AMHERST, NEW YORK, October 18, 2019 — Supported by a growing global demand for integrated audiovisual experiences and a war chest from parent company DCC,  Stampede, the global leader in value-added distribution, took the stage at its 2019 United States Vendor Summit last week to celebrate a record year of U.S. and Canadian sales growth with a pledge to continue to invest heavily in its core commercial AV business and accelerate its development of new business opportunities in CE and Custom Integration.

“A number of factors are converging to create a golden opportunity to increase sales for our commercial AV reseller and vendor partners,” Stampede President & CEO Kevin Kelly said today. “Our core ProAV business continues to grow year over year as end-users in all vertical markets turn to AV technologies to create compelling customer experiences to better differentiate their businesses. United States sales grew by 17% over the last year and Canada sales grew by 15%. To support our continued growth, we will continue to invest in new technologies, products, programs and talent. In fact, we’ve added 18 new people to the team since July 1.

“At the same time, DCC has committed the resources to enable us to explore and develop new business opportunities, both organically and through strategic acquisitions that extend our business into new areas; and invest in our sales and support infrastructure.”

According to Kelly, the rapidly evolving nature of the technology landscape offers Stampede the unique opportunity to continue to move upstream, away from mainstream commoditized products. Armed with a portfolio that now exceeds 90,000 products from more than 200 vendor partners, Stampede will continue to move to a business model that emphasizes a higher level of integrated systems that provide value and profit to resellers and manufacturers.

Leading the way in this area will be new Technical Services and AV as a Service (AVAAS) programs. “As the world in general becomes more experiential in nature, integrated audiovisual systems built around displays are what are bringing these experiences to life,” Kelly continued.  “And these integrated systems will, in the very near future, be maintained and upgraded through managed services. Our new Technical Services and AVaaS programs are designed to enable resellers to deploy and maintain these systems, profitably, over the long run.”

Even more importantly for its vendor partners, Kelly stressed, is the fact that Stampede’s programs can now be expanded globally in the UK, the Nordic countries, France, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Asia by leveraging the company’s Single Supply Chain Solutions Team. “One point of contact in North America, through Eric Lookenott, literally puts the world at your fingertips,” Kelly said, “with one currency, one purchase order and one invoice. No one else can provide this global access to regional markets around the world.”

At the same time, Stampede will expand its investments in highly coordinated sales and marketing programs that are deployed across all verticals; world class inventory and supply chain management; expanded event-based regional marketing; and the industry’s most integrated sales infrastructure defined by Strategic Accounts, Integration Markets, Direct Response, supported by the overlay teams of Field Sales and Just Lamps.

Also on tap for 2020 is the expanded roll out of the Big Book of AV Live program, which will enable Stampede to bring more technologies to more resellers and end-user customers in more markets than ever before. “In 2019 we did dozens of events with our mobile technology showroom. We are going to do even more in 2020 to provide our resellers and their customers with more opportunities to engage with and learn about the technologies that will make a difference in their business next year,” Kelly promised.

Stampede will move more aggressively into new areas of the AV industry, beginning with its partnership with Oculus that calls for Stampede to incorporate their technology in AR/VR solutions customized for commercial (B2B) AV applications.

“In fact, Stampede will support the industry launch of Oculus Enterprise with Independent Software Vendors (ISV) such as VR Health, among others,” Kelly explained. “And our new Direct to Consumer platform will help manufacturers, like Oculus and their ISVs, achieve a higher level of market penetration through a scalable business model that includes promotion, fulfilment services, web services and brand management. And, to support this initiative, we will be opening a new national warehouse in Memphis, TN that will provide 2-3 day delivery to all parts of the United States.”

Finally, as Kelly looked down the road to the year ahead, he envisioned a business that continues to evolve from a single-specialty focus to a multi-specialty focus and, with this shift, there could be a corresponding evolution of the Stampede brand that better highlights the specialty ProAV and CE (Consumer Electronics) business units. “Exciting times lie ahead as integrated audiovisual experiences become more important to the businesses we serve across all vertical markets.”

The 2019 Stampede Vendor Summits move on next to Canada on November 12 in Toronto and Latin America on December 4 in Miami, Florida. For more information on the summits, visit https://www.stampedeglobal.com/summit/.