Daniel J SaitWith over 50 launches and UK firsts at the UK’s only dedicated smart building trade show, Essential Install Live! South delivered another strong performance. Check out what just some of the show attendees had to say.
First time visitor, Tishy Sharma, MD and CEO of Video Prince, said: “The show is great for meeting suppliers old and new, we target the higher end of the market, so I was keen to come along and get the latest on the Savant system and Control4. I also wanted to get a look at the CYP and other matrixes solutions out there. I also enjoyed the Epson projector demo, very impressive, will definitely be back for more next year.”
Philip Pyatt of Munro Acoustics, explained: “We design and build pro audio studios, but have been curious about this market for some time and wanted to come along and meet the suppliers and see where and how we could fit the sector into our offering. I have gathered loads of info so need to go away now and look at how we start to implement some of it, so it’s been really useful.”
A show regular, Raj Mistry, sales director AVM Solutions, commented: “We have quite a few projects on the go at the moment so the event is a good chance to meet some of the suppliers we are looking at using; including Rako.”
Wayne Hyde, sales manager, West London AV Solutions commented that the face to face contact with regular suppliers is what makes the show so valuable, earmarking the whole day next year so as to make sure he speaks with them all.
Wayne added: “Arcam’s room was very impressive, the emotion through the surround system was great. I also really like Melco’s NAS drives and it was good to see Kramer there as I’m working on commercial projects and use their kit a lot. Keith Jones offers a very high end design service which I like so it was good to see them.
“CAVD also offer some really special products, I hope they can show them all off next year.”
Steve Barrett, AV project manager, SMC, was impressed with the amount of firsts at the show: “I thought there were a lot of good stands, a wide and diverse offering of what’s available and a lot of good partners of ours are displaying stuff so it was good to meet them and catch up with what’s new as well as see a lot of new things that we hadn’t seen before.
“In particular the new Loewe TV stood out to me; that looked really good. This show is also a good size compared to the one in Amsterdam, that’s far too big and it’s really hard to get round. I prefer EI Live!.
Zak Vracevic, director, M.E.G.A AV, a former ‘Day in the Life’ interviewee, said: “There were some interesting gadgets at the Future Automation stand; Basalte had some nice things and there were a couple of power management bits at Habitech as well as mode lighting – cheap and nice. I was also keen to check out the JBL stuff at Karma AV. I was familiar with quite a bit of the ‘big stuff’, it was more the little things that can help you. I always look for something that will make me think ‘this will be useful’ and I saw quite a few of those. I also checked the laser projector at Epson – nice!”
See the next issue of Essential Install magazine for a full review of the show.
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