1. Continued consolidation

Due to record sales over the past two years, many manufacturers are looking to be acquired, to acquire, and those who struggled during this time might be close to closing.  It’s a tough reality, but it’s important to work with stable companies and do business with brands that are investing in innovation, supportive and have longevity. In most cases, acquisitions can ruin brands.

At Origin Acoustics, we are taking a curated partnership approach by strategically partnering with other manufacturers to help all succeed. This brings the best companies together to collaborate, innovate and increase their collective strength, while maintaining the individual creativity that built them. Choose your partners wisely!

2. Focus on design

If interior designers, architects and builders are not influencing the technology going into your projects at this time, they will. Everyone is trying to control the relationship with the customer, and now more than ever, this group of influencers is focusing on technology.  Look for products and categories that are important to these luxury home decision makers.

Invisible audio, acoustical treatments, lighting design and anything with a Design Centric Technology story should be what you are focusing on.  You can always sell down to other traditional solutions, but you will get more jobs, have happier customers and make more money if you focus on form and not just function.

3. Slow down in innovation

Despite record years for many manufacturers, the feedback we’ve received has matched our own findings. Tech companies have spent the past couple of years trying to figure out how to handle the growth and react to the ever-changing market, and have not developed much new tech.

This means it is important to look closely at who is truly pushing the industry forward and developing new designs, patents and solutions to help dealers grow in the coming year, so you can continue to differentiate.

Focusing on emerging categories like invisible audio, acoustic treatments and low-voltage lighting, and working with innovative partners will help you stay ahead.

4. Network is king

Despite competing communication platforms, the network continues to emerge as the standard. This means selling better quality networking products, understanding how to set them up beyond the wizard interfaces, and troubleshooting is imperative. With the increase in power provided by POE+, we will see even more products powered by the network and require nothing but a Cat5 for a connection.

With everything running through the network, audio and video distribution, streaming content, power, control and of course the internet, this should be your focus for technical training. The IT industry has been a service-centric model for ages, and we aren’t far behind.

5. Network security

With an increase in connected devices throughout the home and cyber-attacks becoming a way of disrupting economies and modern warfare, looking at network security platforms and being a networking expert is a new category opportunity.

Big tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon will face increased antitrust issues due to the power they have from the data they collect. These privacy issues could have a major impact on tech companies and the connected devices that they create.

Making sure that your customers’ network and data are secured will become a much bigger topic around the world, and it creates a service that you can provide now to help protect your customers.