Sharp Electronics is in the home stretch of a five-city road show and we chatted with president and CEO Mike Marusic to find out What’s Happenin’.
- Atlanta, GA October 6 – 7
- Chicago, IL October 11 – 12
- Houston, TX October 18 – 19
- Anaheim, CA November 2 – 3
- Philadelphia, PA November 15 – 16
The Anaheim event was the largest so far with nearly 250 attendees from over 40 dealerships.
During the interview, Marusic discusses Sharp’s product diversity and how new puzzle pieces like Sharp NEC and Dynabook are fitting in with their plans.
The 2022 Opportunity Roadshow was created for dealer principles, sales and service managers and sales people and allows Sharp to spend more one-on-one time with field people than they typically get to at the bigger shows, like the National Conference coming in April at the Wynn in Las Vegas.
The format in each city was roughly the same. The first day opened with VP John Sheehan laying out the agenda, John introduced then Mike Marusic.
Mike spent time discussing supply chain issues and what Sharp has done to navigate the situation the last year or so. We will post video clips of Mike’s segment in the future.
We heard about product plans and the saw roadmap from Shane Coffey and received more supply chain updates from Dave Dwyer before moving on to the new companies in Sharp’s arsenal.
Dynabook is the rebranded Toshiba laptop program that Sharp acquired in 2020. Dynabook CEO Jim Robbins was introduced and then discussed the benefits and opportunity in their hardware and some inherent advantages they have over competitors.
These include owning their own factories, providing them with full control over the manufacturing process, which helps them build more reliable products.
Next, Todd Baumen, CEO of another recently acquired and renamed company, Sharp NEC was in front of the audience chatting about the newly formed Pro AV powerhouse that is now providing more AV products and services to Sharp resellers.
Following the speakers came a panel with James Olson of Les Olson IT, Brad Knepper of ACP and Phil Houser of DSi.
John Sheehan moderated and asked some intriguing questions. It was an interesting mix with one single line dealer, a mixed dealer (multiple brands) and newly signed mixed dealer sharing their perspectives.
As the new kid on the block, DSi has done exceptionally well with the Sharp product line since taking it on earlier this year, a fact Marusic discusses during our interview.
The day ended with dinner at the House of Blues where the Sharp team spent time with their dealers, enjoying the food, cocktails and live music.
Day two began with more presentations, including a marketing session by Bob Madaio where Bob updated attendees on all of the changes, additions, new marketing materials (custom videos, photos, etc.) and new contests that were available.
A few more presentations on Government and major account opportunities and technology solutions and it was time to move on to the hands-on portion of the event where people were sent off to sessions on sales, service, ownership, etc.
It was a quick trip but it wasn’t short on content. Sharp shared a ton in these meetings and set themselves up for a big show in April, something Mike alludes to in the interview video posted above.
Sharp has been busy to say the least and they continue to move forward when other companies in this industry have struggled. They’re growing, they’re increasing their footprint and they’re grabbing market share at the expense of their competition. Sharp seems to have a lot going in the right direction at the moment.
SOURCE Industry Analysts Inc.
