Starin’s expansion into media and entertainment underlines a potent — and rare — blend of core competencies for a value-added distributor: expertise in AV, broadcast and software. It’s a powerful combination that, during a launch celebration at NAB Show NY, inspired enthusiasm and excitement among dozens of channel partners packed inside a posh NYC eatery. In Starin, they have a partner that has historically served them well with UC and AV technologies that now can also be their trusted expert in bringing broadcast technologies into AV.
Here, CI chats with Rich D’Angelo, executive director, business management – Media & Entertainment, as well as Starin’s CEO, Bobby Swartz, to learn more about the Starin Media & Entertainment business unit.
Outgrowth of the Pandemic
D’Angelo reflects on the pandemic years, when organizations of all kinds had to find new ways to communicate with their constituents (e.g., schools streaming lectures, houses of worship streaming services, corporations transmitting internal communications). “A lot of organizations that may not have traditionally thought of themselves as broadcasters became broadcasters overnight,” D’Angelo says. Given the pandemic, there wasn’t much time to prepare, provoking a frenzied rush for PTZ cameras, streaming technologies and video production technologies. The results might not have been slick, but they did the job — for the time.
Now, however, many organizations want to boost production value and deliver what D’Angelo calls “a more TV-style experience.” Bolstered by two strategic acquisitions — 76 Media Systems and Toolfarm — Starin can help channel partners navigate “version two” of the systems that they set up years ago.
As Swartz says, the Starin Media & Entertainment business unit is “…really about bringing more depth to the focus areas we already have and expanding that portfolio further.” As D’Angelo puts it, Starin curated a catalog to help integrators navigate challenging times back in 2020. “Similarly,” he continues, “we’ve curated a catalog of broadcast AV technologies to now up the production value of those first-generation systems.”
That catalog is impressive for its breadth, spanning PTZ cameras (e.g., PTZOptics, BirdDog, Canon); ingest servers (e.g., Cinedeck); shared storage and media asset management tools (e.g., EditShare); transcode/delivery tools (e.g., Telestream); streaming devices (e.g., Epiphan Video’s Pearl family); and editorial software and effects and graphics software (e.g., Avid, Red Giant). “We’ve really tried to capture everything that one would need to implement a full workflow,” D’Angelo explains.
But Starin’s mindset is not simply to collect brands; rather, it built out a toolkit to suit smaller and larger organizations alike. It’s about not only the toolkit but also the support. Starin boasts a sales engineering team, which a 25-plus-year veteran leads, whose members have broad experience implementing full video production workflows.
D’Angelo encourages channel partners to look for and identify broadcast AV opportunities and then have a discovery call with sales engineering. They’ll ask the necessary questions to gather information and devise the best solution for the customer. D’Angelo also underscores Starin’s excellent manufacturer relationships, adding, “We pull in the experts from those companies, too, to ensure that the solutions we’re devising are going to meet the client’s requirements.”
In short, Starin’s channel partners get workflow validation and expert advice without having to call eight vendors and navigate the process by themselves. And that value proposition is powerful. “We’re there every step of the way,” Swartz declares. “We’re not pushing off that work but helping develop it and making sure the outcome’s right.”
Starin Leans In
Starin doesn’t do anything at half-speed, and that includes launching its Media & Entertainment business unit. Already, the value-added distributor has almost 20 people dedicated to this area. “We have specialists who actually utilize and have worked within these workflows for most of their lives,” Swartz says. “We have people who have lived, breathed and worked in these [areas], which is exactly the excellence you need.” Powerfully, the Media & Entertainment team members are available throughout Starin, ready to assist when an expert view of broadcast technologies is required. “It’s about being able to pull in the specialty as needed, in real time, for our customers,” Swartz adds.
It’s no revelation to savvy integrators that demand for broadcast AV technologies is increasing. What is fresh, however, is having in Starin an AV distributor that’s also able to take the lead and bring those broadcast technologies to our channel. “That’s viewed as a tremendous value-add and [welcomed] with great enthusiasm,” D’Angelo concludes.
Learn more about Starin’s Media & Entertainment business unit at Starin.biz.
