It is hard to believe that Crestron has only been back in full force at CEDIA Expo for two years. Now, for the third consecutive year, their sizable booth will once again be greeting attendees as they enter the show floor, where the company is looking to interact with their dealer partners and introduce others to their expanding line of products.
“We’re always looking for the right kinds of dealers to bring into our ecosystem,” says Brad Hintze, executive vice president of global marketing at Crestron. “Inevitably, we will also have existing dealers that are buying from us today that will see something they didn’t know we released or find something they didn’t know we do. CEDIA Expo is a good opportunity to reinforce what we’re working on and who we are — even among our existing dealers.”
To help dealers discover all that Crestron has to offer, there is a repeating session on Thursday called “Powering Your Business with Crestron” that will provide a high-level overview of the Crestron Home OS and how it can benefit a custom installation business. The 60-minute sessions take place in room 103 at 8:00 AM, 9:30 AM, 11:30 AM, 1:30 PM, and 3:30 PM.
So, why the focus on a Crestron basics course?
“Being in a show like this, it’s all about attracting the right new dealers, and having a landing place for them to be able to come and kind of try it out in training is certainly valuable,” says Hintze. “Also, it is easy to take for granted that over the last few years that we’ve all been living through a lot of integrators have had tremendous turnover in their employees. We see this on the residential side and also on the commercial side, so even longtime dealers will have 50% of their staff that are new to Crestron. By providing this kind of onboarding experience, we’re able to help bring more of the technicians within an existing dealer into the Crestron camp as well.”
Back at the booth, there will be plenty of Crestron tech on display as usual, but with a different focus than last year. “There are a few product areas that will be consistent — certainly lighting and shading are a core part of who we are — and there will again be a focus on how easy it is to deploy and manage a Crestron home, but this year there is an even deeper emphasis around entertainment and AV over IP,” explains Hintze. “At InfoComm, we had a heavy emphasis there on NVX, as we have shipped a million endpoints for our AVoIP solution — more than any other manufacturer — which shows how well it’s been accepted. So, we will be reinforcing the value of audio and video over IP. We feel proud of our NAX audio amplifiers and what we’re doing with them, which is super unique.
“The heart of CEDIA is home theaters and entertainment, and I think that our industry is at risk of getting distracted by other things. For example, for the last few years, we’ve been distracted by little voice hubs, voice control, and poor-quality DIY devices, and there are certainly consumer trends that lead people to question if AV over IP is valuable. We believe it is — it may be for different kinds of uses than might have been the case five years ago, but there is obviously still a place for that.
“We also think you don’t need to settle for tabletop speakers. Our industry is doing consumers a disservice by letting them find Alexa hubs and other voice pods as an acceptable way to listen to music. Who else can tell that story better than our industry? As a major player in that ecosystem, we’re dedicating a lot of space to entertainment and talking about it so that we can reinvigorate some of that thinking and excitement.”
In terms of new products, the company is showing the latest changes to its mature Crestron Home OS and a new product that fits nicely into that focus on entertainment.
“Everybody wants audio everywhere, but the reason vinyl matters is the nostalgia of it — the tactile feel and that experience of it,” says Hintze. “And how can you bring together that vinyl experience and get it over the network? Our new NAX endpoints make it super simple to take a turntable and get it onto your distributed network. Sending vinyl over IP is central to what we’re teaching people inside of our booth, and we hope it’s exciting and inspiring!”
Ready to experience Crestron for yourself? Head over to booth #1901 and visit http://crestron.com.
