2004 has brought more stress on value in pro AV
Nov 23, 2004 3:39 PM
“Business is returning but what’s returning is different,” says Jim Colquhoun, regional vice president for Audio Visual Innovations, Inc. in Denver, describing what his company has seen in 2004.
Corporate buyers now are “much more knowledgeable,” he adds, and their price consciousness continues to drive the AV industry toward a commodity model for equipment sales.
Moreover, declining equipment prices have a less obvious effect, Colquhoun adds. “There is a huge downward pressure on our labor costs now,” he explains. “Historically, we could divide our business into a percentage for equipment and a percentage for labor, but as equipment cost goes down that percentage for labor appears larger.”
Combating this perception means educating clients about the value of professional design and installation. The challenge to the pro AV integrator is to focus on types of sales that give full rein to their professional knowledge and competence. Sweta Dash of isuppli says that compared to the consumer business, “the corporate market is going to be high-value, but low-volume.” Colquhoun further notes that within the corporate segment, “The business is stratifying. There are a lot of very, very large jobs out there.”
Dash suggests that “everybody is looking at digital signage as the future” in the corporate market, especially for large LCDs and plasmas. Signage is the ideal application for many of the new wave of super-sized microdisplay rear-projection systems, too. NEC designed its new WT600 DS84, with its 84in. screen, for tradeshow displays, shopping malls, and other venues, says Don Fasick, product manager for installed projectors.
“Digital signage is too complex” for a simple commodity buy, Fasick says. “You need somebody to help with content delivery, with digital asset management.”
Fasick also anticipates a demand for short-run rear-projection systems among “people in areas with expensive real estate. They can have a big screen without the deep area behind the screen” that’s needed for conventional rear projection.
Digital signage emphasizes network management and content delivery capabilities, and increasingly, the larger corporate installs are driven by information technology concerns. And this convergence remains a challenge to the pro AV channel. “In general, AV people continue to shy away from IT,” says Colquhoun. This has led to AV systems being installed by computer technicians and even electrical contractors, he adds, with corporate IT managers worried about “non-network-savvy people impinging on their networks.”
Even when corporate clients stage meetings and other events, these days they’re looking for professional support in delivering more sophisticated and complex jobs, and handling simpler projects on a price-driven basis.
For Jeff Studley, president of CPR MultiMedia Solutions in Gaithersburg, Md., 2004 has been a year of “more jobs but many smaller jobs, dollar-wise. Of course,” he adds, “with the advent of smaller, cheaper, brighter projectors and smaller, cheaper, more capable switcher technology, this is inevitable.”
Corporate clients are looking for more sizzle at the upper end of their event range, though. “We see a lot more requests for out multi-screen switchers lately, as they become more of a necessity on corporate shows. Widescreen and panoramic projection images have been very popular this year for corporate clients,” says Kirk Garreans, president of Available Light Productions in Orlando, Fla.
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