Each year, Michelle Ferlauto walks the floor at CEDIA Expo with the same question in her head every year.
The COO of SoundVision, a custom integration firm based in the Carolinas, Ferlauto isn’t necessarily concerned about what’s flashy or new at the show. Instead, her question is much more practical and strategic: Is SoundVision keeping pace with an industry that won’t wait?
“A question that comes up every time we go is, ‘Are we behind?’” Ferlauto acknowledges. “Nobody wants to be yesterday’s audio video. No one wants to be last year’s lighting provider. Nobody wants to move backward.”
What Has Michelle Ferlauto Gained from Her CEDIA Expo Trips?
Five trips to CEDIA Expo have sharpened Ferlauto’s instinct into a business discipline. For Ferlauto, the show isn’t a marketing expense or a morale trip. It’s an annual audit of her company and her team, as well as the assumptions she’s been operating on all year.
The numbers behind the show reflect why that discipline matters. Last year’s event drew 14,000 industry professionals across 400 brands from 60 countries. Some 77% of attendees said the show is important to their business, and 81% indicated that they planned to return.
Ferlauto’s reasons for attending — and for planning the agenda that she does — mirror a pattern that forms a through-line in the custom integration channel.
You Can’t Vet a Product Through a Screen
For Ferlauto, making the decision to attend CEDIA Expo isn’t a close call. After all, custom integration is a tactile, field-dependent business. No spec sheet or webinar could ever replicate what you learn when you have a product in your hands in a live environment, with your installation team beside you, with a manufacturer’s team member nearby.
“Part of the experience is seeing it firsthand, experiencing it, getting excited about it [and] having your team get excited about it,” Ferlauto explains.
The show floor helps translate abstract ideas (e.g., immersive sound) to experiential reality. Ferlauto and her team pick products up, turn them over, watch them run and ask the questions that matter before those products are ever specified in a client’s home.
What’s more, Ferlauto notes, a failed show-floor demo doesn’t disappoint her; instead, it informs her. In the rare instances when it has happened, she says, “…that made a lasting impression, and we chose not to go with that product. Because we were like, ‘OK, well, if they can’t deploy it here of all places, with all of the technology and the support here, I don’t really want to mess with this out in the field.”
That candor cuts to CEDIA Expo’s deepest utility: It’s a place to help integrators make better decisions.
“It’s so easy sometimes to just get the job,” Ferlauto says. “But actually delivering the vision that you’ve sold, standing by it and servicing it after the fact is crucial to the success of your business.” She continues, “So, if you aren’t there to ask the questions and get the answers that you need, you may not be making the most informed decision.”
That’s especially true given that the custom home integration industry is replete with fantastic marketers. “[Those marketing assets can be] beautiful stuff,” she acknowledges, “but it has to translate out in the field and for the customer at the end of the day.”
How CEDIA Expo Helped Michelle Ferlauto Reshape SoundVision
Ferlauto’s most persuasive proof point draws on her own experience at SoundVision. After a visit to CEDIA Expo, her sense of what was possible in lighting expanded.
Indeed, a decade ago, Ferlauto wouldn’t have put lighting anywhere near SoundVision’s core business. That changed as the category matured — and when CEDIA Expo put the full scope of that maturation in front of her.
SoundVision eventually decided to move into lighting in 2020, during a major showroom renovation, and the category absolutely took off in the years since. “It’s the biggest vertical in our business, certainly since 2020,” Ferlauto enthuses. “That has helped SoundVision become the success story that it [is].”
CEDIA Expo’s role in that arc is neither incidental or accidental. Seeing lighting deployed live, talking through applications with manufacturers and asking field-level questions — all while standing in front of actual hardware — is what shifted SoundVision’s product mix.
Indeed, Ferlauto credits the show directly, saying, “When you go to a show like CEDIA Expo and you’re able to see the other product offerings or the other applications where you could use it, [something shifts].” She continues, “You start to see how it’s configured, what you can do with it [and] how it’s deployed.”
And for Ferlauto, that’s genuinely refreshing. “That’s not exposure that you’re going to be able to get on a daily basis,” she states. “You’re not going to have a live person sitting there with you and going through it.”
Education, Community and the People You Didn’t Know You Needed
Ferlauto’s case for the show extends well beyond product discovery and category expansion. The education component carries real weight, as well.
“There are certifications that your technicians can get while they’re there,” she explains of CEDIA Expo. “It’s important to note that some of the CEDIA certifications do require a proctored exam, and that’s your opportunity to get that done in person.”
The community dimension matters, too — particularly for professionals who spend most of their time working with the same team and in the same regional market. The energy thrumming through CEDIA Expo — and the full cross section of industry professionals represented onsite — is the perfect antidote.
“In this industry, in the past, it’s been a little bit tough to connect with women,” Ferlauto laments. “It’s been tough to find other women that may be in the same position as you.” She adds, “You get into this place where you feel like you’re kind of on an island, and you’re doing the best you can with what you know.” But Ferlauto says CEDIA Expo breaks that isolation.
Indeed, she discovered Women in Consumer Technology (WiCT) during their luncheon at CEDIA Expo, and she found a community she hadn’t known existed. “And I was like, ‘Wait, you mean there’s like a whole organized group?’” she says with a laugh. “I had no idea!”
The peer-to-peer exchange extends to the Smart Stage, as well, where working integrators share real-world results with their integrator, dealer and installer peers.
“They’re sharing [this information] not because they have an agenda,” Ferlauto explains. “The pieces of information that you’re getting — how they’re deploying this or that — [has a lot of value]. They’re willing to take questions, and they’re willing to answer the questions. Again, you get this opportunity to interact that you normally would not get.”
It’s the kind of dynamic that simply doesn’t surface in the same way on the regional or distributor event circuit. Instead, it’s specific to CEDIA Expo as the global crossroads of the custom home integration community.
Michelle Ferlauto on the Case for Being at CEDIA Expo
If you ask Ferlauto what she’d tell an integrator who was weighing airfares and hotel costs, her answer will be direct: Go to CEDIA Expo, and be sure to go with a plan.
“[It’s important to be] very intentional about your experience and the experience that you want to have,” she advises. “If you go into it without a plan — without any research, and you’re just looking to have a good time — you’ll probably just have a good time.”
Ferlauto’s top tips? Set goals before you arrive. Build a daily agenda around at least three priorities and then hold yourself to them. Whether it’s a product category to evaluate, certifications to complete or conversations to have, intention is what separates a productive trip from a merely enjoyable one.
CEDIA Expo is built to reward that intention. It brings together integrators, installers, designers, builders, architects and manufacturers from across the channel. Post-show data shows 75% of attendees don’t attend another industry show, which means the access available during those three days simply isn’t replicable.
The Takeaway is Simple
For Ferlauto, five years on, and with a materially changed business, the key takeaway is simple.
“I would just say make the most of it,” she concludes. “See the things that you can only see or learn while you’re there.”
Register now to attend CEDIA Expo this September!
