Universal Remote Control, Inc. (URC) has had a round of layoffs heading into the holidays. Taking place last week, the remote control giant has made cuts to its team that represent approximately 6% of their total workforce.
Learn more about the cuts at URC…
Last week Universal Remote Control cut approximately 5 employees, roughly 6% of their workforce, in an apparent reorganization of their sales team. Some of these cuts were to their distribution salespeople, as well as to other territory salespeople, as the company realigns its sales efforts.
Multiple messages seeking comment from the company on this story were not returned by the time this story was posted.
Severed Ties to SnapAV
This latest move is likely connected to a decision the company made earlier this year to sever ties with SnapAV. SnapAV is rapidly expanding into a major national distribution force as it expands its geographic presence by acquiring several local CI-centric distributors, such as Allnet Distributing, Volutone, Custom Plus, MRI, and more. SnapAV was likely one of their largest customers, if not the largest.
Although the company never issued any form of formal announcement about this salesforce reorganization, word of it quickly began circulating around the industry. Multiple readers began reaching out to Strata-gee to find out just what the facts are surrounding the company, a valued supplier to many of them.
A Significant Innovator in a Changing Industry
Launched in 1991, URC is one of the industry’s most prominent players in the remote control segment. In fact, they’ve been a significant innovator that has created many designs that have served to help drive the growth of the entire category.
As the industry has changed, embracing more IP-enabled/app-accessible system designs that cut into the need for handheld IR-based remote controls on the high end – and voice-controlled smart speakers on the low end, URC has expanded their offerings into other control related areas to try and pick up the slack. Still, the headwinds are quite strong these days for URC and any remote control manufacturer.
Learn more about URC products and the company’s history by visiting: www.universalremote.com.
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