Avixa Spain analyzes the impact of the pandemic on the AV industry and its future
Mike Blackman also participated in this annual meeting, director of the ISE fair, who highlighted the great opportunity that holding the event in Barcelona in June represents for Spain. 2021.
with the title Current situation, opportunities and immediate future of the AV industry, the annual meeting of the association Avixa Spain virtually brought together 170 professionals to reflect on the current situation of the sector and the immediate future, from manufacturers' perspectives, distributors, integrators and companies of live events and digital signage.
Mike Blackman participated in this event, fair director WHEREAS, who highlighted the great opportunity that holding the contest in Barcelona represents for the local fabric, which will take place 1 al 4 July.
Yoav Slimobich, responsible for Avixa in Spain and Portugal, was in charge of welcoming more than 170 participants(including twenty-one panelists from different business areas) who represented 150 companies, 30 of them from Latin America, highlighting the importance and added value of maintaining communication and business channels between both continents.
In his speech, he especially thanked the members of the association for their work and the efforts made by professionals in the audiovisual industry in these difficult times., especially freelancers and live event companies (live event).
Positive balance of activity
Slimobich reviewed the activities carried out by Avixa Spain in 2020, which included actions to promote the AV industry in universities, as in Alicante and Malaga; collaboration agreements with COITT, Ceet and Clear Av Cataluña; support in education and training with advice and tutoring; virtual preparation courses for the CTS Certification; the meeting of the Advisory Group of integration companies, as well as the connection between students and companies to carry out internships and the invitation to end clients and students to ISE 2020, among others.
One of the actions especially highlighted by Slimobich has been the program AVIXA Live, which entailed the realization of 24 online seminars for eight weeks, in which more than 35 trainers and which had more than 6.000 participants. Also, the Ibero-American Congress had 42 presentations in four days, recording 4.580 assistants.
Among the projects for 2021, The head of Avixa Spain revealed the so-called AV Experience Zone, a specific area to be launched in ISE 2021, in which vertical end customers (corporate, hospitality, retail and education) They will learn how AV integrators can improve their businesses, which will have integration companies from the association, real case presentations, market studies, talks on new trends and guided tours of the fair.
On the other hand, Slimobich asked for the support of its members to increase collaboration with universities, technical schools and vocational training centers throughout the country, and reminded companies that they can count on Avixa when they are looking for new talent. In addition, invited more companies to join the association “because together, In addition to being stronger, “We will be able to carry out more actions for the benefit of our sector”.
The ISE Barcelona opportunity
Mike Blackman, director of ISE, wanted to be present at the meeting and stressed the great impact that the fair will have in Spain as a catalyst to generate new business opportunities, since traditionally most of the event attendees come from the host country.
The director of the largest event in the AV and systems integration industry predicted a very successful in-person event in 2021, with all security guarantees, in which some virtual elements will be incorporated for those who cannot attend in person.
Blackman was also confident in the number of exhibitors that will be at the event., which he calculated at eight hundred “in the worst case”, and assured that all the major exhibitors have already confirmed their participation because “we continue to be the largest AV fair in the world”.
In that sense, The participants of the annual meeting of Avixa Spain agreed on the importance of holding ISE in Barcelona, since it will allow Spanish companies to “play at home” and meet face to face with end users.
Alberto Caceres, CEO of Trison, He predicted that the fair will serve to attract new clients “since the fair will be in all the media and that enormous visibility will generate great opportunities for national companies in the sector.”.
For José María Grau, general director of Ditec, holding the fair in Barcelona “will allow the majority of our clients to visit it, so we can meet them there what, in the medium term, will boost sales. Added to this is that European aid may coincide in time with the fair., which will activate the market and favor the recovery in the second half of the year”.
Aristeo Lopez, general director of Tower TBA, He stressed that the fair “will give great visibility to our business and will make IT department managers finally aware of the AV industry.”. When clients enter ISE Barcelona in 2021 and see the volume of the fair and everything that moves around them, they will realize the size of this industry, something you can't even imagine.".
Representation of all business areas
The annual meeting of Avixa Spain had four panels: manufacturers, integrators, live events and digital signage. The participants of the first highlighted the new opportunities and learning generated as a result of the pandemic.
Alvaro Fontanals, marketing director of THE audio, delved into the importance of manufacturers accompanying their distributors in managing demand. “We have to get to work with our distributors to discover more business opportunities and optimize our offer”, pointed out, while advocating for greater use of CRM techniques for better monitoring of all opportunities and thus maximizing sales.
Montse Romero, international sales director Arthur Holm, rescued some lessons from the health crisis: “We were very busy with day-to-day life and this crisis has helped us rethink our strategy, mission and products, as well as explore new vertical markets. Besides, in the absence of fairs, We have learned that the use of tools like Zoom can also be a good way to communicate with our clients, see their needs and work together to understand how the demand for AV products evolves”.
The person in charge of Arthur Holm assured that 2021 It will continue to be a complicated year, but that in 2022 growth will return. “There will be a strong demand for video surveillance solutions, conference and collaboration, and we will see a great boom in artificial intelligence. In-person meetings will never be replaced by virtual ones, but they will coexist. “We are social beings and we need face-to-face experiences and social contact”.
For your part, Jesus Cabrera, director of Alfalite, emphasized how the events industry has changed forever. “There has been a disruption of business as we knew it and we are going to encounter hybrid events, with less presence than until now, with which other technical instruments will be needed to carry them out, which will be a business opportunity”.
On the live events panel, The participants stated that their sector has been the first affected by the crisis and will be the last to emerge. In fact, Juanjo Vila, of Equipson, He assured that there is already a talent drain in the sector, “which will cause problems in the future to find new ones in the industry”.
Diego de Anna, CEO of New Media, highlighted as a positive aspect of the pandemic the fact that technology is now on the minds of the CEOs of large companies. For your part, Daniel Perez, sales director of I am, commented that many clients have found advantages in hybrid events (especially in the corporate sector) because they can reach a greater number of people anywhere in the world. “Hybrid events are here to stay”, sentenced.
All the panelists of the live events agreed with Manuel Moreno, manager of flights Barcelona, when he stated that “the experience of an in-person event is irreplaceable”.
Participants in the digital signage panel (Gemma Cusco from TMM-Group; Juan Carlos Martin, of Icon Multimedia/Deneva, and Iván Rodríguez, of Admire) They highlighted the quality of digital signage solutions made in Spain,“that can compete on equal terms with any international manufacturer”.
They also warned of the unfair competition that often occurs with non-professional solutions and advocated for some type of quality seal that guarantees good practices and reliability in digital signage..
In the integrators panel, Alberto Caceres, CEO of Trison; José María Grau, director general de Ditec; Aristeo Lopez, CEO of Tower TBA, y Gorka Fernández, manager of Telesonic, They agreed that the crisis can be a great opportunity to promote the digitalization of physical spaces in all verticals. “Technology has come to the end user to stay, and the role of the integrator interconnecting the different layers of an AV project takes on a fundamental role”, stated Gorka Fernández.
Economic data and new initiatives
The meeting also allowed Peter Hansen, from the Avixa Market Intelligence department, will analyze the situation of the AV industry globally, with special emphasis on the EMEA region. The analyst pointed out that Europe is going to suffer a lot this year, with a fall in GDP 7,3%, although it predicts long-term growth.
During the meeting, two new Spanish initiatives in the sector were also presented.: Avify, an online community that puts audiovisual technicians in contact with companies in the sector, y The AV Connector, a podcast created by Juanjo Vila in which technical and creative professionals in the industry are interviewed.
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