Outdoor technology remains red hot, and one company that’s been leading the charge for custom integrators is outdoor lighting and audio specialist Coastal Source. The Moorestown, N.J.-headquartered company, which also has offices in the Florida Keys, had a big presence at the recent CEDIA Expo 2022 in Dallas … did you get a chance to check out their booth?
Actually, Coastal Source had multiple areas showcasing its solutions – one wasn’t a booth, however, but the Destination Backyard event it co-hosted with ruggedized display manufacturer Séura outside the front of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. Coastal Source president Franco D’Ascanio and VP of operations Jon Bowman discuss the company’s new products highlighted at CEDIA Expo, trends in outdoor technology requests, dealer benefits and programs, plus more on the latest CE Pro Podcast episode.
“It was really a great opportunity for us to display what we do best, and that’s our outdoor sound and lighting,” Bowman says of the Destination Backyard setup. “We were pleasantly surprised – we probably could have used more staff, just because we had a lot of people come out. Close to 3,000, and last I heard that was about a quarter of the entire CEDIA attendance.”
Bowman and D’Ascanio were both excited by the activity inside the convention center as well, where Coastal Source like other exhibitors had discussions with many new attendees to the Expo who got to see and experience the solutions close up.
“This year for sure, a lot of new faces that we saw and integrators that had never come to the show. That was exciting to see,” Bowman adds of the Expo, which had 41% attendees first-timers to the event this year. “It was a brand new booth for us and we were happy to have everybody check it out, and we were launching inside pretty much all of our new products both on the lighting side and the audio side.”
Among the new wares being highlighted were the Razor and Contour loudspeakers and FLEX Niche landscape lights. One attractive feature common to Coastal Source’s solutions, besides the elegant aesthetics of the products themselves, is their versatility and flexibility. That goes for applications and installation placement.
Additionally, a new camlock connection system enables dealers to make their own length cables out in the field, Bowman notes, ideal for lighting areas like steps and pergolas so installers can get “make those connections where we want them when we need them,” he says.
Meanwhile, Contour is a sleek speaker smaller in footprint than other offerings, that works as a landscape or hardscape speaker. “It’s very much at home on patio decks, pool decks, on soffits, on pergolas,” says D’Ascanio. “So it has that hardscape and landscape application, very flexible.”
Along the same lines is Razor, whose versatility extends its applications from an on-wall outdoor speaker to something that can be multi-ganged to serve as a more powerful system. Putting four together in a quad-gang like a box can even create a planter type of solution.
Hear much more from Coastal Source’s D’Ascanio and Bowman, including more product features and the company’s design services, by watching or downloading the podcast above. Find past episodes of the CE Pro Podcast by subscribing to the CE Pro YouTube channel or our Apple and Spotify podcast feeds.