Karp Expounds on Custom Channel's Standards Quandary, as His Exit Looms

A transition plan went into place in the summer, when Karp, the longtime chief operating officer, handed those reins to Anthony Cotignola, vice president, who had been with the company since 2004. Karp assumed the transitional title chief marketing officer. Co-owners Elliot Ingber and Fred Martin aren’t involved in day-to-day operations, he said.

Karp, president of New York CE retailer Harvey Electronics for 14 years before joining AVS, is retiring from the dealer side of the business but plans to remain involved in the custom integrator channel, he said. “I still have a lot of energy … and a reasonable amount of smarts I can use.”

Karp calls himself a disciple of industry veteran Richard Millson, CEO of Millson Technologies, Vancouver, British Columbia, who has preached for years about the need for standards in the custom electronics channel: “There is still a drastic lack of standards and best practices on the integrator side,” he said. Karp compared that with other industries where electricians, HVAC installers and architects, for example, have standards: “You ask five different techs from five different companies how they wire things up, and you’ll get five different ways. If you asked an electrician, you’d get one answer -- if the guy wants to be in code and keep his license.”

Millson has been trying to bring that kind of wiring standardization to the custom channel for years, Karp said, and “it’s an issue every integrator needs to come to terms with if they want to be here 10-15 years from now.” Karp isn’t sure what role he can play in changing that, but it remains a challenge for the industry, he said. Ultimately, Karp believes, states will have a licensing requirement for integrators in the way they do for plumbers, architects and electricians.

On the manufacturer side, few have a true idea of what customers need and go through, Karp said. The people in charge at most companies in the channel “don’t come from the other side,” he said, remembering when he’d lament the same disconnect at retail when a vendor “never spent a day on the sales floor and has no clue.” In the integration world, many manufacturers haven’t spent a day behind an equipment rack, “dealing with an end user,” leaving a void between the products and his customers. Most companies need to “manufacture stuff, and they hope they can sell that stuff into a customer,” he said.

The custom industry continues to have a disparate way of doing business,” said Karp, who expected the industry to have “matured more by now.” There are younger industries, such as PCs and smartphones, that “matured a lot faster and are much better organized than our industry,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s all about the deliverable and making the end user happy. I don’t think we do a good enough job making the end user happy with what they purchase.”

The integrator channel veteran said he always thought “custom” was the wrong word to associate with the home electronics control business, calling it “off-putting and alienating for a vast number of customers.” He also cited jobs he hears about that are “absolute nightmares,” delivered by an integrator who thought it was OK, delivered it and went on his way. “You can’t even get him back to service it.” Karp regularly receives calls from other integrators’ customers asking AVS to fix problems. “I get too many of those calls,” he said: “That tells me there’s still a lot of shoddy work going on.”