Some integrators have a jack-of-all-trades approach, touting their skills in every little thing from audio-reinforcement rigs to handle-method programming. By contrast, Coffman Media, founded on February 1, 2010, in Dublin, Ohio, positions alone as a expert professional electronic signage integrator.
Jason Ault, COO and co-founder, describes the company’s aim as “an inch vast and a mile deep.” That specialization has served Coffman Media exceptionally properly, enabling it to deal with all the things from common digital signage to interactive, really customized creations. “Really,” Ault begins, “whatever our clients desire up, we can assistance them carry that to life.”
Coffman Media’s consumers extend throughout a huge swath of vertical marketplaces, such as cannabis, fast-support places to eat (QSRs), retail, healthcare, training and community venues. What is far more, although the business only has a person bodily office environment at present—a next place will open in Jacksonville, Fla. this June—it has tackled purposes throughout the world, including in Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Central The usa. “Pretty a great deal any where our consumers want to expand or go,” Ault claims, “we can assistance to aid their desires.”
As a electronic signage expert, Coffman Media has forged solid partnerships the signage stakeholders. Ault mentions that the business has turn into grasp associates with each Signagelive and EngagePHD. With respect to displays, Ault highlights Coffman Media’s interactions with suppliers like LG, Samsung and PPDS additionally, he mentions vital partnerships on the media-player aspect with BrightSign, Bluefin and IAdea. The aim of these near interactions, he claims, is to enable Coffman Media to be an asset to them in the identical way that they’re an asset to Coffman. “It seriously has turn into a symbiotic relationship,” Ault describes, “where there is not a job that we cannot tackle.”
Coffman Media’s energy and expertise notwithstanding, it confronted the identical COVID-19-similar issues that each and every other business did. “Our mantra was ‘pivot or plummet,’” Ault claims, proving that management understood the stakes. Soon after all, several retail, QSR and corporate clientele ended up turning off their provider, and there was no distinct concept when it would resume.
“We swiftly shifted into performing some audience temperature recording and issues of that nature,” he points out, including mask detection as a different sweet spot. Coffman Media even obtained into the sanitizer business, leveraging its current work deploying systems that may be utilised for sanitizer dispensing. “We connected up with a area Ohio company that was creating every thing from the bottle and cap all the way to the elements inside,” Ault remembers. As a result, it was not only a revenue center for Coffman Media but also a excellent way to assistance a regional business.
Thankfully, despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over, normalcy is starting to return. As a final result, Coffman Media has tapered some of its pivot parts and returned to its core strengths. “We’re closely concentrated on aiding out retail [and] brief-company eating places, primarily in the travel-through room,” Ault explains. “We’re however executing a whole lot of refreshes and revamps simply because numerous of our shoppers are now in that tech-refresh cycle.” In limited, Ault claims, his business is performing to enable consumers changeover their electronic-signage ecosystem to the upcoming section. This aligns with what he describes as the most effective section of doing the job in our sector: “Providing remedies for people’s goals.”
When I question about Coffman Media’s 1st Overall Tech Summit (TTS) in 2021, Ault says merely, “We ended up honestly blown absent by it.” Evaluating TTS favorably to exhibits like InfoComm and DSE, he states it permitted his staff and he to community extra intimately and find out from all those peer-to-peer connections.
Ault emphasizes the spirit of collaboration and unity that suffuses TTS, indicating of fellow integrators, “We may perhaps be in a competitive overlap at some stage, but it just appeared all people required to assist a single another.”
He also praises the breakout classes, indicating that they give the possibility to “hyper-target” to the proper vendors. “I would say it deepened some associations,” Ault adds, stating he uncovered extra about partners’ screen products and solutions and new immediate-watch LED lines. He also notes forging meaningful connections with TD SYNNEX and DISH Network.
When I inquire about programs for TTS 2022, Ault responds, “I would say it’s absolutely truly worth the investment—again, just from the peer-to-peer learning.” In fact, he shares, a vendor husband or wife asked Coffman Media’s opinion about whether it’s worthwhile to participate a sponsor. Ault’s remedy? Devoid of a doubt. “It’s certainly truly worth the couple of days to go down and immerse oneself in the working experience,” he concludes.