Colorado vNet Hoping to Sign Distribution Deals for New Line of Products Due in Q2
After a five-month sales and marketing hiatus, Colorado vNet is planning to launch three products in Q2, Russound CEO Charlie Porritt told Consumer Electronics Daily during a press tour in Manhattan Thursday. Porritt confirmed it will deliver a media streamer using Autonomic Controls’ technology (CED April 19 p4) as part of a 2011 new product trio that will be available to dealers in the next 60 days.
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The MS-1 streamer will ship in June and stream Pandora, SiriusXM, iTunes and Radiotime, according to company literature for the new Vibe. The company also hopes, along with Audionics, Sonos and others, to have Spotify streaming by the end of the year, but the European streaming service has long been promised here and not yet delivered. The MS-1 will deliver six simultaneous streams of audio, something that Audionics “doesn’t even do,” Porritt said. The hardware is Russound’s and the software is “taking Audionics and adding a few elements to it,” Porritt said.
Colorado vNet will also ship a media server to replace a previous Colorado vNet model and an iPad app for control as part of the company’s mission to “be flexible and adapt to a changing market,” Porritt said. The iPad has been a “game changer” for content control. Eighty percent of music consumed in February “came from the cloud,” he said. “When was the last time you went to a store and bought a CD or a movie?” he asked rhetorically. “We need to be able to collect on that.” The iPad app is all about “content control,” and it’s where the industry is headed, he said. When the Colorado vNet iPad app is available in May, users will be able to control audio only but the app will control lighting, security and HVAC by year-end, he said.
Colorado vNet is transitioning manufacturing from its Loveland, Colo., facility to Russound contract manufacturers and consolidating product development with Russound, Porritt said. A spokesman for the company said manufacturing hasn’t officially ceased at Loveland and the company is “at the same staff level since several are temps who show up when there’s something to build.” Follow-up questions for a clarification of the manufacturing transition and how many workers would be affected weren’t answered by our deadline.
Regarding the decision to shut down sales and marketing of Colorado vNet abruptly at the end of 2010 (CED Dec 30 p1), Porritt said the decision was about “taking a step back” to reassess the product line and determine the direction it wanted to head in the future. The three new SKUs “are a product of that,” he said. Colorado vNet remains a separate legal entity, despite management by Russound executives, he said. Although the brands continue to be distinct and to be marketed in separate channels with dedicated sales resources, they are leveraging IP and know-how in product development, hardware engineering, software quality assurance, compliance and licensing, he said.
Porritt handles the “day-in-day-out” operations of Colorado vNet, and Maureen Baldwin, president of Russound, handles purchasing and supply-chain management. Jon Fisher, formerly of Savant and NetStreams, joined the company two weeks ago as sales manager to replace Petro Shimonishi, who left the company earlier this year. Porritt cited Fisher’s experience in the integrated systems market. Fisher will work out of his home office in Texas, Porritt said. R.J. Hirshkind, vice president of sales and marketing, will have responsibility for all sales and marketing for both brands, the spokesman said.
Fisher’s priority at the outset is to “re-hire the rep force,” Porritt said. The goal is to have a total of 12 firms by the end of June, with “a lot of the reps the same,” he said. A year ago the company had “seven or eight” and “never really filled the country,” he said. Reps and dealers have both expressed concerns about disruption in business, Porritt said. “They've said, ‘You guys basically quit your sales and marketing. What’s going to keep you from doing it again?'” Porritt said. His response has been that the company has a product pipeline close to delivery that “we didn’t have in any state in the last 18 months."
On the Russound side, the company will launch a streamer in its C series at CEDIA this September along with a new line of bezel-free speakers, Porritt said. The streamer will incorporate Apple Airplay for playback of iTunes content from iPhones and iPads through a multi-room system along with DLNA for playback of content on Android devices, he said.
Porritt maintains both brands have a “bright future,” and that over the past couple of years it has spent a lot of time on “sustainable engineering,” including compliance with European ErP standards for electronic power consumption in standby mode. The company hopes that compliance will help it expand its reach internationally.