After years of success taking the Christie brand, products and services to the North American market, Christie now appoints Stampede Europe as a distribution partner for its Business Products, LED and Video Wall Solutions.

“For years, Stampede has served as Christie’s largest value-added distributor in the United States, Canadian, and Latin American markets, helping to establish the company as a pioneer in the display and projector industry,” says Stampede CEO Mark Wilkins. [Shown in photo at top left.]

“Christie offers an unprecedented combination of consistent product and high-quality service, allowing us to offer our resellers the right product targeted to the right application, and be completely confident of support. And now, with the opening of Stampede Europe and the acquisition of UK-based Just Lamps, we have the sales and marketing infrastructure in place to extend a very successful distribution partnership to the UK and beyond."

“Christie has a long and successful relationship with Stampede in North America so it was natural to continue that with their expansion into the UK market. We found that Stampede NA has a fresh, dynamic marketing dimension and have been a proven force in marketing terms to deliver our products and services to a wider audience,” says Dale Miller, Executive Vice President, Global Sales, for Christie. [Shown in photo at right.] We’re confident that Stampede will be able to leverage from their NA experience to help drive forward in developing the market place in new territories.”

Simon Smith, Vice President, Christie EMEA [Shown in photo at bottom left] echoed the sentiment, adding,“In recent years Christie has introduced a huge number of new products and services. For example, we have award-winning flat panels and LED. Christie has the widest range of projectors spanning 1DLP, 3DLP and LCD, and pioneered new illumination sources and technology platforms with laser phosphor and true native 4K. We have here an established and important market for Christie.

"When you consider the range and level of performance we can offer tailored to specific applications, this is a great time for Stampede to extend the consistent growth we have enjoyed with our existing distributors.”

According to both Wilkins and Miller, the newly-signed agreement currently includes the UK but the plan is to continue to expand the Stampede-Christie network globally.

Go Christie Digital Systems

Go Stampede

This year’s Digital Signage Summit Europe broke its own records: the event saw more attendees, more exhibitors and more speakers discussing more important topics for the future of the sector than ever before.

All in all, 503 attendees filled the two-day DSS Europe conference to listen to 40 plus speakers and the 40 exhibitors making their way to the Munich-based conference. Despite summer temperatures, all presentations and panels were well attended.

This year’s DSS Europe was also historic: the largest and most successful conference to-date was also the event’s 10th anniversary. Furthermore, with the news of Brexit running parallel to the event, questions were raised regarding the inevitable changes both to the economy in general and the digital signage industry as a whole.

Aside from both of these external factors, the DSS Europe could be a historic conference for other reasons: the rising trends IoT and smart cities, two of the most important topics at the event, both set to have a huge impact on the world -- for companies, individuals and potentially all vertical markets.

After 10 years of DSS Europe, the organizers say the event has taken place in the Hilton Airport for the last time. From 2017, the event will most likely take place in Munich’s ICM.

While the DSS Europe may be over for another year, there are many reasons why 2016’s event is sure to be remembered as a turning point. Organisers invidis and ISE hope that everyone made it back home safe and sound and would like to extend thanks to all people and companies that made 2016’s DSS Europe an extremely special one.

Go DSS Europe News

Scala names Harry Horn as VP and General Manager to lead their EMEA operations. Horn will oversee efforts in sales, marketing, finance, services and support and daily activity in the Sittard, Netherlands-based EMEA office.

Horn will continue overseeing Scala’s marketing strategy as Global Marketing Vice President. Scala has digital signage solutions driving more than 500,000 screens worldwide, connecting networks of digital devices and has operations throughout the EMEA region including Norway, Germany, Spain, UK and UAE.

“Harry’s marketing efforts have consistently supported and reinforced Scala’s sales and services goals, and his broad knowledge of the EMEA digital landscape and partner network makes stepping into this role a natural fit,” says Rune Halvorsen, chairman of the Scala board. “This also brings continuity to the EMEA leadership.”

Leading to his new role, Horn has worked to align sales, services and marketing to ensure a consistent, cohesive message and high-quality digital solution is delivered to customers and communicated to partners. Horn joined Scala in 2010 with more than 20 years of experience and in 2012 took over the direction of the global marketing strategy driving digital marketing, events, thought leadership and communications, awareness campaigns and prospect nurturing.

As general manager, Horn will extend his current presence in lending his expertise to speaking engagements and industry interviews.

Go Scala Names Harry Horn as GM for EMEA

Based on feedback from 500 organisations across W. Europe and the US, Futuresource Consulting says, the corporate vertical continues to show a strong propensity for growth in the adoption of digital signage at a time where the wider market is beginning to show signs of maturity (in some segments) and emerging territories are posting declines in the face of worsening economic conditions.

In short, look to the corporate market for growth.

The corporate market offers a large addressable audience, existing communications infrastructure (which signage solutions can leverage) and the growing desire of companies to communicate with employees and partners in increasingly diverse ways.

Ben Davis, Senior Market Analyst, reports annual volume growth for commercial Large Format Display (LFD) product (excluding videowall and interactive whiteboard product) reached just 6% globally in 2015, down from 10% the year before and 20% in 2013.

“Large chained installs in sectors like automotive, QSR and retail banking continue to prop-up rising volumes in larger Western markets but a growth ceiling is becoming an increasing concern for suppliers as penetration in these early adopter verticals rises.

“Over 30% of organisations surveyed in our latest round of research are using screens outside of meeting spaces for the purpose of digital signage. Large organisations with headcounts of 500+ show the highest rates of adoption but it’s the SME market, below the top tier of enterprise, which provides the largest addressable opportunity in terms of scale. Requirements in this sector are typically heavily cost driven, often based on small networks running template driven signage, with the potential to overlay signage content on existing screens used to deliver broadcast content.

“From a supply side perspective, the last few years have seen increasing diversification of solutions as vendors seek to align products to individual verticals, opening up new customer bases. A key facet of this strategy has been the rising availability and declining cost of lower end solutions designed to service small network environments like those seen in SME office spaces.

“The rising penetration of SoC solutions in screen hardware, the decreasing cost of low end media players and the increasing availability of template based content management solutions have all made digital signage more accessible to corporate customers. Penetration in the segment is rising and this positive trend is highlighted by our survey with 14% of companies that do not currently operate digital signage in office spaces expecting to do so during the next two years.

“A primary driver for the adoption and expansion of digital signage networks in the corporate space is the increasing influence of IT managers and IT integrators on AV purchase decisions. This trend is happening at a time when the AV signal distribution market is making its first significant inroads into replacing conventional matrix switching products with IP based solutions. Residing on a company’s central network, these video distribution platforms sit alongside other network based communications tools, providing IT and communications managers with opportunities to create increasingly centralised and integrated solutions.

“IP solutions account for a small proportion of the AV matrix switching market at present (<5%) but the cost of these solutions is falling as the cost of Ethernet switches comes down and video compression standards improve. These solutions can offer numerous benefits and significant cost saving potential for larger networks spread across corporate campuses. Perhaps most importantly for the signage market is the flexibility these solutions offer. Any screen in any location can receive any video stream on the network and adding additional screens is as simple as adding an additional Ethernet switch to existing infrastructure. Over 50% of companies we surveyed which currently use digital signage in their offices expect to expand that network within the next two years.“

Davis adds, “The future adoption of IP based video switching solutions will aid network expansion and help maximise the utility of signage installs in office spaces.”

Go Futuresource Consulting