Quick Bio
Name: Mark Roslon
Position: Director of Product Management, Commercial Displays
Company: Epson America
Overtime: In his spare time, Roslon enjoys beach volleyball, mountain biking, and track days.
SCN: What is your position, and what does it entail? What are your responsibilities?
MARK ROSLON: My team manages the commercial projector and augmented reality display lines of business at Epson. My day-to-day responsibilities include lifecycle management, roadmap definition, and go-to-market strategy—along with the launches and marketing of Epson products.
SCN: How long have you been in this position?
MR: I took responsibility for this business line about a year ago but have been with Epson for over 10 years.
SCN: How has your background prepared you for your role?
MR: I’m an engineer by training but moved to business/marketing later on. I joined Epson after a four-year stint in management consulting.
My background equipped me with several key skills necessary to be successful in product management. First, I learned to solve complex problems by framing my approach and breaking things down into smaller/more digestible chunks. Second, I have learned the art of influencing others across the organization to support company efforts. Finally, I am able to craft a clear and compelling vision or story for the business and communicate it effectively to internal stakeholders, channel partners, and customers.
SCN: What are your short- and long-term goals?
MR: In the short term, we are focused on capitalizing on the strong recovery we are seeing in the pro AV market, particularly in education.
Our long-term goal is to leverage the incredible performance and flexibility of our laser projection displays to create highly engaging and transformative experiences across multiple sectors, including education, corporate, retail, hospitality, and rental and staging.
SCN: What is the greatest challenge you face?
MR: Working with our channel partners to increase end user awareness and adoption of the range of capabilities that laser projection offers is one of my greatest challenges. We continue to work closely with our partners to communicate these capabilities and demonstrate the flexibility of projection technology and its ability to free end users from constraints imposed by their display of choice being a two-dimensional rectangle on the wall.
SCN: Where do you see the projection market heading?
MR: As we continue to adopt new hybrid working, collaboration, and learning models post-pandemic, projection will play a key role in supporting these interactions with large, flexible displays that enable users to view content and remote participants more clearly and effectively.
Additionally, we expect projection to play a key role in accelerating the transformation of retail and hospitality as the industry shifts toward more immersive and interactive experiences that draw consumers back through business doors.
SCN: Are there new initiatives we are likely to see from Epson?
MR: We are placing strong focus on thought and category leadership with our new Epson Speaker Series, which focuses on K-12, higher education, and corporate/experiential markets. The goal is to benefit our end users and channel partners by bringing subject matter experts to the table to share perspectives on the latest trends and challenges and the technical approaches that they are taking to address these.
We are also continuing to promote the benefits of large Epson projection displays in hybrid classroom and lecture hall settings through our Laser Focused Learning campaign, as well as highlighting the capabilities of our high-brightness portfolio through the Project Confidence campaign.
SCN: How can systems contractors better position themselves to profit from products and/or services you have to offer?
MR: We encourage channel partners to join our ImageWay partner program, which confers multiple benefits such as enhanced margins, marketing, technical support, and more. By joining the program and working with us actively to promote and deliver Epson’s best-in-class solutions to their customers, they will get the benefits of partnering with a broadly recognized leader and innovator in the industry.
Click here to read more stories from the July 2021 issue of SCN.
