Pelco Major Rep Shakeup

In my opinion, Pelco will never "come back" as long as Schneider owns them. They lost most of their best engineers and customer support employees during the acquisition and the corporate mindset changed dramatically from customer-centric to profit-centric. Eliminating or changing factory reps will not change their underlying problems.

They can replace all of the rep firms they want to. I still will not actively promote a product that is manufactured and/or sold by Schneider. Firms that have the Schneider Electric logo get the leads and the best prices. I can't beat the house. Not to mention, they still don't lead in product develpement the way they used to.

I am not sure why the industry wants to continue to dance around this issue. Schneider dug this whole all by themselves.

I have been in the manufacturers rep field for over 15 years and have started 2 different firms. It is a very competitive model and one of the most difficult entities to successfully run. With that said, most all of the Pelco firms had been with Pelco for quite some time and had seen tremendous success during the increasing demand for security products over the 1990's and 2000's. However, I believe that success came with a very harsh price, the industry changed very quickly to IP and both Pelco and it's firms could not address this change. The staff's at both companies struggled to manage this drastic shift and 3rd party VMS products and camera technologies took this opportunity to take significant share away from Pelco. Pelco was king, and the likes of Axis, Milestone, Genetec, Sony, Exacq, and Avigilon ate their lunch. It is somewhat understandable however that after being acquired by Schneider the shareholders would not have liked offloading a significant part of their revenue in hardware to Dell, HP, Iomnis, EMC, IBM, etc. I can only speculate that a large percentage of their revenue was directly tied to these hardware recording platforms.

Times change, technology changes, and it all changes faster than it has ever in the past. It doesn't matter if it's Pelco, other mfrs, integration, consulting, or reps. Embrace the change or someone else will eat your lunch.

I just received an email that Pelco is also terminating their relationship with Crockett Sales. Crockett's territory is: TX, OK, AR, LA, MS, West TN

I have to wonder if Ken Massrey is still a rep?

The closing of the Canadian Service Center in Quebec, and the Manufacturer rep they dumped on us is what drove me and the company I used to work for away from Pelco. And they haven't dumped them, still using Video Experts who will charge you $600 to replace a hard drive that will fail in 6 months, which they won't cover under warranty.

Apart from the sales numbers, the effect of Acquisition, and the time taken for PELCO to embrace IP, as a product how do the latest Pelco Sarix cameras (which are IP) fare when compared to the likes to Sony, Bosch, Avigilon, Samsung? Also on the video management side, is PELCO more of an NVR-friendly solution than the VMS based approach by Milestone, Genetec and Exacq?

To Carl's point...Remember Vicon? Very similar situation and they have never recovered.

While no official list of reps impacted is available, we have confirmation that Langbaumin the Northeast and Keith Parker in the Midwest.

Confirmed what (incomplete senstence)? They are in or out?

Is it Langbaum and Parker that are out or being confirmed as retained?

John, love the "shaky" Pelco logo graphic you used in this article. Very cool.

Expensive products? Outdated tech? Falling revenue? We could either increase our R&D spending and thereby admit we were wrong to have slashed it in, or we can blame the sales force and fire the manufacturers reps who helped us climb to the top in the first place. Yeah, let's do the second thing.

What about 1 Volt and Kunz? Did they get cut?

1 Volt is definitely terminated - letter in hand dated May 29 - signed by Mike Prysock - Regional Sales Director - says effective June 30 - Letter also provides 6 "factory" names and phone numbers to contact for field support, customer visits, demos, etc...

Letter continues with they are "...evaluating options for how to best support this important territory " BTW 1 Volt territory - Maryland, DC, Delaware, Eastern PA, Southern NJ, Virginia, North Carolina & South Carolina

Seems a bit crude, but it is what it is. Langbaum is a top-notch rep. firm and deserves better treatment for, yes, helping build and grow the Pelco brand.

@ John. TYCO has the Illustra range of IP cameras. Have you done any tests with them or have a cue on the performance Vs Samsung, Avigilon, Bosch, Pelco Surevision?

The firms cut were: Milsk, Parker, Crockett, Langbaum and 1Volt. The last 3 all cut the same day. Take a look at the rep map again, that's a BIG part of the country. I was told the rumor is Pelco plans to go direct in those last 3 regions (Crockett, Langbaum and 1volt). Most of the West Coast and Rocky Mountains are direct already.

I've heard there's been a lot of attrition at Pelco, especially in the last 18 months. MR firms even putting money back into their business to keep it going and retain their people. Sad. The Vicon comparison is probably pretty accurate and I'll add, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. So it could even be worse than Vicon? I think the real question is how much patience Schneider has left for Pelco? Understand sales are way off where they used to be, and how can they compete with the current product offering?

I'm convinced the "Schneider to Sell Pelco" rumors are true, but after the last 7 years of pillaging and burning, who would buy it? That be a good betting pool to start.

Pelco is trying to sell their main building #1, and rumors of more buildings for sale. Take a look at this listing and see for yourself:

Why would Tyco keep Exacq reps and American Dynamics reps? Especially when AD already has an OEM version of ExacqVision. My feeling from talking to people in the know, is that by ISC West 2015, there will be no more ExacqVision reps, only AD reps.

I wanted to jump in and address some of the reader comments on this thread. It’s not always easy to read, especially those coming from former customers, but that is the great thing about this forum - we are able hear from the industry and when appropriate and necessary, jump in to set the record straight as we see it.

Part of putting that record straight is acknowledging some basic facts. And let’s be honest about it. Some continue to compare the current Pelco to the McDonald-era Pelco; some continue to have the same expectations. Admittedly, that is the price you pay when you set the bar as we did. But that business model was simply unsustainable as the industry transitioned to IP and the market went from few competitors to scores. Of course, that naturally leads to the question: did we handle the shift well? No.

That being said, while we admittedly faced challenges five years ago as we transitioned to an IP company, I would disagree that we have “gone nowhere but down the last five years.” But perception is reality so we have a lot of work to do to change it. I want to point out, however, that 67% of our sales are IP sales with double-digit growth each of the last four years. We have the 5th largest market share for IP cameras per IHS 2013 (formerly IMS) and strictly on a revenue basis for all IP sales, I would venture to say we are larger than the vast majority of the competition. Importantly, I think our IP cameras themselves have been on par with the competition under shootouts and reviews. (I’m sure John will let us know if he disagrees.) So while some may not see Pelco as a relevant IP company, it is my number-one goal to win these people over and show that we are indeed very relevant in today’s market.

And while we are nowhere close to where we want to be, we like our trajectory, our double-digit sales growth in EMEA and APAC and our ongoing efforts in the US to become the IP market leader.

I as much as anyone understand that these are just words. That’s why I challenge my organization on a daily basis to stop talking, to continue proving and most importantly, to focus on what matters most: our customers and what matters to them, on-time deliveries, field failure rates, customer satisfaction scores, repair time, on-hold wait time, etc. As a result, I am confident that the industry’s perception is changing. Obviously not as fast as I would like but I am proud of where we are, the obstacles (self inflicted though they may have been) we have overcome, and where we are headed.

We are an IP company. We are a customer service company. And I think that is a unique combination. As more and more products become commoditized (it’s a fact that no one in this industry can be blind to), we are very confident in our ability to offer what other companies simply cannot - customer support second to none.

Finally, let me clear up any confusion about our go-to-market strategy regarding our Reps. As of July 1, we will have 5 Rep firms (KMA, Milsk, Spec Point, Tech Sales & Marketing and Monfort) as well as 5 territories, which we will manage through a direct sales force. As noted, our preference is using reps whenever possible and we are confident and excited with the Sales organization we now have in place.

Herve Fages

Senior Vice President

Pelco

Carl,

I'm surprise about the C10 Serie since it was one of our top seller. What about you drop me an email at : hfages@pelco.com.

If you not happy with the product we will replace it free of charge. Just contact me and I can have someone in my team take care of this.

Herve

Pelco has updated their website with the list of the surviving manufacturer reps

Plus, here are the new contacts for direct Pelco sales in each non-rep region: