News and Reviews....

    In With The New   Dec. 2008

By Bob Lieto

    Well, 2008 shaped up to be a year filled with radical changes, with more expected to come.  The expected BIG story was supposed to have been the Blue Ray camp winning the format war against the HD-DVD..... NOT. Or it could have been the long, dragged out process of the Federal Communication Commission to allow the merger of XM Satellite Radio with Sirius Satellite Radio ..... NOT. That would have been in a normal year. The year 2008 was anything but normal. We lived through the take over of Circuit City by investor Mark Wattles, his fight along with Wall Street superstar Carl Icahn to take over, fire their top executive Phil Schoonover, then go into Chapter 11 with many in the know expecting them to tank completely in 2009.

Then there is the Tweeter story. I for one have always thought of Tweeter as our (being a Custom Integrator) closet competitor. They stocked the line-up of products that were needed to compete as a true Custom integrator but lacked the one on one design model and personnel ability necessary to apply their products. Tweeter is in its last phase of going the way of the dodo. CUSTOM... ROCK ON from the world and in the words of  Wayne.

Fujitsu left the Plasma Biz, sorry to say, they had a great product and brought the plasma picture to a higher level. Panasonic dropped the Matsushita as it branding name, made a move to buy Sanyo and chopped the margins and MSRP of 42, 50 and 60" PDPs, forcing all to follow. The JVC - Kenwood deal went on without notice, and Sharp's investment in Pioneer began in Europe. Philips got out of the plasma market and licensed its name to Funai. Sharper Image shut down in May, Best Buy the last of the big box stores announced 75% drop in 4th quarter sales ($150 million)

Please keep in mind the changeover to DIGITAL is scheduled for February 17, which should bring about a whole lot of phone ringing here at Custom Audio-Video Systems, we are adding a roll over telephone line in anticipation. 

The story of the year 2008 should be the traumatic changes that have occurred due to mismanagement, miscalculations, the degeneration of the general economy which is practically criminal in nature. The outright greed of the financial institutions which have had such a profound affect on this industry and others worldwide. Will the story of 2009 be the dramatic turnaround needed?

We have been in business for over 22 years and have seen it before, although not as bad, and have faith in our company and industry to weather the storm....even in a deep recession. And so we would like to wish our past and future customers, clients and accounts well in 2009 and thank-you all for allowing us to deliver our personal brand of service and design innovation. Happy New Year.

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