The who’s who in custom integration distribution including Erikson Consumer, Evolution Home Corp., Gemsen, Lenbrook Industries, The Sherpa Technology Group, Trends and The Watershed Group were out in full force for the annual Toronto CEDIA Tech Summit.
The one-day CEDIA tech and networking event held last week at the Toronto International Centre, was designed to be an alternative opportunity for education and product discovery for people who don’t attend the larger annual CEDIA Expo in Denver.
Approximately 380 integrators participated this year marking record attendance for a Toronto event, and making Toronto the best-attended of the dozen North American Tech Summits held so far this year according to Barry Wosk CEDIA’s Regional Development Consultant for Canada.
The event featured 60 tabletop displays, low light projector demonstrations featuring JVC and Epson, and two experience rooms focused on outdoor audio and landscape lighting.
The Watershed Group brought along a professional racing car simulator from Cool Performance, a company partially owned by Formula One driver Lando Norris. While the simulator drew the biggest crowds for the day, Scott Newbrough, Watershed’s Vice President of Sales also stated, “such products set an example for how custom integration is expanding beyond lighting and home theatre to include other areas of entertainment, including the growth categories of racing and golf simulators, where Watershed has added focus.”
Gemsen’s National Sales Manager, Edit Cantor explains “the Tech Summit are a great opportunity to demonstrate our company’s added value tech brands to the CI channel. Our business is so relationship driven” adds Cantor “that the one-day events really allow us to expand our face-to-face time with our important partners. We love attending”.
The tech Summit was also an opportunity for Evolution Home Corp. to introduce Rafay Vasti who has joined the company in Dealer Support. “We are thrilled to introduce Rafay Vasti as the newest addition to the Evolution team,” stated Cantor. “Rafay brings a wealth of experience in sales, technical management, and business development. He also has a deep understanding of the big-box retail model, having worked with renowned companies like Best Buy, which will be instrumental in developing new business channels and revenue streams for us.” Rafay will represent Evolution’s brands across Canada, including Kanto, Powershades, MantleMount, BluStream, Nakymatone, SVS, KEF, and Neptune.
Erikson Consumer used the CEDIA Tech Summit to introduce the CI channel to products that are usually designated exclusively to the company’s Pro Audio division that specializes in outfitting stadiums and concert halls more than homes and restaurants. Mario Cadoret, National Sales Manager for Specialty and Luxury Brands for Erikson pointed out “that we are seeing so much overlap among our divisions and the needs of clients that products that were once considered exclusive to a single application are now being introduced to a much broader CI channel and offered through multiple divisions within Erikson.” On display from Erikson were stadium JBL outdoor speakers as well as a new product from Sound Tube Entertainment that allows speakers to be mounted on a track for a daisy-chain application.
Sherpa Technology Group was one of the largest presenters at the show with two rows of tables on the convention floor. While Sherpa certainly used the day to show their expanded offerings from brands such as VSSL relaunching their SX Series, JVC projector with a stand alone demonstration room and Muxlab, the distributor also used the day to introduce CI installers to a new feature on the company’s website called Projects, that allows installers and retailers to run multiple shopping carts simultaneously ensuring purchases can be isolated and coded to a specific job keeping expenses and purchases isolated to each specific project rather than being bundles all together.
CEDIA provided a hearty social lunch and additional training sessions expanded opportunities for education beyond the convention floor. From all accounts, the day is viewed as an important and essential part of the annual calendar for the industry by providing rewarding face time by bringing distributors and CI retailers and integrators together.
