Retail is a constantly changing environment. Brick and mortar stores have been watching the ever present migration of consumers as online retail carves out a larger market share. The economy has forced a need for end users to educate themselves on every purchase, making sure that they are getting as much as possible for their dollar. Digital formats are becoming more and more sophisticated, turning products into legacy devices in mere months. Consumers learn from their retail experience. They get in person comparisons of products and features, and advice from sales people who have that much more experience with AV than they do. For retailers, being in touch with industry changes has never been as important as it is today.
Accessories have always been a value add for those in the retail market, something to tag on to a sale of some large ticket item such as a HDTV. Now that the industry has reached a point where the HD foundation is solid, the only logical thing to do is build up. Consumers are holding on to last year’s big screen, but still want this year’s features. This is where accessories such as converters are starting to become more of a necessity than a value add. Typically, most retail location carry high margin accessories such as cables and mounts. These days our company is seeing much more interest from retail sales companies for solutions. They are looking for an answer to give customers hitting some of the walls that come with digital formats like getting their video signal from their laptop to their HDTV without having wires running across the floor.
Atlona Technologies has been stable throughout the winds of change that have swept over our economy, and have even experienced some growth due to their stance on being a solutions based connectivity provider. In the coming months Atlona will provide solutions for consumers wanting to take advantage of all the new features offered by the HDMI 1.4 as well as converters for Mini DisplayPort. These products will be met with a large demand as these video formats proliferate in the market at the hands of industry giants such as Apple and Panasonic. Retailers will need to change their mindsets on accessories if they hope to stay on top of this trend. Those that do will have something offer their customers between the big screen purchases.
