2-15-2017, Mobile Electronics -- If you walked the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES last month, chances are pretty good that you passed MTX Audio. Even if you didn’t see them, you probably heard them.

Now managed by John Ivey, president of Mitek, the company is forging new directions, diversifying its properties and adding new products.  

“I grew up in this industry,” Ivey said. “We lived in the factory when I was a kid. I went to Iasca events when I was a child. I grew up in this industry going to all the shows and knowing all the people. Even through college, I worked at Mitek.”

John’s father, Loyd, who founded the company and still serves as CEO, is considered a pioneer in the industry. He maintains the vision, leadership and dedication of the company and was honored by the Consumer Technology Association in 2013 for his 16 years of service at the time on CTA Executive Boards.

These days, the family-owned business offers high-performance car, marine, home and street audio products to customers in over 80 countries around the world.

“While every CES grows in attendance, and I’m a big fan of CES—I’m on the CTA Automotive Board and the Board of Industry Leaders—there were not as many car audio dealers that attended the show as there used to be,” said the younger Ivey.

Prior to the show, Ivey said he had considered displaying some of the other products that Mitek makes to get more traffic to the booth. “We could have showed some more of the commercial audio goods,” he said. “We make a VOIP speaker that is powered over the Ethernet. I thought about adding those things into our booth to draw more people, but I wanted to stay true to North Hall—what North Hall is really supposed to be. So we haven’t done anything like that as of yet.”

Not Just Subs

When most people think of MTX, what first comes to mind is, “Oh, yeah, they’re the company that makes subwoofers.” (Thunder9500, RFL, Jackhammer). “We do that, but we do a lot more,” Ivey said, who has been running the commercial side of things for the last six years. “MTX is really where our company was founded, then grew. That has allowed us to invest in other companies and expand our portfolio. Now we have everything from ear buds to the largest audio systems in the world."

For instance, the largest division of Mitek is Atlas IED which Ivey estimates to be 10 times larger than MTX. “It’s a neat division and it allows us to gain exposure to the technology that is coming—future technology,” he said.

Basically, what the company does is digital audio transport. “Our system runs 80 percent of the world’s international airports,” Ivey said. “You have probably heard a woman who works for us and she is the voice of all the airports. So the voice you hear at JFK is that same voice you will hear in Orlando or Vegas, or Hong Kong. It’s the same voice at each airport. When the gate agent picks up the microphone and speaks—‘Delta flight 213 boarding out of gate C12’—that audio is turned into digital information and it is streamed to a massive server. We just completed the World Trade Center building in New York City, and not only did we do that building for the city, we do all the audio for the New York City subway stations.”

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2-8-2017, Mobile Electronics Magazine -- It's a known idea in life that the young typically leap before they look. Typically, the older you get, the more cautious you are when making big decisions. Sometimes, that's a bad idea.

Striking while the iron is hot seemed to be the motto of this year's Atlanta Falcons, which became the highest scoring team in the NFL with 540 points in the regular season. While scoring in such an aggressive manner doesn't guarantee that a team will win a Superbowl, it doesn't hurt either.

Ethan Blau uses a similar strategy with his shop, Sound Wave Customs (SWC), out of Virginia Beach, Va. By utilizing a combination of service-centric sales tactics, an aesthetically-pleasing shop layout and accepting any job that comes through the doors with a can-do attitude, SWC has earned several awards in its over three years of operation. Among the awards are a Best Of, Gold award from the Virginia Pilot three years in a row, making the Mobile Electronics Top 50 Retailers and Installers for 2015 and 2016, and winning the Best Customer Experience award at the 2016 Mobile Electronics Industry Awards.

Being such a new company, one might expect SWC to need some time to build a customer base and reputation to earn such prestigious awards and to be as profitable as it has become. But any expectation would prove wrong after getting to know what makes Blau and his team tick.

Lighting The Match

Learning what one's career will be in life is a struggle for most people—except Blau. From as far back as he can remember, he's wanted to be in business for himself.

"I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. When I was a kid, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I've always said I want to be my own boss," Blau said. "This is even before I knew I wanted to be in the 12-volt industry."

As a teenager, Blau took his passion for music and audio into business, performing basic installs for neighborhood kids in high school. Using car audio magazines as an educational tool, Blau found his career path right away. After high school, fueled by his new passion, Blau pursued car audio with persistence, offering his skills to any local shop that would have him. Soon enough, Blau was hired as an installer, despite not having much technical knowledge.

"I was very green. I installed for a couple of years but then they saw I had good people skills and product knowledge. They moved me up front to sales," Blau said. "I tried that for a while, became assistant manager, store manager and ran a store chain that was 30 years old. It was called Discount Auto Sound."

Blau worked at the chain from 2004 to 2008 before moving on to two more shops, Mobile Environment and Go-Ho Auto Audio before making the decision that would change his life. Inspired equally in the positive, by people like Dave "Fishman" Rivera, and in the negative by some former colleagues who had mistreated customers, Blau had a blueprint for the kind of shop he wanted to run. Despite his eagerness to get started, he received some words to the contrary.

"A Memphis rep gave me advice. If you were starting off boxing, would you want to step in the ring with Joe Schmo or Mike Tyson? I chose Mike Tyson," Blau said. "If you see a vision, you have to fully go after it. That's what makes our industry so special. Think about how much talent is out there and what they come up with. They still blow my mind. It's just amazing."

Piecing together capital from family and other sources, Blau found a location in the heart of Virginia Beach, part of a six-store shopping center right across the street from the Linhaven Mall. The shop is a mile from Interstate 264 and eight minutes from the ocean front.

The store and parking lot have a total space of 6,500 square feet, including a 2,800 square foot installation bay and fabrication shop, 1,200 square feet of stock room, office and conference room, and 2,200 square feet for the waiting room, restrooms, front counter area and main showroom.

After opening in September of 2013, the shop has grown approximately 30 percent annually in sales, according to Blau. After starting with two employees and growing to now have eight working for him, Blau attributes the growth to his willingness to educate himself and his employees, who he feels are hard to find due largely to pay and a lack of opportunity.

"We lost a lot of good guys in this industry because the pay was horrible. For a while at a store, I was the only guy with keys to the store. I was getting paid $9.25 an hour and we were doing good numbers back then. Some of the top techs were getting $7, $8, $9 bucks an hour. Even back then it was still a struggle," Blau said. "Some of the really good techs we had in that area were getting more career type jobs. Not only did I want to single-handedly change the industry in my area, I created my own niche." 

Read the rest of the story HERE.

2-1-2017, Mobile Electronics -- For 50 years, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), has delivered on its promise to showcase the latest in electronic technology. In the summer of 1967, its first year, the event hosted 117 exhibitors featuring transistor radios, stereos and black and white televisions. The next four decades saw innovations like cassettes, CDs, DVDs and plasma televisions take center stage. Today, one concept has dominated the show floor like no other: a fully connected life, harnessing the power of handheld digital devices and pursuing the dream of autonomous driving.

For the 12-volt industry, many of the innovations on display at this year's CES in Las Vegas won't have much of an impact on a retailer's bottom line. However, in the North Hall, which houses the automakers and 12-volt industry manufacturers, there were a number of trends that could have a significant impact in the near future.

Connectivity and autonomous driving were promoted with purpose with companies like Ford, Hyundai and Toyota, all eager to showcase what the roads will look like in the future. Connected driving products on display, such as Alpine's wireless CarPlay head unit, offered a more practical view of that future. Chris Cook, president of the Mobile Electronics Association, discussed the impact connected driving will have for the entire automotive industry in the Connect2Car panel during the four-day event.

"Consumers want to be able to connect their device with the car confidently. By 2020, 250 million cars will be connected to the Internet. What does this mean? It means the vehicles will be connected to the Internet and everything else. This is a good thing for all of us," Cook said. "Consumers are demanding to be in the forefront of the vehicle. When they're picking up their used Mustang, they usually want more than the OEM offered at the time it was sold. They want the latest technology. So to connect with confidence, automakers are responding. They are working to upgrade new vehicles with the latest aftermarket technologies."

With the safety category being one of the primary catalysts for this trend (all new light vehicles in 2018 will require backup cameras by law), automakers and the aftermarket are pushing for ways to fully integrate the latest technology into cars for an all-in-one solution. That doesn't account for the rest of the vehicles on the road, which average 11 years in age.

For all those in attendance, the aftermarket's response to consumer demand and OEM competition seemed clear: innovate.  

An Integrated Necessity

Regardless of the excitement generated by a new concept car or gadget, time has proven that the demands of consumers are what drive a successful innovation of new products. One category that the aftermarket has jumped on this year is high-resolution audio, which is more easily attainable for the average listener than ever thanks to an innovation in DSP technology.

Several companies have announced new DSP amplifiers that are designed to work as solutions for OEM sound systems. The Kenwood eXcelon XR600-6DSP is designed to capture signals before they reach the factory amplifier, resulting in cleaner output and retention of factory notifications, according to the company. The device works in cooperation with the iDatalink Maestro AR integration module, which links into the CAN bus of specific vehicles.

"I'm looking for the new products and looking forward to seeing some of the OEM stuff like built-in technologies and what we need to do to integrate with them," said installer Shaughnessy Murley from Visions Electronics as he began to walk the show floor. "I think OEM integration is going to be a necessity moving forward. You get in there, unplug the factory amp, plug their module in and then it's a blank slate. Integrating telematics in the vehicle will be a big thing, too."

Audiocontrol has also joined the OEM integration trend by making three of its recent products compatible with the Mastro AR. The DM-608 and DM-810 processors and the newly announced D6-1200 six-channel amplifier are all compatible with the ADS product.

"Hats off to ADS for what they're doing. For somebody who wants to keep the door chime muted without blowing your ears out, it'll make the interface that much easier," said Chris Kane, National Sales Manager of Audiocontrol.

In addition to the OEM integration trend, manufacturers focused efforts on what makes the 12-volt industry stand apart from OEM offerings. It discovered that clients are still eager to upgrade their sound systems to the best on the market, especially if high-end, high-resolution products are affordable. Sony's solution was on display in a demo vehicle featuring its RSXGS9 high-resolution single-DIN head unit and GS1621C component speakers.

"With the hi-res frequency range, you're basically getting more head room in your music. You don't get the sharp cut-off in the higher frequencies at 20K-ish. We've got about 60K going through this. It's a really good-sounding, smooth system," said Kris Bulla, National Product Trainer, Sony Car Audio. "We're all about hi-res this year. This GS system is the hi-res that you want to hear. It provides studio-quality sound."

Read the rest of the story HERE.

3-8-2017, Mobile Electronics -- There are many components that make up a sound system. There's a head unit to handle music, navigation and Bluetooth functions, tweeters for the high end, coaxials for the mids and a subwoofer for the bass. To send the signals, an amp, preferably with DSP, is used to maximize the audio output to those speakers. Finally, it requires a skilled installation technician to bring all the components together to create a cohesive sound system.

The same could be said of the types of products and services a 12-volt shop sells to its customers. And like sound systems, there are many different products one could choose from to create a shop's offerings. While a standard car audio shop might focus mostly on selling the standard "deck and fours," some stores have had to expand their offerings to keep up with new technology and declining car audio sales.

During his 25 years as a mobile electronics business owner, Alan Binder came to learn this modern truth well, leading him to diversify his business in multiple directions. Seeing a steady decline in his car audio business forced Binder to look into other revenue sources for his chain, Progressive Mobile Electronics. Binder transformed his chain into a diversified example of how a 12-volt business can find its niche in a variety of categories, including window tinting, breathalyzer installations and emergency equipment product and installation.

Retail U-turn

After selling his share in a successful restaurant chain that employed over 7,500 employees, Binder decided he wanted to take the money he'd made and fund a different kind of business. It ended up being Progressive Mobile Electronics, a chain of stores in San Diego, Calif.

Since buying the company in 1991, Binder expanded beyond just car audio with a several categories. "90 percent was pure retail and 10 percent was dealer business going to install radios and speakers in cars on those lots. By May 2016, 55 percent of the business was retail, 35 was emergency equipment and the other 15 percent was window tinting."

Binder admits that the emergency equipment business is a great place for retailers to make revenue thanks to the business model available in that area. "That's a business that will be there forever. Police, fire, FBI, DEA, sheriffs and Homeland Security are included in that category. We concentrated on undercover vehicles," Binder said. "The problem is that the barriers to entry can be quite high. It's not the cost of getting in, but it's being able to find the right contact in these government institutions that's very difficult."

To gain initial entry into emergency vehicle work, Binder recommends making friends with a local government agency like a police department. If you have a particular goal in mind, it doesn't matter which agency you start with since the field is very close-knit.

"People who work in the sheriff's office will talk to people with the police, who will talk to people in the FBI. They all know each other. Once you're in with one of them, you can get in with the others, but it's difficult to get in with the first one," Binder said. "It's also difficult to become a dealer with those necessary equipment brands. Federal Signal, Code 3, Whelan, Soundoff Signal—they have their dealers and protect their dealers very well. Initially, you'll pay a lot more to a distributor than you would direct, so your margins are going to be minimalized. You'll have to get in with a 10 to 15 percent mark-up when you're used to a 25 to 30 percent mark-up. You also have to have skilled labor to do this work since consistency is of the essence."

The bidding process can be quite rigorous as well, according to Binder, with up to 50 or 60 pages of documentation often needed due to the high level of consistency required. But thankfully, once a shop is in the system, they're in for good.

"Every store in the stereo business has the ability to be in this business. Particularly in small towns with a police department. I've seen police departments send vehicles over 200 miles from L.A. to San Diego to get done," Binder said. "It's just the difficulty to get into the business." 

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