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CEDIA Expo 2022 Recap
By Jim Garrett
Senior Director, Product Strategy and Planning
HARMAN Luxury Audio
CEDIA Expo was a return-to-form this year in almost every sense of the phrase. Held at the end of September in Dallas, Texas at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, this year’s show felt a lot like 2019 when we last had a full-strength event prior to the global pandemic. According to show host Emerald Exhibitions, there were 11,946 industry professionals and 317 exhibitors on hand to see and hear the latest and greatest products in the custom installation space. Attendance spread beyond just the U.S. with attendees coming from Canada, Central America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Korea and even as far away as Australia!
Our Luxury Audio 3,600 square foot exhibit was located at the crossroads of the two main aisles diagonally across from our partners at Samsung, with Crestron and LG occupying the other two corners. Our high-profile location helped ensure strong traffic from start to finish all three days of the show. We curated a collection of our most-exciting home theater and custom installation products from our industry-leading brands including JBL, JBL Synthesis, ARCAM and Revel. We specifically focused on our award-winning immersive audio products and our formidable portfolio of architectural loudspeaker solutions including the newly expanded JBL collection. The line for our JBL Synthesis theater demo stretched through the booth and out to the aisle from the moment the show opened on Thursday morning to when it closed on Saturday afternoon with some people waiting up to an hour to get a chance to listen to our system.
We had more than 15 press appointments during the show, and I did more than 10 video interviews in the booth with key media outlets. We were also a stop on the CEDIA Design + Connection Tour where members of the architecture and interior design community visited key manufacturers on the show floor to learn about how technologies are being integrated seamlessly into the home. Coverage was extensive from these appointments and interviews and helped to spread the word about our products. Additionally, we were featured in the VIP Edition and all three days of the CEDIA Expo daily magazine that is distributed throughout the show.
On the awards front, our ARCAM AV41 was a winner in the Residential Tech Today Innovation Awards, and it was a finalist for Best New Hardware in the 2022 CEDIA Awards.
For a detailed look at some of the highlights of our new ARCAM, JBL, and JBL Synthesis products, check out this extensive YouTube interview and product walk-thru I gave with Michael Stevens from Youthman – a video that already has more than 70K views as of this writing: CLICK HERE
All said and done, CEDIA Expo 2022 was a very successful event for us. The demand that had built up for new products and in-person interaction and demonstrations made for an exciting and engaging event. We met new friends and new customers and got reacquainted with old friends and existing customers. The response to our products was extremely positive with passion around our expanded JBL Synthesis portfolio, our new JBL architectural speakers including Stage 2, Stage XD and Conceal - our industry leading AVR selection from ARCAM - and our forward-looking streaming audio solutions from JBL. Our flagship JBL Synthesis SCL-1 and SSW-1 loudspeakers and the limited-run JBL Classic Black Edition loudspeakers – products both highlighted on prominent displays at the front of our booth – generated significant buzz on the show floor, literally stopping people in their tracks as they walked by our booth.
Thanks to the entire Luxury Audio team and to every one of our partners who helped to make this year’s CEDIA Expo such a success.