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Q&A: AVAD VP & GM Jim Annes
Jim Annes, AVAD VP and GM
Spearheading the company's efforts is Jim Annes, vice president and general manager, whose prior experience includes being head of worldwide strategic planning for AVAD's parent company, Ingram Micro.
How are AVAD's dealers weathering the tough economy?
A number of dealers that were late to market, less sophisticated or simply dependant on segments that were hit especially hard by the economic downturn dropped out of the market in the first two quarters of 2009.
Our dealers had to transition from figuring out how to manage more business than they could handle in a given month to honing their marketing and networking skills and driving business to them. The focus on new-construction has decreased, and dealers have to find additional revenue streams.
We anticipated these needs and put together our entry into security and commercial, expanded training programs for dealers, including a number of courses on managing a business in challenging economic times; we increased the amount of marketing collateral that dealers could use to prospect and sell business and added lines and solutions that were better suited to the retrofit market.
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3D is a technology that after we saw it in prototype form last year we immediately believed that once dealers saw it and showed it to their customers, it was going to be the next major evolutionary step in panels. We started working in January with one of our leading partners, Samsung, on a campaign to educate and enable dealers to sell 3D-enabled panels, Blu-ray players and other associated technology. We just completed a two-day demo and training program for our dealers across all 28 of our North American locations where we executed hundreds of education sessions and demos to more than 1,800 dealers.
When technologies change dramatically, where the resulting effect on the market is not an enhancement - like adding a new bezel style to a panel - but one that changes the experience of the user and increases the functionality of things that truly change the experience of a consumer, it requires education and demonstration.
What made security appealing for AVAD?
The security category, like commercial, was appealing to us because our dealers were already in or asking questions about entering those markets. Our role is to aggregate not only the products in residential, security and commercial into one location, but educate our dealers as to how these three categories work together; controlling your DSC security panel via your RTI remote, for example.
It's about getting a larger share of the customer's total electronics expenditures. For example, let's say a customer owns both a business and a home. The dealer's ability to meet both the commercial needs and residential needs of the customer enables him to win both jobs and a greater share of that customer's total spend on A/V and security than if he did not have access to products and training in both categories.
What's Vend-O-Palooza?
We hold Vend-O-Palooza events at our branches across North America throughout the year and the schedule can be found here or here. These events are 90 percent mobile trade show and 10 percent traveling circus.
We give our dealers the opportunity to meet and speak with factory reps from up to 50 of our vendor partners at each event and our vendors get to speak with more than 2,500 dealers a year through these events. The traveling circus part is bringing a mobile trade show to 20 or more locations around the U.S. and Canada in a year. All the equipment, displays, demo gear, promotional materials, etc., arrives, is set up, used in the event and sent to the next stop within five days.
Dealers can expect to get to speak with factory reps from up to 50 vendors, learn about the newest products and solutions and attend up to five cutting-edge training courses, in addition to taking advantage of event-specific promotions.
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3 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
I have to disagree with you, Bob. I don’t know Jim, I have to say, but it very often makes great sense to bring in an outsider to run a business. They often come with fresh ideas and always a clean slate.
The story is not an ad or advertorial by the way. True, it is a puff piece, but we do offer mfrs an opportunity every month in CE Pro to answer our questions in their own words. Some of us ask softer questions than others! In the future, however, I think it is a good idea to add a byline.
Thanks for the comment. We appreciate the feedback.
“but it very often makes great sense to bring in an outsider to run a business. They often come with fresh ideas and always a clean slate.”
I don’t know if I would concur with that, Julie. Tweeter brought in “bottom-line” folks that knew how to spin a good tale at the board meetings, however with no boots-on-the-ground experience, they were more out of the loop than a blind Chicago cab driver.
What makes sense in an office in New York state doesn’t necessarily translate well to a CI dealer in Miami, Seattle, or San Diego.
No doubt AVAD is convenient and the premise of them being are your “warehouse” is completely valid however the price for that is quite dear, especially with Video products. It’s very deflating to see something at COSTCO retailing for significantly less than you can obtain it from AVAD. Yes, these are the times we live in, and the modus operandi is not as it was in 2005. While that comment lends itself to opening a pandora’s box of rationales, the end of the day issue is that most integrators are arm-wrestling clients over pennies in this economy and one can only justify their mount, their cable, their ability to use a level and DeWalt just to a certain extent. When the client produces a competing bid that is, at least to him, less for whatever the reason you either lace ‘em up, or get out of the arena.
This is in no way disrespecting to AVAD at the branch level. The guys work hard, and where I am located, they come from a long background in the industry across a multiple of disciplines and in many if not most instances know more about what they are selling than to those on the other side of the counter. Where the disservice occurs is when these guys are given their pricing from “above” and have to face integrators who make less selling a Blu-ray player than the cost of gas to pick it up. With Trailing Credits programs from buying groups such as H.E.S. and seeing how Sony has manifestly improved cost, procurement, and the ease of dealing with them by way of Tech Data, it would seem that AVAD should be at least as efficient along with the ability to offer somewhat of a dealer cost reduction that gives their raison d’etre every advantage possible in this economic climate. As “BOB” points out…AVAD is closing branches at an alarming rate. They were perfectly poised as the solution - what happened? I suggest that it is those bottom-line guys that don’t understand the folks they are seeking to serve or their needs.
AVAD is making the same mistake that Tweeter made, bringing in people to run things that aren’t from the industry. Jim sounds like a perfectly nice guy, but has no business running a CI-geared distributor. All of his experience is in IT, and he obviously did very well to move up at Ingram Micro. AVAD needsto have someone from the CI community, someone that understands what our needs are, to helm the ship.
Why do they go from opening new branches to closing them, while other distys are expanding? What are they doing right that AVAD is doing wrong? For starters, they are actually listening to their dealers.
Sure you branched into commercial, but you don’t have much selection and a dealer can still goto his commercial disty to get what he needs.
Sure you branched into security, but the security dealers will continue to goto their existing security disty because they are getting better prices.
It’s nice that you picked up lines like B&K, ML, and Crestron, but at the same time you lost NetStreams and Lifeware, and lost exclusivity to RTI and Lutron.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of AVAD, just not the way it’s being run. Another dealer told me the other day, “It’s really hard to do business with AVAD.” Puff pieces like this article don’t help the matter. I love that no editor will take credit for this article. At least in print magazines there is a disclamer at the top about articles like this being paid advertisements.