Earlier Gary Kayye wrote a brief but eloquent blog post about Sony and Sharp’s financial woes, and the certain impact that Apple’s TV offering will have on control and distribution systems.

If you haven’t already read it, you must.

Go here, then come back and finish reading my blog post.

As I said in the comments section, there isn’t anyone out there who’s still hanging their hat on one or two categories of hardware to make their profit dollars for them, are there?

Anyone? Bueller?

I wish that was the case, but I know it’s not. Times are hard right now for manufacturers, integrators, and most definitely for retailers. Every month when I get the print edition of the Canadian trade magazine Marketnews, there are more news stores that all say the same thing: “decades old family-owned retailer to shut doors.” West coast, East Coast, Greater Toronto Area, it’s all the same; AV dealers are getting killed.

And why is that? There are any number of reasons, but for the most part, it comes from hanging on to a business model that no longer works.

This isn’t anything new, it’s been going on since the 80s, if not earlier. Yesterday’s high margin bread and butter category is today’scommoditized price point crap, and tomorrow’s extinct product line.

When I started selling AV, the commission on a single well-accessorized camcorder sale was at least $300, often a lot more, and more than enough to pay your car payment that month. Today consumer camcorders are as cheap as dirt, when people even buy them at all instead of just using their phone.

The commission on the first Plasma TV I ever invoiced, with accessories, was $2,000. That was nearly three month’s rent at our old apartment. Today, there’s less than $200 in gross profit for the dealer, often a lot less in a single flat panel TV sale.

I could go on, but you all get it by now, I hope.

And now automation and control systems are on the chopping block.

Gary is 1,000 percent correct; you need to be charging for your services, looking at your labor and your expertise as your real profit center, and looking beyond hardware margins to value-added services like system monitoring and digital signage content management. Sell your brains and your brawn, not your gear.

Otherwise we’ll be reading your company’s obituary.