Asserting that the Age of Interactivity is now giving way to a new Age of Hyperactivity characterized by an always-fast, always-on Internet, Stampede Presentation Products, Inc. yesterday told attendees at its 2013 Vendor Summit that a new era of unprecedented opportunity was now unfolding — creating sales opportunities for dealers that were unimaginable a few short years ago.
The annual two-day Stampede Vendor Summit, the industry’s only event of its kind, took place October 7-8, 2013 at the Marriott Hotel in Amherst, New York and featured a mix of immersive one-on-one sales interactions between manufacturers and the Stampede sales team, information-packed presentations from InfoComm Senior Vice President John Fuchs and PMA Analyst Rosemary Abowd, a challenging vision of a future built around ‘The Internet of Things’ by AV Girl futurist Midori Connolly, and an engaging dealer panel discussion of business and technology trends hosted by New Bay Media’s Lindsey Adler and EH Publishing’s Craig MacCormack.
“At a time when the traditional AV industry is maturing, a new personalized industry is rising up to take its place, one that is built upon the ideas of connecting, integrating, and sharing devices in entirely new eco-systems built around highly customized software applications,” predicted Stampede President & COO Kevin Kelly. “This shift is challenging our industry to stop using the terms ‘audio and video’ and start using the terms ‘see, hear and control’ in order to understand the business opportunities that this shift is creating.”Indeed, according to Kelly, Stampede has taken a number of strategic steps to empower its 11,000 dealers to take advantage of this seismic shift by consumers and professionals to connect, integrate and share devices at work, school, government and home. “In 2013 we added 20 new product lines and several new core platforms that traditional AV products can attach to,” Kelly emphasized.
“And the results of these additions speak for themselves as we conclude a fifth year of record-breaking growth — a year where earnings grew by 46 percent.” Equally important, according to Kelly, is the fact that the company’s sales grew in all three of its primary product categories — displays, projectors, and unified communications, which is by far the fastest growing segment of the company’s business. “During the Q2 period, our unified communications category sales increased by more than 239 percent over the same period in 2012 and that growth is being driven by the shift from an audio/video world view to a see-hear-control world view.”
Kelly reaffirmed Stampede’s commitment to constantly add value to every system installation it is involved with. “Value adds margin for our dealers,” Kelly told Vendor Summit attendees. “And, thus far in 2013, Stampede is adding value at an unprecedented level that cannot be matched by any other distributor in the business today. We can add this value on a consistent basis because we are focused exclusively on meeting the needs of the ProAV dealer community. We are not distracted by other industries and market segments. We devote 100 percent of our time and considerable resources to helping dealers grow their business.”
Meeting the demands of growth, however, requires an expanding commitment to maintain face-to-face training, online learning, and readily available credit facilities to qualified dealers, “all of which Stampede is committed to providing,” Kelly added. “In fact, in 2013 alone, we have increased our available monthly credit line by 28 percent, enabling us to serve as a bank to our dealer partners. In 2014 we will be opening a new southwest regional office and adding to our field sales team network to increase the number of contacts we can have with dealers and their customers. ”
Photo caption: Left to right: Jeff Willis, Senior Vice President of Stampede; Mark Wilkins, Founder and CEO of Stampede; Kevin Kelly, President and COO of Stampede.
