I’m at the Toshiba LEAD dealer conference in Dallas Texas for their dealer show. Toshiba started their event early and brought me to LA for their ribbon cutting ceremony at the famous STAPLES Center where they unveiled a new relationship with sports goliath AEG.

When Toshiba first started showing their digital signage products and strategies, I couldn’t help but think it was more of a desperate bandwagon move by a company struggling to find other products for their dealers to sell. After what I saw in LA and here in Dallas at their product fair, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

This isn’t a company simply pushing displays because that’s what their factories make. These guys have seen an opportunity that most others haven’t and it’s impressive. Where do I start?

In LA, this wasn’t a “we won the deal so let’s have a ceremony.” They won the deal because they have an offering that has sports franchises drooling (and retail customers, education, the food services industry and anyone that has a storefront or customer interaction).

Imagine a concession stand that automatically changes its menu based on who is standing in front of it. Lots of children? Pizza and chicken tenders are featured. Or how about a bar in a stadium that does the same; fruity fun cocktails if it’s a certain demographic, beer if it’s another, etc.?

Toshiba now offers a service that does just that. Using cameras and facial recognition technology, they can program the digital menu to automatically adjust based on who is standing in line in real time. It was really pretty amazing. When we did the analyst walk through with Joe Contreras we saw it in action up close and it literally showed exactly who was standing there. In fact, if it was tied into a back end system I am sure there would have been Rogaine ads popping up all over the place for this crowd.

Then there was LA Interactive; a kiosk that ties into social media to allow fans to engage the sports team right there at the stadium. They can text or tweet their photos and see themselves on the big screen, they could scroll through team information, up to the minute stats about the game and tons of other items they could view and play with. They can also go use another kiosk that has videos only available at the stadium that can be uploaded to their Android (and soon Apple) phones using a Toshiba-developed high-speed technology that moves massive videos in seconds.

Then there was all the other amazing signage, some traditional, some that was really unique, like a cube on it’s corner that was so mesmerizing I couldn’t stop looking at it.

I spoke with President and CEO Scott Mccabe about their strategy and while it looks to me like Toshiba is talking about everything but copiers and printers, he assured me that Toshiba is still fully engaged in those markets and they’re using this signage to start relationships with companies that will eventually allow them to target their imaging requirements. It’s an interesting approach similar to what most companies in this industry use their solutions for – sell the solution, pull the hardware.

As far as hardware, they did show production monochrome they’re finally selling again and their dealers will love it. It’s not theirs but it’s a solid piece of gear that fits a big hole in their line up. These products are coming in January 2015. The other product that was highlighted was their eco copier first showed a few years ago. The “Green Machine” allows customers to literally strip the toner off the paper so they can reuse it up to five times. While this is not the type of product that most people will flock to, it’s a great door opener with customers and helps their reps to showcase Toshiba’s commitment to the environment.

This was a selling event and Toshiba dealers were not allowed to attend unless they brought customers. Surprisingly, there were a lot of big names missing from this event and I don’t get it. Toshiba offered to pay for each dealer to bring a customer, so why wouldn’t they? I can tell you the ones that took advantage of this are getting a lot of out of it and they are closing deals.

Toshiba really seems to be transforming into a very different company, not just different from the old Toshiba but different than their traditional competitors. I haven’t seen anything like some of the digital signage shown here at this event and in LA and from what the AEG people told me and the interest I have received from some significant buyers in this market, Toshiba is going to kill it. If I was selling for their branches or dealers I think I’d probably have a very hard time focusing my efforts on imaging equipment with signage solutions like these in my pitchbook. While the show was extremely light on printers and MFPs, it more than made up for it in digital signage.