Friday, September 05, 2008

Plenty of Non-Custom Vendors At The Custom Show

CE Pro's Jason Knott went off on a tirade about the sheer number of vendors on the show floor at CEDIA Expo who's products have nothing to do with custom installation.

CE Pro: Vendors Taking “Custom” Out of CEDIA Expo

At CEDIA Expo, several of the exhibiting manufacturers unveiled products completely targeted toward consumers with little to no application for custom installation. This trend, very apparent during Wednesday's press day, appears to be growing.

Jason makes some excellent points in his story, but I would suggest that this has been going on for some time. As long as I can remember, the show floor at Expo has had many products on display that are only tenuously related to custom AV installation.

I would even go so far as to suggest that the hundreds of big, sexy, expensive freestanding loudspeakers with exotic wood veneers are out of place at a Custom show.

There, I said it.

Don't get me wrong, I like big, expensive speakers as much as anyone, but for me and the dealers I know, in 99 custom installs out of a hundred, the client wants the speakers hidden. It's possible to spend a lot of money on high end in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, and lots of clients want quality sound, they just don't want to look at it.

Regardless, Expo has always had a fair number of direct-to-consumer products, although I agree with Jason that the trend seems to be growing. You can look at it as a mark of CEDIA's success that the big CE brands use it as a fall show, unveiling products before Christmas, when they feel it's too long to wait for the next CES.

Sphere: Related Content

No comments: