Bad business sense in the .com era

UPDATE: 23FEB2010

I have been contacted by Casey Hall, VP of Sales and Marketing at Extron, about this matter. I've had a very cordial conversation with him and received feedback about why their channel works the way it does. Basically, they work very hard to control the channel so that the only companies selling their product are companies that are trained on the installation and support of their products. That I can appreciate, but it still doesn't answer one of my complaints about locating these resellers. I gave Casey that feedback and that is something they will have to work on improving.

He also addressed my technical challenges of the lack of speaker bind posts in their wall plate products, summarizing that I had recieved bad information when I had called the company. They don't offer the bind posts, but there is no technical reason, most likely it just hasn't been asked for. Finally, regarding purchasing the amplifier product I originally was searching for, he is putting me in touch with their internal product sales folks to help me purchase the product directly from Extron as a design consultant.

All in all, this effort has turned a negative, grumpy attitude on my part (justified or not) into a positive partnership between our companies. So, I guess the ".com" stuff really does work after all. :)

---------------------- ORIGINAL POST -----------------------------

I really thought that making mention of something in the ".com era" was a phrase of the past. Well, I've been pushed over the edge by a company called Extron. I've specified their multimedia modular wall jacks for several years now, mainly because of the high quality of the pieces. Yes, I've had complaints, namely for as many parts/pieces as they make, it is impossible to get exactly the right combination of modular pieces you want into a single wall plate. That combined with the grief I've had trying to get line input speaker jacks incorporated with their wall plates has given me grey hair.

I've put up with that though because when it comes to quality of the product, it is hard to beat. I've even gone to having a second wall plate adjacent to the Extron plate simply to support speaker bind posts. Extron claims they are concerned about having the high current speaker jacks in the same box as signal lines. While I appreciate their concerns, lets be honest here, anyone putting a system together with the kind of speaker currents that could cause problems on ethernet lines or shielded signal lines is not using this type of product.

This company also makes some very high quality switching and amplifing products for commercial AV installations. I've specified a few of these products for some of the K-12 schools I've designed for the multimedia outlets and the schools are very happy with the products. I've never really looked into buying their product, that is something the contractors deal with through their various distribution channels. Now, I'm getting to my point. Our main conference room in our Denver headquarters needed a small AV amplifier to drive a pair of in-ceiling speakers. I thought (wrongly) that it would be no big deal for me to pick up one of these items that for our internal use.

This is where the whole thing goes straight into the bucket. For some reason, the company protects their distribution channel like they are selling top secret nuclear arms to the US government. Go ahead, try to find some of their AV equipment for sale somewhere. You can find a few of their wall jacks here and there but that is about it. Ok, next step, I contact Extron directly through various links on their website. First response is a canned response that informs me that they only offer sales information to authorized designers and consultants. Second response is from a sales guy at the company who asks a lot of questions and sounds sympathetic but advises me I've just been dealing with the wrong access points into the company and that he was going to take care of me. Says that he will send me a bunch of information on how to buy stuff shortly. Note to sales guys: DON'T SAY YOU ARE GOING TO DO SOMETHING RELATED TO CUSTOMER SERVICE AND THEN NOT FOLLOW THROUGH! Yes, you guessed correctly, no response from the guy has arrived.

Ok, I then try contacting several of the AV companies I know that might be able to buy or resell their product. All of them inform me that Extron makes becoming a reseller very difficult and that they have all given up (or are still considering the value) on becoming a reseller. One does have the ability to sell but after a day of them trying to get pricing for the one stupid little switch device, the best they can do is slightly less than MSRP of $1,300.

Can a business, especially an AV product based company really expect to survive in a world where everyone expects to be able to locate and find resellers of product on the Net? Doesn't it go without saying that 15 years into the ".com era" all companies would realize this? I guess what I'm saying is, Extron can take a short step off a tall building. I don't need this kind of grief and I can put another company's products into future designs.