Milestone Hires Fired Exacq Rep Firm

Two examples of the combo regional sales force (factory + rep firm) that make for a good 1-2 punch:

1) Factory that sells through distribution- The rep firm typically has multiple reasons to be engaged with a distributor and therefore is usually more in tune to help with timely opportunities than just 1 factory person within an entire region selling a sole product.

2) National Accounts/High Profile Integrators- Because of their status and the nature of their end users, they expect frequent factory attention in addition to rep firm service.

Big Projects versus daily needs, long sales cycles versus the timing of I'm-glad-you're-here opportunities- The more bodies in focus a factory employs, the better.

I guess that was my point. CVREPS is a powerful rep firm that shoudn't be underestimated, but they really didn't have a choice other than Milestone. Desperation is kicking in.

Had Milestone said "no" it would have made things difficult. So no, they were not in a position to pick up anyone, but still highly desired given their position and strength with Exacq before. Pretty sure that Milestone weren't the ones hunting after CV and likely were able to pick them up on pretty favorable terms.

CV's days are also numbered with Miilestone as the Arecont stench starts wafting over into the Axis camp.

I would say that giving licenses FOC is a regular practice of many VMS manufactures to give a discount for their systems to fit into a budget and so on.

I did it for partners selling SONY, Arecont and so on. There was also a project that we designed with Sony partner and meanwhile our long term American Dynamics partner came with the idea that he would do the project with Illustra cameras and Exacq but he would need extra project price.

The answer from our site was NO and we did very nice project with the Sony partner, we do our best not to mix our two businesses together.

It is true that we promote our Illustra cameras on Exacq pages and we are ready to extend the offering to existing Exacq partners, it is true that Illustra cameras will have always priority to be fully integrated into Exacq with as many features as they have but that is all.

In the future we could also promote our Kantech access control or DSC intruder there as the integration is already exceptional and for many Exacq partners it could bring nice advantage against competition to sell those solutions together. It is easier than to wait for a development of some descent access control solution as many VMS developers try to do now. It exists already, it has history and trust, no baby illness could be expected. For us it is easy to joint those systems together and offer the nice solution.

But it is just about promotion of our solutions, we do our best not to harm the sales channel we do our best to give excellent solutions to our partners and end customers.

It was obvious that the acquisition will harm the trust of Exacq sales channel and integration partners, it is the same like with the Canon now, they can say whatever they want but they will be doubted in similar way like Tyco and they will face the same temptationsJ

I believe that we have experience and internal processes how to cope with those situations, we can prove that we are able to manage several product brands that are competition to each other (Software House, Kantech, CEM or DSC, Bentel, …) without harming our partners by giving advantage to one or the other.