Strategy in TECH...
Azione Unlimited, a national buying group of specialty retailers and integrators, said today it has added several lines of products from the Core Brands’ stable of brands to its mix. The Core Brands lines added include BlueBOLT, Furman, Panamax, and Xantech.
Nortek, Inc. released the results for its fiscal second quarter after the market’s close on Monday and took the unusual step of issuing optimistic performance guidance for the remainder of the year. The company does not typically release future performance guidance as a matter of policy, but did so in an apparent attempt to calm investor reaction to their troubling report. It didn’t work – investors reacted strongly on Tuesday by driving Nortek’s stock to a close of $75.23 per share, down sharply from the previous close of $79.88. In just a matter of hours, the total market value of Nortek collapsed almost 6%.
Core Brands, LLC, a division of Nortek, Inc., announced Tuesday that Atlantic Integrated, a Rockleigh, NJ-based sales representative company, has been awarded most of its brands for representation in the New York Metropolitan region and Fairfield County, CT. This appointment is effective immediately and represents a realignment of the brands under one rep firm.
Core Brands continues to rejigger its team as we mentioned in our Breaking News SYNCH earlier this week. And one major step in this process took place in September 2013 when Core Brands surprised many by announcing the appointment of Joe Roberts as its new head of marketing, replacing Paul Starkey. Two weeks later, Roberts headed to his first CEDIA ready to jump in feet first and reassure dealers of the company’s direction…and learn all about any concerns that they felt the company needed to address.
Just three weeks ago, we had the opportunity to speak with Core Brands Senior Vice President of Marketing Paul Starkey, who confirmed information we had received from multiple sources about an impending announcement of significant changes in the way the company planned to go to market. Starkey confirmed much of the information we had uncovered, especially changes to systems and processes.
But regarding one major initiative we asked Starkey about – that of an extensive restructuring of its sales representative network – he was not able to confirm…at that time.
Core Brands, a division of Nortek, Inc., will announce sweeping new structural and marketing initiatives this coming Tuesday, April 1st, Strata-gee.com has learned from multiple sources. In a recent post on parent company Nortek, we alluded to sources telling us about impending changes in what was to be a major announcement – literally a fundamental change in the way the company does business.
In a recent fiscal year 2012 fourth quarter and full-year report, Nortek, Inc. showed a mixture of hit-and-miss results with fourth quarter sales dropping 5.6% to $505.4 million as compared to Q4 2011’s $535.2 million. Worse yet, the company’s Q4 net loss increased from last year’s $800,000 to a substantial $12.5 million. These results were in spite of the fact that this year’s calendar for the quarter had two more days in it than the quarter last year.
However, Nortek’s overall annual results showed a brighter picture with 2012 sales increasing to $2.2 billion, up 2.8% from the previous year’s $2.14 billion. Net profits in 2012 came in at $9.5 million – a substantial improvement over 2011’s net loss of $55.9 million.
Nortek Inc. announced this morning that it has consolidated several of its brands into a new organization that they call the “ProAV Group.” Consisting of several Nortek brands that were conspicuously missing from their recently formed “Core Brands” group, the ProAV Group combines Gefen, TVOne, and Magenta Research into one consolidated group.
The 2012 CEDIA Expo launched with a bang for me as I previously reported when, upon entering the convention center, I was collared by a PR person who quickly walked me (without explanation) to a high-level executive for a Nortek company who felt the need to tell me – in compelling and direct terms – what he thought of strata-GEE.com’s coverage of the Core Brands consolidation. (Hint: he didn’t like it.) After a few minutes of somewhat hot-under-the-collar conversation, things cooled off a bit and he offered to get me together with the Core Brands management to clarify the situation.
This Monday, Nortek, Inc. announced yet another reorganization, their third major structural change since the company decided to group its A/V assets under one roof back in April 2010. The company has created yet another new company called Core Brands which will further consolidate and control a total of ten of the company’s A/V brands in their Technology Solutions Segment (TECH).
The brands affected by this consolidation include Aton, BlueBOLT, Elan, Furman, Niles, Panamax, Proficient, SpeakerCraft, Sunfire, and Xantech. Core Brands will be based at offices in Petaluma, CA; Calrsbad, CA; Riverside, CA; and Marblehead, MA.
[Read more…] about Here We Go Again – Nortek Reorganizes Its Reorganized Reorganization
