JON KOWANETZ, HANDCRAFTED CAR AUDIO, MESA, ARIZ.
17 years in the industry
I deliver: “Very simply, vehicle personal- ization. Given the wide range of end users that the OEM must appeal to in order for their company to gain or maintain market share, they average out the expectations and desires of the masses to deliver something that is generally acceptable by most, loved by some and hated by others. But for those who require more of their in- car experience, we are here. Only we can build a user experience that is custom-tai- lored to an individual, rather than a market demographic.”
My skills: “My most prominent skill or expertise is my level of knowledge about the products and services my industry of- fers and how they can be used to improve people’s lives. I use my expertise to help me listen better, understand more deeply and recommend solutions that go beyond simply solving a problem, but actually pro- viding functionality and benefits that the customer didn’t even know they needed.”
“Most everything we do can be adapted to an OEM system with some form of adapter. So, if the goal is to remove the need for an adapter of any sort, I just
don’t see it as being worth the cost.” - Jon Kowanetz, Handcrafted Car Audio
What I Want From Automakers: “Unfor- tunately, I don’t believe there is a way that vehicle engineers could make their prod- ucts more easily upgradeable for the af- termarket while maintaining their ability to have their systems be easily serviceable and predictable. But I’m really not even sure that they need to. Audio systems are fairly universal these days, given the in- tegration products that are offered, as are remote starter and security systems given the increasing number of vehicle functions available over data bus. Most everything we do can be adapted to an OEM system with some form of adapter. So, if the goal is to remove the need for an adapter of any sort, I just don’t see it as being worth the cost. To make, say, the vehicle audio system be an open source platform of sorts, the engineers would need to come up with a standardized base audio system that would be easily upgraded on their end and easily downgraded on our end and I just don’t see that happening. Just like we, as aftermarket dealers, want to “lock in” a customer to dealing only with us by being professional and educated, the OEM wants to lock in a customer to dealing with them by making their systems proprietary. To make our jobs easier for us, is simply bad business for them.”
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