Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
It appears to be full steam ahead at New Milford, Connecticut-based Magenta under John Dace, president and CEO, who joined the company in September, 2011.
“It took a while to put all the pieces in place, but we’re now really moving ahead,” says Dace, who exudes excitement as he talks about the changes undergone over recent months.
These were evident at #InfoComm12 where the company launched several new products tied to its Voyager brand and unveiled a new logo that will now be seen everywhere, cohesively tying the company, its product line and its literature together.
“The old logo with its swirls was difficult to work with when we were sponsoring things,” says Dace. “With the new logo, we wanted to establish that we’re here to stay and moving forward. We also wanted to tie everything together.”
#InfoComm12 appears to have been the launch of a new Magenta, which is now focusing on Voyager, the company’s fiber-optic-based extension, distribution and switching solution for Pro AV signal routing.
“We found that people were coming up and saying, ‘We knew you did a lot of analogue. If you can bring us into the fiber world, we want to talk to you,’” says Dace. “We came away from InfoComm with four times the number of new leads than usual. In fact, if our booth had been a boat, it would have capsized from the number of people we had visiting.” (Magenta was co-located with TV One and Gefen. All are Nortek companies.)
The new products introduced were all new additions to Magenta’s Voyager and MultiView lines: the Voyager 4-port transmitter; new SRx ScaleMax Receiver; Voyager CF-18: 4U: Rack-mountable chassis that holds and powers 18 Voyager CF transmitters; and Voyager CFS Series: Compact format, stand-alone Voyager transmitters and receivers – as well as Multiview II upgrades adding digital video.
“We were a little gun-shy in terms of talking about Voyager in the past,” says Dace. “Now we’re really showing it and the pipeline is growing. And we won an award at InfoComm for it.
“We’re also becoming much more customer-focused, with solid customer servicing to back it up.”
To that end, Dace expects to soon add a technical service person in the UK, where Phil Starling, director of business development, and Rob Muddiman, director of international sales, are now working from the company’s shared offices with TV One in Maidenhead – acquired by Nortek in May, 2011, TV One is included in Nortek’s Technology Products segment and closely aligned with Magenta, Ed.
In the US, along with adding a director of US sales (Andy Fliss), three new sales representatives, a director of marketing (Patricia Booher), and a director of business development (Lee Dodson) over recent months, the company has now added a consultant, Lewis Eig, who represents Magenta, TV One and Furman, another Nortek company. (Just before InfoComm, at CEPro, it was announced that Bill Pollick, president of Panamax/Furman, is now running the companies that were formerly of the AVV group including, among them, Speakercraft, Niles and Élan.)
And for those curious about Keith Mortensen, Magenta founder and former CEO, Dace says that he’s enjoying his retirement, and has not been involved as an executive, member of the Board nor as a shareholder for quite some time!
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