CE Pro June 2021 - 4

From the Editor
by Arlen Schweiger

Shaking Up Market Share
Requires Patience

How do you
choose?
Do you go for
the trusted
brand leader,
take a chance
by supporting
an upstart,
or perhaps
utilize another
company to
which you may
be loyal for other
good reasons?

Arlen Schweiger is
executive editor of
CE Pro. He can be
reached at
arlen.schweiger@
emeraldx.com and
@ArlenSchweiger

LIKE A LOT OF (mostly) guys my age, the
pandemic reignited a long-lost interest in
sports cards ... as a nostalgia-based hobby, a
potential investment for retirement, a connection between father and son, whatever
the motivation, it's a hot market.
It's also a much different world than when
I stopped collecting as a teenager, and one
change that has created a huge influence
over the industry is the rise of professional
card-grading services. It's a segment that
actually got me thinking about the wholehouse automation category and our annual
CE Pro 100 Brand Analysis, which can be
found starting on page 30.
Collectors, many of whom run card stores
as one- or few-man shops just like custom
integrators, rely on card-grading companies to
potentially increase the value of a card. These
companies use 10-point scales to scrutinize
every facet of a submitted card, and the difference between an " excellent to near-mint "
9 and a " gem mint " 10 could translate to thousands of dollars on the resale market.
The card-grading market is dominated by
two top companies whose grades set the
market value, but thanks to the industry's
pandemic boom, those leaders are now facing
challengers touting impressive heritages,
splashy cardholder designs, tech innovation
like using AI, or some other differentiator.
I couldn't help but think about companies like Crestron, Control4, Savant, Elan,
RTI, URC, Vantage and others. Back in 2006
when I started at CE Pro, the home control
category was led by Crestron and AMX as
the consensus leaders. Control4, with its
mesh network and mission of bringing home
controls to a wider potential customer base,
seemed to have the integrators' ears having
debuted a couple years earlier at CEDIA
Expo, and it was certainly the " young gun " of
the group looking to shake up the market.
Then along comes Savant around this time

having jumped on the popularity of Apple
iOS; it was the shiny new toy in whole-house
automation. Meanwhile, the likes of Elan, RTI,
URC, Vantage and others continued to leverage their own histories to earn their chunk of
market share. Soon, the category would be
bombarded by security and DIY challengers.
The question for dealers (of both tech
integration and of sports cards) is how do you
choose which supplier to use? Do you go for
the trusted brand leader, take a chance by supportiing an upstart, or perhaps utilize another
company to which you may be loyal for other
good reasons?
It's a question the CE Pro 100 Brand
Analysis helps dealers tackle every year as
it crunches the numbers on the preferences among the highest revenue integrators.
When looked at over a several-year period,
it produces a nice snapshot reflective of
industry trends, innovation impact, mergers &
acquisitions and much more.
In whole-home automation, for instance,
AMX turned its focus to the commercial
market many years ago, long before it was
acquired by Harman (and later Samsung);
Control4 kept gaining until it now has run
away from the pack; Crestron and Savant
have been neck-and-neck with their loyal
integrator ranks; and companies like Alarm.
com, Google, Amazon and others are reshaping the category.
On the other hand, companies such as
Exceptional Innovation and others that vied
for market share at one time are dust, and
you'd be pressed to find a Millennial integrator who's heard of them.
Sometimes you just have to wait and see
how things play out. In the near future, I'll be
looking to send in some of my old basketball
cards (heck, I've owned a prized Bird/Magic/
Dr. J 1980-81 Topps card for 40 years now!)
for professional grading. But which card-rating brand will earn my business?

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CE Pro June 2021

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