What is the state of the custom integration industry as we begin 2024? That’s a broad topic I had the opportunity to address moderating a Smart Stage session panel at last fall’s CEDIA Expo in Denver. Who better to opine about the custom integration industry’s health than the global president & CEO of CEDIA and the leaders of the major buying groups, which twice a year at their conferences see firsthand how their members are faring.  

That’s why we gathered CEDIA’s Daryl Friedman along with Azione Unlimited’s Richard Glikes, HTSA’s Jon Robbins, ProSource’s Jim Pearse, and Oasys Residential Technology Group’s Hank Alexander. Here’s a glimpse of what they had to say about members’ successes and struggles: 

Daryl Friedman: Finding Good Labor Still a Challenge

“The growth area, and this is what I hear anecdotally as well as the survey we just did, is lighting and shading. This is one of the key areas where integrators are finding amazing growth, amazing margins, so that’s one of the great positives. And they’re starting to look at some emerging categories and seeing promise there like wellness, sustainability, and power management,” Friedman says.

“The challenge today is the same challenge I heard when we started [my tenure], which was labor. In such an industry with this optimism about growth, if you can’t find the technicians and the salespeople to work for you, you can’t capitalize on that growth.” 

Richard Glikes: Light at the End of the Tunnel

“If you look at the market in three segments — the lower end, the middle market and the high end of the market — there is no low-end business right now; that evaporated. The middle of the market is hit or miss, and the high end of the market is flourishing; if you’re dealing with one-percenters or one-half of one-percenters, you’re having a good run,” Glikes says.

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“The problem is that we need all those to hit. I was looking at our statistics for [2022] … and I think we could all consistently say the last three months [of 2022] were pretty bad comparatively speaking, and the good news is now we’re up against some weaker numbers, so I think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” 

Hank Alexander: Success in Education

“We’re seeing a lot of help, a lot of success with process management, education — we’ve partnered with Daryl and CEDIA for the CEDIA Education Academy — so we’ve seen success with those initiatives. Labor continues to be a problem. We’ve got members who want to promote somebody and they don’t have somebody to take that other person’s position, so it’s backfilling positions, finding that next technician; and we’re partnering with a lot of people in the industry to help that along.”  

Jon Robbins: Bullish on the Years Ahead

“We got into lighting to help us get into the [project] process earlier, and for the first time, at our spring conference in April, we were hearing members say that we’re being called into the process prior to the hiring of GCs — that’s humongous. So despite the fact that we think it’s going to be a flat [2023], we’re pretty bullish on what’s coming. [Regarding labor], we created a video with One Firefly to help promote what the industry looks like. They can show people these videos, that this is a really cool industry, it’s fun — and our members are using this to attract new talent.” 

Jim Pearse: Project Managers Key Assets

“There’s a couple of areas that have been a struggle. One is just really getting good at operations in the business, and when we were discussing that with [dealers], they pointed out the project manager position is so important to profitability because it drives labor efficiency, it drives inventory, it drives purchasing. So we stood up a hands-on training in Virginia to do training for project managers for a week.

“What we found is when you start to teach project managers about leadership, about the financial acumen required to really drive a better outcome, it’s been amazingly successful and sold out for as long as the calendar allows for these events.”  

These are just snippets from one question; check out the entire session at in the video below.

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