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Gary Yacoubian on Life After MyerEmco
Yacoubian can't imagine not being in the CE industry after 21 years at MyerEmco.
Gary Yacoubian is leaving MyerEmco effective July 10.
The good news for Gary Yacoubian is that he'll get to take a vacation after he leaves MyerEmco Audio/Video.
The bad news is that he'll need to write a resume.
"My last resume was done on a typewriter," says the president and COO, who has been with the Gaithersburg, Md.-based specialty retailer/custom installer for 21 years.
Asked why he's leaving MyerEmco, Yacoubian says he's anxious for some time off and for a new perspective on the specialty electronics industry.
Although Yacoubian plans to stay in the electronics field, he doesn't have a job lined up and everything is "completely up in the air."
Yacoubian wants to see where he can add value, saying he's "not going to draw any lines in terms of what part of the industry I want to be in."
He adds that he's biased towards the CE industry. "I love it. Despite our hiccups, it's one of the bright spots in our economy," he says. "I can't imagine not being in it."
Yacoubian also is chair of the CEA’s executive board.
"To be a member of the executive board you need to be in a company that is a member of the organization," he says. "Hopefully that will be the case [soon after leaving MyerEmco]. With respect to CEA, I'll do whatever is best. I'm going to handle that with absolute care and work with board members and Gary Shapiro to make sure we do the right thing."
Yacoubian has talked about how the specialty electronics segment of the industry must adapt in order to remain viable in the long term.
He says the three mediums specialty stores traditionally use to get messages across — newspaper ads, radio ads and direct mail — "are all dying, and we need to figure that out."
MyerEmco, a nine-store chain, recently launched a TV advertising campaign. The overwhelming message of the campaign is that specialty stores offer a lot of value-add versus the big-box stores.
"I totally believe that the value-add that the specialty channel brings is real and tangible — and the consumer doesn't really need to pay more for it," Yacoubian says. "We've done a bad job of messaging it. "We're trying to understand what the specialty A/V channel looks like going forward."
Yacoubian will be thinking about that quite a bit during his hiatus.
The bad news is that he'll need to write a resume.
"My last resume was done on a typewriter," says the president and COO, who has been with the Gaithersburg, Md.-based specialty retailer/custom installer for 21 years.
Asked why he's leaving MyerEmco, Yacoubian says he's anxious for some time off and for a new perspective on the specialty electronics industry.
Although Yacoubian plans to stay in the electronics field, he doesn't have a job lined up and everything is "completely up in the air."
CEA Executive Board Chairmanship
Yacoubian wants to see where he can add value, saying he's "not going to draw any lines in terms of what part of the industry I want to be in."
He adds that he's biased towards the CE industry. "I love it. Despite our hiccups, it's one of the bright spots in our economy," he says. "I can't imagine not being in it."
Yacoubian also is chair of the CEA’s executive board.
"To be a member of the executive board you need to be in a company that is a member of the organization," he says. "Hopefully that will be the case [soon after leaving MyerEmco]. With respect to CEA, I'll do whatever is best. I'm going to handle that with absolute care and work with board members and Gary Shapiro to make sure we do the right thing."
State of Specialty Electronics
Yacoubian has talked about how the specialty electronics segment of the industry must adapt in order to remain viable in the long term.
He says the three mediums specialty stores traditionally use to get messages across — newspaper ads, radio ads and direct mail — "are all dying, and we need to figure that out."
MyerEmco, a nine-store chain, recently launched a TV advertising campaign. The overwhelming message of the campaign is that specialty stores offer a lot of value-add versus the big-box stores.
"I totally believe that the value-add that the specialty channel brings is real and tangible — and the consumer doesn't really need to pay more for it," Yacoubian says. "We've done a bad job of messaging it. "We're trying to understand what the specialty A/V channel looks like going forward."
Yacoubian will be thinking about that quite a bit during his hiatus.
MyerEmco's Collapse
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About the Author
Tom LeBlanc, Senior Writer/Technology Editor, CE Pro
Tom has been covering consumer electronics for six years. Before that, he wrote for the sports department of the Boston Herald. Migrating to magazines, he was a staff editor for a golf publication and an outdoor sports publication. Now, as senior writer/technology editor of CE Pro magazine since 2003, he dabbles in all departments and offers expertise in marketing. Follow him on Twitter @leblanctom.
1 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
Page 1 of 1 comment pages
Gary’s feelings about offering and communicating your companies value add seemed to have paid off when I visited some of the Myer Emco stores a year or so back.
With VUDU I had visited a lot of dealers around the country, and in many cases the story was very similar. Lots of technically aware sales people who obviously loved the product they sold - unfortunately they could rarely articulate why you should buy it from them and the company they represented.
At Myer Emco, everyone I talked to seemed well versed in not only the products but in why ME was the best place to buy. This was most clearly contrasted when I went to Tweeter stores, where the people clearly had favorite products (that they knew would pay their bills) but little feel for the company or ‘the bigger picture’ it tried to offer to consumers.
It strikes me Gary is a great person to be pondering on the future of the channel.