Supported by a growing global demand for integrated audiovisual experiences and a war chest from parent company DCC, Stampede took the stage at its 2019 U.S. Vendor Summit to celebrate a record year of U.S. and Canadian sales growth with a pledge to continue to invest heavily in its core commercial AV business and accelerate its development of new business opportunities in CE and Custom Integration.
[Stampede to Rebrand as Exertis Pro AV]
“A number of factors are converging to create a golden opportunity to increase sales for our commercial AV reseller and vendor partners,” Stampede president and CEO Kevin Kelly said. “Our core pro AV business continues to grow year over year as end-users in all vertical markets turn to AV technologies to create compelling customer experiences to better differentiate their businesses. United States sales grew by 17 percent over the last year and Canada sales grew by 15 percent. To support our continued growth, we will continue to invest in new technologies, products, programs, and talent. In fact, we’ve added 18 new people to the team since July 1.
According to Kelly, the rapidly evolving nature of the technology landscape offers Stampede the unique opportunity to continue to move upstream, away from mainstream commoditized products. Armed with a portfolio that now exceeds 90,000 products from more than 200 vendor partners, Stampede will continue to move to a business model that emphasizes a higher level of integrated systems that provide value and profit to resellers and manufacturers.
Leading the way in this area will be new Technical Services and AV as a Service (AVAAS) programs. “As the world in general becomes more experiential in nature, integrated audiovisual systems built around displays are what are bringing these experiences to life,” Kelly continued. “And these integrated systems will, in the very near future, be maintained and upgraded through managed services. Our new Technical Services and AVaaS programs are designed to enable resellers to deploy and maintain these systems, profitably, over the long run.”
Also on tap for 2020 is the expanded roll out of the Big Book of AV Live program, which will enable Stampede to bring more technologies to more resellers and end-user customers in more markets than ever before. “In 2019 we did dozens of events with our mobile technology showroom. We are going to do even more in 2020 to provide our resellers and their customers with more opportunities to engage with and learn about the technologies that will make a difference in their business next year,” Kelly promised.
The 2019 Stampede Vendor Summits move on next to Canada on Nov. 12 in Toronto and Latin America on Dec. 4 in Miami, FL. For more information on the summits, visit https://www.stampedeglobal.com/summit/.
