Category: News

Is it time to put that turntable back into your product mix? Probably! Consumers are continuing to gravitate to vinyl with the COVID-19 spurring the trend rapidly. According to a study from MusicWatch, vinyl album sales grew an astonishing 27% during the pandemic, with 18 million consumers aged 13 and over buying vinyl in 2021. […]

The way security and automation dealers and their clients interact is changing rapidly as technology advances and do-it-yourself (DIY) systems proliferate. Continued dealer success hinges on their ability to embrace these changes as part of everyday business. Traditionally, the dealer was the source of all devices and services required for a connected home. Dealers installed […]

Businesses across the entire world are stressed right now for various reasons: post-pandemic struggles, fluctuating economies, the war in Ukraine, staff shortages, ongoing supply chain issues, and more. The resulting “hustle culture” at many workplaces may seem reasonable — but it leads to employee burnout. So is a four-day workweek the solution? Many business owners […]

Cybersecurity firm Mandiant has published a detailed analysis of a new threat actor that has been observed remaining undetected in victim environments for at 18 months by installing backdoors on IP cameras appliances that do not support security tools and leveraging a large IoT botnet to spy on organizations involved in large corporate transactions. According […]

As the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January sparked a new wave of autonomous vehicles (AVs) coming to the automotive market in the next few years, much focus as of late has been on the technology of these vehicles themselves. However, the technology embedded in road infrastructure is also beginning to see more conversation between […]

Businesses don’t like to give away their trade secrets. However, I’m going to let you in on ClearTech’s secret weapon: We don’t just practice diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) — we embrace it. Every ounce of energy we put into DEI has been returned to us many times over. Diversity isn’t an uncommon topic in […]

The home entertainment category continued strong growth in 2021 even with the challenges of the chip shortage. The average integrator completed ten home theaters last year which is on par with 2020. However, our research shows that there were a number of uncompleted home theater projects that were halted by the struggle in obtaining the […]

The home security industry has experienced meaningful growth in the past few years, despite the impact of the pandemic. Parks Associates research of 10,000 Internet households shows that now 36% of U.S. Internet households own a home security system, up from 26% in 2018. Parks Associates’ most recent survey of security installers/dealers found that dealers’ […]

We’ve all seen the headlines: people are pausing, reassessing and resigning in droves on a global scale. And we’ve felt it personally: friends, family members and colleagues announcing their “Big Quit” on LinkedIn as they’ve hit the reset button over the past 24 months. The trend began in early 2021 and while it’s slowed a […]

Landscape lighting combines two of the hottest areas for custom integrators right now — lighting and outdoor technology — and distributor Lighting BOSS aims to be a one-stop resource for dealers. “It’s a phenomenal industry to be in especially right now and everybody’s upgrading their homes and their exteriors,” says Ryan Jaso, founder of Lighting […]