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5-Minute Interview: Geno Marcoux

Ingram Micro is a Santa Ana, CA-based technology distributor and technology sales, marketing, and logistics firm. The company entered the digital signage market earlier this year.

5-Minute Interview: Geno Marcoux

Ingram Micro is a Santa Ana, CA-based technology distributor and technology sales, marketing, and logistics firm. The company entered the digital signage market earlier this year.

Geno Marcoux, vice president of vendor management, Ingram Micro is a Santa Ana, CA-based technology distributor and technology sales, marketing, and logistics firm. The company entered the digital signage market earlier this year. Its East Coast Solutions Center, which is scheduled to open this month in Buffalo, NY, will provide demonstrations and feature the company’s emerging digital signage solutions.

Pro AV:What opportunities in the digital signage market did Ingram Micro identify that led to it becoming involved in this area?

Marcoux: We’ve cited some different data that shows the digital signage market is estimated at more than $1 billion and is growing at 30 percent year over year. Anything that has those kinds of numbers and growth always attracts our interest. From an end-user base, we always want to understand where the ultimate end-user is and work backward to help our re-sellers. We’re focusing on retail, airports, and other small- or medium-sized markets that may use digital signage. It may not sound like a lot, but there are thousands of smaller sound and video markets that can be targeted.

Pro AV:What types of companies do you see as resellers for your digital signage offerings?

Marcoux: We have two sets of customers: our traditional VARS, which will use digital signage as an additional adjacent market, and we’ll also start looking at the existing pro AV market. The pro AV market may promote digital signage, but they also have entry into some of these end-user clients, which is where we can assist them in better understanding the IT industry. From the IT side we can enable them to get more familiar with digital signage. Then we can assist the AV market by showing them what we can help them with in the technology solutions field beyond traditional systems that will make them more valuable to their end-users.

Pro AV:How does Ingram Micro plan to distribute digital signage systems?

Marcoux: The digital signage systems will leverage our existing core infrastructure to move the hardware and solutions through. One of the biggest things that we’re focusing on is trying to add adjacent markets to our IT VARS. Digital signage is becoming a more adopted medium to increase the revenue of clients, and what may have been a traditional AV play is now going into the IT industry, bleeding over as convergence is starting to happen. We view it as another way to open doors for our existing customer base. Besides traditional data or IT opportunities, digital signage is another avenue to help differentiate yourself and be more successful in a niche that will provide you with a broader foundation.

Pro AV:Will Ingram Micro also provide content creation and management services?

Marcoux: That will be provided mostly through a vendor partner. We’ll enable the solution, but we won’t become content creators. There could be content from our reseller customers from the AV and VARS sides, but we aren’t going to necessarily produce that. Sony and NEC may have their own content they want to transmit through to the channel, which is fine, but we’re here to help our customers and vendor partners. We’re not here to take their jobs.

Pro AV:How will Ingram Micro work differently with pro AV dealers than with traditional IT companies and clients?

Marcoux: Our goal in the pro AV space is to understand what we can do to engage those customers and make ourselves more valuable to our resellers. We’ll look at where there’s fragmentation or inefficiencies and where we can help them offer their services. We also want to broaden their knowledge as to what their end-users are interested in. If they’re strictly interested in pro AV, that’s fine, but we can make it easier for them to do business and have more time to service their end-user clients without worrying about fundamental IT challenges. Our goal is to offer value and provide insight into other solutions they can offer their clients.

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