PowerHouse Touts Newest Additions to Member, Brand Rosters

During InfoComm 2015, multi-member distributor PowerHouse Alliance welcomed West Virginia-based Davis Distribution Systems as well as unofficially announced taking on Ubiquiti’s line of networking products.>

A quick walk around the InfoComm 2015 booth of wholesale distribution organization PowerHouse Alliance provided good insight into what has made it a powerhouse, so to speak, within the commercial and residential AV and automation industry.

Manufacturing brands were showcased prominently all around, with each getting its own little spotlight, and the color-coded United States map indicating which individual distributor members cover which territories presented an impressive visual aid to show PowerHouse’s strong national reach.

The commercial tradeshow in Orlando, Fla., gave the distributor and executive director Dennis Holzer a perfect platform to formally welcome its newest and 12th member, Davis Distribution Systems, whose addition PowerHouse had announced about a month prior to InfoComm. Located along the Ohio River at the northern tip of West Virginia’s panhandle in Newell, Davis is well situated to take on coverage of a region that includes its home state, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky.

“If you know that area of West Virginia, they’re 20 minutes from Pittsburgh. There’s nothing that’s beyond a one-day UPS shipment for them. They have eight guys in the territory, they have eight guys internally – obviously the outside guys push the business to the inside and the inside handles it – and they have a huge marketing department,” Holzer says. “They already had a bunch of the lines we have, I would say they had better than 50 percent of our lines.”

More InfoComm 2015 Coverage.

Davis was already offering PowerHouse-supported brands such as Jamo, Panamax, Sanus, SunBriteTV and Vanco, as well as other premium lines such as Definitive Technology, Sonos and Sony. For the commercial market, its list of 12-volt related brands as noted on its website numbers more than 75.

Along with the distribution member news, Holzer and PowerHouse were also excited to talk about the latest addition to its products roster. Though not formally announced yet, PowerHouse shared news of bringing on Ubiquiti Networks and its line of wireless networking gear. Holzer says the manufacturer is mainly in the residential space now but working its way into commercial.

In July, personnel from Ubiquiti will be meeting with a group of PowerHouse members to provide training on the products. Though PowerHouse already offers networking products from Luxul, Holzer says the Ubiquiti addition does not present competition, but rather complementary offerings that dealers can take advantage of as the networking category continues to boom.

“The two complement each other. They both have some similar products, obviously, but there’s a couple products Luxul has that Ubiquiti doesn’t and vice versa,” says Holzer, who notes that Ubiquiti possesses great brand loyalty and name recognition that PowerHouse is already benefitting from as dealers learn of the addition.

More on Networking & Storage from Commercial Integrator.

Holzer says the process of adding lines is one that can take a lot of time. During InfoComm, representatives from the 12 member companies went about their meetings with manufacturers and will be able to report back on prospects.

“Instead of me going on a wild goose chase and saying, ‘Hey guys, here are the five lines I want to bring in,’ I’d rather start honing in on what is made a constant for all the guys that we’re looking at, and then that’s how we start the process,” Holzer says. “The goal is to slowly start building the category. … We actually have a national sales meeting coming up in July where we’ll sit down and then we’ll start to hone in on what’s constant for all the guys and lines that were here [at InfoComm] and start making some decisions.”

In general, having a presence at InfoComm and adding more commercial-friendly lines will help PowerHouse offer complete end-to-end solutions for dealers to in turn provide customers.

“With a lot of our lines, that fine line of residential/commercial, there’s a lot of applications that we do where [our integrators] are using residential product where they really should be using commercial; our ultimate end game is to really be A to Z for commercial,” Holzer says. “In residential we’re A to Z, in security we’re working on A to Z, and then this is our third area of expertise … hopefully expertise.”

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