Retail’s Role in Expanding the Connected Home Ecosystem

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It’s an exciting time for the connected home category as sales move beyond entry-level products to more advanced offerings that work together to form a connected ecosystem. Within this ecosystem, products are creating a sense of modernization for consumers—devices are talking back to users and communicating with other devices to make homes more efficient and comfortable than before. This shift translates into big opportunities for retailers, who should be planning for how to consultatively sell products that interconnect, as the smart home category continues to grow. Retailers who select core products that work together and add in the right peripherals can help consumers create a true connected ecosystem. Due to these new possibilities with technology, now is the time for retailers to map out a plan for gaining connected-home market share.

 

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Hey Dealers: The Smart Home Is Knocking And Distributors Can Let It In

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Let’s face it, any dealer worth his or her weight in TVs and appliances knows that the connected home is coming, if it’s not already here. And just like the New York Lottery, you gotta be in it to win it.

Problem is, like any emerging technology it’s an untamed mess of incongruous standards and platforms, and placing your bets too soon could prove deleterious.

Enter the distributor, the champion of virtual inventory, just-in-time delivery and e-commerce fulfillment, who is ready and willing to sort things out. Just as they have done with new PC operating systems, A/V technologies and assorted protocols, these manufacturer intermediaries can help guide retailers through the IoT maze in order to avoid the pitfalls of a nascent category.

TWICE contacted a host of leading two-step lights to shed some illumination on the pathway. Here’s what they had to say.

Dennis Holzer, executive director, PowerHouse Alliance: Today, consumers are demanding products they can control with their smartphones or tablets, so almost every day new products enter the smart-home market.

It’s an ongoing priority for the PowerHouse Alliance to seek out new relevant products and add them, as we have recently done with Zigen, Hikvision and KEF. We continue to bring on new lines across the smart home and other categories, and as we bring them on, we equip dealers with the knowledge to sell and install those products.

Every once in a while a product innovation causes a ripple effect in determining the next generation of products across the industry. Voice control is the latest technology proving to be a game-changer for CI dealers. My advice to dealers is to embrace voice control and ensure you have the right product mix, knowledge and expertise to sell and install these control systems and compatible devices.

I also encourage dealers to offer networking products to build a strong and reliable network for customers that can handle the number of smart devices they have. Both of these categories will be critical to dealers’ success this year and in the future.

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Just How Good Were Holiday Sales At Retail?

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The latest installment of TWICE’s Executive Retail Roundtable, in which we gather some of the best and the brightest in tech retail to address the state of the industry, revealed an optimism about 2017 and the prospects for such categories as Ultra HD TV, connected home and virtual and augmented reality systems. Join our deep dive into the challenges facing the retail business today:

TWICE: Let’s start with the holidays, and you in particular Laura, because Amazon described it as the best holiday season in the company’s history. How much of that can you take credit for?
Laura Orvidas, CE VP, Amazon: All of it — my own holiday shopping contributed. [Laughter.]

We had a great holiday season. A lot of our success was buoyed by Echo and the other Amazon devices. We saw a lot of customers come and interact on a variety of our products.

TWICE: “Millions sold” was Amazon’s official statement, but do you have any hard numbers on the Alexa devices?
Orvidas: Nine times our previous holiday season.

Mobile shopping was also very hot. Over 72 percent of Amazon customers worldwide shopped using their mobile devices, and on Cyber Monday alone customers purchased 46 electronic items per second on a mobile device.

Read the full article on TWICE.com

How Alexa And Home Networking Are Stirring Up The Smart Home (And Other Holiday Insights From Top Retail Execs)

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It’s kinda startling how much ground can be covered in less than 90 minutes when you lock eight leading industry merchants (and one renowned CE analyst) inside a room and discourage the use of mobile phones.

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