NEWS WORLD
Harman-AMX: it starts here
Blake Augsburger, president of Harman International
Rashid Skaf,
president and CEO of AMX
AT A press conference at the start of InfoComm, it was announced that the acquisition of AMX by Harman had been completed. Later that morning, Paddy Baker sat down with Blake Augsburger, president of Harman International, and Rashid Skaf, president and CEO of AMX, to discuss the implications of the deal for the companies and for the market.
In the press conference, Blake, I think you said that Harman has a total audio-video strategy, or possibly audio-video-lighting strategy? When does that date from? Blake Augsburger: We’ve been talking about an AV system solution for 10 years. When we bought Martin, there was a whole bunch more to it than just live events. We bought them for the growth opportunities on the installation side. Simplistically, they take a string of LEDs and wrap a building or a bridge in it, and each LED becomes a pixel – and they can run video across what is basically a big screen. So you think about AV and
really Martin starts to play a large part in that. As we grow that business, we’re going to be doing more of this architectural stuff – and you’re going to have AMX controlling and conditioning signals that are going to end up being shown on both a Martin light and, say, a Samsung flatscreen.
6 July 2014
Will there be further acquisitions on the display side? BA: I can’t talk about that, but if you look at where we started, it was with a pro- audio system solution, and that sold very well because it was all about the user experience. Now we’re going to talk about a parallel path, which is video, and we want to provide a full video solution and then bring them together for an AV solution. So you start thinking, what am I missing in this video solution? That will kind of give you an idea of the things that we look at and talk about. But to do a deal, you’ve got
to have to have a buyer and a seller. I’ve known Rashid 10 years, we’ve been talking about this for a long time, and the timing was never right for either party. Now we’ve got lucky because of the timing.
Rashid, AMX went on the acquisition trail a few years ago and bought a number of brands that widened its reach into different markets. Those brands have been subsumed into AMX, which is now a more diverse brand than many of the other Harman brands it now sits alongside. Is there any scope for unpacking some of those AMX-acquired brands again? Rashid Skaf: We had to completely pivot the company about eight years ago. As we acquired these companies it was about building a platform to combine all these things to
come up with new solutions. Last year almost 70% of our revenue came from products that didn’t exist three or four years ago – and for a 32-year old company that’s pretty amazing. What we really see now is not unpacking the brands again to go into Harman, but – and we’re two-and- a-half days into this, so we still have a few things that are not quite worked out yet – I would like to see some of our technologies under brands that someone in the professional audio channel would want to buy, such as a controller by Harman, or a controller by JBL. Or somebody wants to buy a speaker, and that becomes part of what we do. Blake’s vision has always been a complete solution, and we’ll become part of that – whether as a brand or as part of a different brand, it’s really not that important. It’s about solving people’s problems rather than what it says on the box. BA: AMX gives us huge credibility in video – customers know what the quality is going to be, they know what to expect. RS: And vice versa – we have audio DSPs and amplifiers in our product line. I’d rather have them under the Crown brand because we’re not an audio company. And that’s the beauty of this: what we’re really strong at Harman traditionally hasn’t been, and what they’re strong at, we’re not. So together we bring real
great strength across the board. The really exciting part is the amount of innovation that can happen across the brands that will leapfrog us into a whole new segment of the market that we’re not in as an industry. Those are the kind of innovations that I look forward to under Blake’s leadership.
When can we hope to see the first jointly developed Harman-AMX products? BA: As Rashid said, it takes a while to design products. You’re probably looking at a couple of years before you see something material. RS: If you look at our history, that was about the timeframe to see something material after an acquisition. We have a roadmap of products that we’ve announced – so we have to complete those as we look at how this mission is going to happen. For something that makes you say, ‘Wow, that’s it, I get it now”, 18 to 24 months is probably realistic. BA: We want to bring something that’s very innovative and disruptive to the market. We want to change that whole
experience for our customers.
What’s the opportunity that you’re each most excited about? BA: From my side, looking at early wins; I think boardrooms, education and government installations are very exciting. There’s a big opportunity on the audio side. RS: I’d say exactly the opposite: the stadiums, the houses of worship, the hotels – where we don’t do such a good job. It’s not that we don’t do anything in stadiums – or Harman doesn’t do anything in government – but it’s not our main focus. I would like to see that become a much bigger part of what we do globally. BA: I met a big AMX dealer this morning, doing a big job with a ton of AMX and a ton of audio – none of it was Harman. I asked why, and he said, “Nobody really came to see me”. There’s no reason why these guys aren’t using each other’s products, it’s just that we aren’t touching those people. We’re going to get that business pretty quickly.
www.amx.com www.harman.com
ONLINE EXTRA
You can read an extended version of this interview, and see a short video interview, at
www.installation-international.com
www.installation-international.com
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