Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
What’s this? No job layoffs, no impending crisis, some growth, some new customers – surely then NOT a press release and subsequent story about one of Our Top 10 Digital Signage Vendors?
But YES, here we see Scala announcing that it has finished its third quarter, ending 30th September 2008 having generated the highest sales month of the year.
We weren’t invited to either its American or European Annual Connected Signage Conferences but heard good reports first hand about each of them and in today’s press release Scala also announced record attendances at both events.
We also learned that customers and prospective customers are to expect before the end of the year a new release of software that will offer the the first level of integration between Scala itself and Scala Ad Manager, the product obtained through the acquisition of MISC, now Scala Canada, in April 2008.
Getting their costs low enough to compete in India will be difficult like it is for any corporate signage vendor but at least they have feet on the ground there now – i.e., a new sales and development office located in Bangalore, India.
Scala were quick to point out in the press release that “it has a strong balance sheet with no debt and significant working capital and reserves” – a nodding reference perhaps to BroadSign and others (primarily US vendors) who don’t seem to be in such an enviable position?
Anthony Maddalone, CFO at Scala, commented in the release “While none of this is any reason to sit on our laurels, it is gratifying in these challenging economic times to be able to report some good news”.
Q3 saw some sizable new customers to the Scala stable including Infiniti, Miele, Statoil, Showcase Cinemas, Sidewalk Express, Gruppo Maiorana, Johns Hopkins University, KPN Narrowcasting, the BZ WBK Bank, Immedia Communications, Alpha Japan, Telecom Italia and Sanofi Aventis (Mexico)
Some of those new deployments, like Statoil are huge rollouts and others, like Showcase Cinemas, award winning.
Many other networks that don’t usually get as much mention as they should by Scala, particularly those that have grown this year are listed as well; The Life Channel, Audi, Hitachi, Vanten, Rabobank, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Fastsigns, Monopoly Media, Citroen PSA, Specialized Software Service, Captivate Media, Baptist Health Systems and Krystal Restaurants.
All in all, a good press release from Scala, good for the industry as well, i.e. quite up-lifting etc. and no hype!
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