back and forth on that. I think we thought that was going to be easy, but it really wasn’t as easy as we thought.
Strata-gee – So Azione Unlimited is leaderless right now. Richard Glikes is stepping away after a long, illustrious career. Can you share what’s going on with the management of that group?
Sottile – We’ve launched the search for a new leader for Azione Unlimited. It’s really going to be an important decision. It’s so important to find someone that fits that role in that group, and has the ability to grasp the larger vision, which I know they will. But we’ve got to make sure that Azione Unlimited maintains its own unique space because I think it’s really important.
Look, it’s Richard Glikes, there is no replacing him. And that’s okay, I think that his legacy is pretty damn well cemented. With Patrick McCarthy and Karen, Richard built a great team who are there supporting the members. But I do think that in regards to the person that we’ll pick for that job, it will be about what’s next. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to get somebody that has that same perspective as Richard where they put the dealers first. It’s not about their ego…it’s all about how do we listen and get better.
I’m really excited at the prospect of bringing someone else to the team who’s going to come with a fresh set of ideas and who looks at Azione as a great success story that they want to build upon. And, that’s what I told the members when I spoke with them at their recent Spring Conference.
For More Information
Find out more about Oasys by visiting oasysgroup.com.
See more on Nationwide Marketing Group at nationwidegroup.org.
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