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 editor’s forum Widening the Highway


Te plan for 2014 is an ambitious one; in fact, it may make new friends of an old nemesis.


I


SOLOMON DANIELS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF


SOLOMON@ME-MAG.COM


t’s not easy publishing a magazine. In fact, the actual production is probably the easiest part, though our designers and other editors might disagree with me. We made the choice


for this magazine not to be a print publication that looks for dirt, embarrasses industry mem- bers and reports on lawsuits. We chose to be an integral part of the mobile electronics community, which means we built a publication designed to amplify best practices and provide broader in- sight, while still supporting a platform for readers to share ideas and solve problems. However, every year the trends in and around the mobile electronics industry change. These changes are driven primarily by consumer demand but are also influenced by new products, competi- tion and legislation, not to mention the economy. Tracking those changes, gathering and assessing input on how they are affecting our industry, and building a predictive model of where those chang- es will take us and how we need to adjust the magazine and other assets to compensate – that is the real work. And we do it every year.


complete picture of how our industry is changing, and where we as aftermarket fulfillment experts fit in. This is why we sought out and supported the L.A. Auto Show’s Connected Car Expo as the official trade publication, and why future steps will further integrate us more strongly into the automotive realm. For retail business owners, the plan is to provide you with more information on consumer buying habits and trends so that you can better optimize your marketing and product mix. Over the past two years, we’ve experimented in the magazine’s products section, publishing internally cultivated consumer preference data and retailer-generated sales strategy for each product. The good news is, the information was unique and well-received. The bad? It’s tough to get on a monthly basis. With new channels of consumer data, we can strengthen this offering to make it more consistent, reliable and a better representation of the total market. For our installers and interface developers, this


unfortunately does not mean that we will suddenly have access to all OEM-level integration archi-


For retail business owners, the plan is to provide you with more information on consumer buying habits and trends so that you can better optimize your marketing and product mix.


In a lot of ways, 2014 can be called a year of “more of the same.” We’re still battling a declining core footprint and market share. We’re still in need of good, qualified people and resources to train them. We are still competing with places that sell our products with a substantial anti-overhead advantage. But we are also still dynamically adjust- ing—at both the manufacturing and retail levels— to meet our customers’ need for personalization and independence. And in this respect, 2014 can be coined as “change is the new constant.” That’s what Mobile Electronics and Hotwire— and by extension, MERA—are repurposing to sup- port this year. Our goal is to create a framework that makes adjusting to market changes a more fluid endeavor. To do this, we need to increase our information influx by opening more doors to more resources, whether they be other industries or the automakers themselves. In addition to nurturing deeper relationships with our industry’s innovators, we’ve challenged ourselves to build collaborative bridges with automakers, Tier 1 suppliers and promising tech- nology developers so that we can pass on a more


10 Mobile Electronics  January 2014


tecture (though not for lack of trying!). We will however, gain better insight on how devices share information and the means by which companies plan to make the truly connected car a reality. This will hopefully lead to more solid, shorter product development cycles on the aftermarket side and innovative technical and fabrication solutions in the bay.


On top of all this, we will continue to repre- sent the best our industry has to offer, featuring business advice and technical expertise from our Top 12s, Retailers of the Year and Installer of the year. (I joke with them that this is like the yearlong obligation following the Miss America pageant: the work doesn’t end with the crown!) I will also be looking for commitments from some of our more prominent bay gurus to help us provide firsthand technical and installation solutions. So that’s it. The steps we take this year are the


latest in our efforts to be our very best for you. I hope you look forward to them as I do. Enjoy CES if you’re going, make new friendships from your peers, and don’t forget to set your goals for the year. If you need help doing this, give me a call. 


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