For the past 10 years, the AV Industry has been undergoing Technology Democratization. Collective efforts driven by the end customers, manufacturers, integrators, and software companies have made the technology we install more of a commodity.

This has many upsides, Integrators could further scale their businesses, end customers could afford to build more rooms, manufacturers sell more equipment, and software licenses more services. The downside was that with commoditization that specialization lost value significantly, the entry barriers to the industry dropped, and many integrators started to struggle with margins. The battle to the bottom in pricing started and can’t be stopped.

Some industry reports (like NSCAs) show a concerning shrinkage of EBITDA across the board, in boutique, medium, and large-scale SIs.