Azione Unlimited Wants Fair TV Supply Deal as Ultra HD Rolls Out

Custom electronics buying group Azione Unlimited is seeking to add a TV maker at the high end of the 4K market to offset what President Richard Glikes predicts will be “the quickest commoditization you've ever seen.” Glikes told Consumer Electronics Daily that Ultra HD will proliferate “so quickly,” citing a Chinese TV vendor who forecast 50-inch 4K TVs will drop to $999 by December. Larger panels hold more promise for small-volume Azione dealers if the group can “solidify a relationship” with a vendor for screen sizes at the 75-inch, 84-inch or 90-inch levels.

For 4K, Glikes wants to get high-end product “at least at the same time” as Best Buy and “maybe get favored allocations,” he said. With any new technology launch, it’s typically a short-supply situation, which buoys prices, he said. Also, “whoever has the goods makes the sale,” he said, and Azione dealers need to have product to write a ticket. “We tell people to buy them and then we don’t get the sets” that may instead have gone to a retailer “one tier down” who could afford to buy a container-load, he said. “That’s unfair,” he said. “If we ’sell’ the product, we should be able to sell the product.” A tight relationship with a TV supplier would allow the group to fulfill its needs, “get it into the hands of the right people where it’s installed and displayed properly and it’s a benefit to the entire marketplace,” he said.

Azione Unlimited added 14 dealer members in the past quarter to bring its membership to 67, on the way to its goal of 250, Glikes said. Glikes, who launched the group with its first member in February 2012, believes Azione achieved the critical mass necessary to show staying power when it reached 60 dealers and he expects to end the year with a roster of 125-150 dealers “at the present clip.” he said. Four out of five Azione members weren’t in a buying group before, but there are also “a lot of people in the wrong buying groups right now,” he said. Recent Azione additions have included some of the largest integrators in the country, he said, “and when you add $8 million, $10 million, $12 million accounts in our slice of the business, that’s pretty meaningful,” he said. A quarter of the group’s members each bring in more than $5 million annually, he said. Minimum annual revenue for Azione membership is $1.5 million with a record of three years in business, he said. Total buying power of integrator members stands at $200 million, Glikes said, and member employees total 1,070. Ninety percent of Azione dealers may have conference rooms or a theater space but don’t have showrooms, Glikes said.

Azione’s vendor count stands at 30 and Glikes wants to cap the number at 32, he said. He wants to add a receiver vendor out of “four contenders” to join Integra, “but there are not a lot of choices,” he said, noting how names like Kenwood and JVC have left the market. In addition to another TV vendor relationship, the group is also looking at a mount or other installation hardware vendor, he said.

One of Azione’s programs for members is Azione University, available through the Azione website, where vendors can upload training materials and tests. Having the online repository allows dealers to get new hires “up to speed quickly” and offers a way for companies that want to follow the Azione template to “speak the same language” and “have the same way to present,” Glikes said. The program will be coordinated by Training Allies, a support organization launched by former Tweeter trainers, Glikes said. Vendors used to have training staffs that met with dealers on a one-by-one basis, “but that doesn’t happen anymore,” Glikes said.

A goal of Azione is to be a launch pad for new technologies, a tough act for dealers who largely don’t have showrooms or visibility that a retail location offers, Glikes said. “What we have is the client base -- the athletes, CEOs and early adopters,” Glikes said. “We won’t do volume but we'll do penetration into the right part of the [retail market],” he said.