Editor’s Note: This article featuring Apogee Insight’s Sean Wargo and his 2025 reflections is part of Commercial Integrator’s series that will run throughout the month of December. In this series, we’ll highlight 2025 reflections from some of the industry’s most notable luminaries.
As the pro AV industry reflects on the year 2025, it’s clear that this has been a period of both growth and transformation. To gain deeper insights into the trends, challenges and opportunities that have shaped the industry, Commercial Integrator turned to Sean Wargo, Principal, Apogee Insights, LLC.
Sean Wargo 2025 Reflections
The pro AV industry faced a year of slow growth in 2025, marked by economic headwinds, tariff impacts and shifting market dynamics. In this Q&A, Wargo reflects on the challenges and opportunities that defined the year, from inventory surpluses to the industry’s pivot toward emerging sectors like digital signage, broadcast AV and entertainment.
Commercial Integrator: What kind of year has 2025 been for the pro AV industry?
Sean Wargo: Slow growth has been the norm for the market as a whole, though with a lot of variability across the segments. Manufacturers and distributors experienced the lowest rates while integrators fared better. A lot of this had to do with some significant economic headwinds and uncertainties, most notably tariffs which caused a larger influx of inventory early in the year. This set up integrators pretty well who had projects still coming in, though at a lower rate and scale due to an end user who was closely managing budgets in the face of higher costs all around. The channel was able to slowly work through that inventory as the year progressed but were not needing as much from manufacturers. This lead to some of the lowest rates of growth pro AV has seen since the pandemic.
CI: What has been the most surprising development in the pro AV industry this year?
Wargo: One could argue the breadth of impact of tariffs was not something anyone really could have predicted as we started 2025, qualifying it as a surprise. There was talk of it but exactly what was going to be implemented was not known. In fact, the landscape continues to evolve. This has contributed to a lot of uncertainty and added caution to the buyer. It also generated the wave of shipment to avoid the tariffs setting up an overage situation. Without this impact the year would arguably have been quite different, likely with higher growth given improving economics as we entered 2025.
CI: What has been the most important change we’ve seen this year in pro AV?
Wargo: The industry is meaningfully shifting away from its core. For decades, corporate conferencing has been the primary driver of revenue growth for the channel. While it still accounts for a strong percentage, growth has become harder to come by due to the commoditized and competitive nature of the segment. The education market has also been a challenge after large investments during the pandemic and more incremental pacing since. This has caused solution providers to shift their capabilities towards sectors with more potential like digital signage, broadcast AV and entertainment. Control rooms and operation centers also hold promise. Data and AI will also offer possibilities from here, fueling a rise in managed services and further evolving the integration business.
Stay tuned with Commercial Integrator as we gather year-end insights and reflections from the brightest minds in the industry. If you’d like to be featured, contact our editorial team (Alyssa Borelli, Amala Reddie and Dan Ferrisi, [email protected])
