BrandSource Drops Car Electronics Division

By Amy Gilroy -- TWICE, 2/23/2009

ANAHEIM, CALIF. — BrandSource/AVB has “suspended” its car electronics division, which was launched last March, due to economic conditions, it said.

The group has stopped its warehouse operations for car stereo products that included such brands as Alpine, Eclipse, JL Audio and JBL. Rick Mathies, who was executive director of the Mobile Electronics Source (MES) division, has been let go, confirmed Jim Ristow, executive VP of Brand Source's Home Entertainment Source division.

“It's not a surprise that under these trying economic conditions, a start-up venture is more difficult to launch,” said Ristow, noting that the 75 or so retailers who joined MES may still receive member benefits such as group insurance rates and financing.

“Everyone's watching inventory levels, credit, ROI, and no matter how strong the business model, immediate positive results are typically not the norm in a start-up. Therefore, we're just suspending our warehouse strategy until the economy stabilizes and we can do a normal launch,” Ristow said.

MES launched last spring as collaboration between BrandSource/AVB and the Mobile Enhancement Retailers Association (MERA) with the intention of providing smaller 12-volt retailers an advantage to compete with big-box retailers and to help them transform their image from hobby shops to more professional retailers.

The group promised retailers benefits such as free shipping on warehouse orders of $1,000 or more for mixed brands.

Another buying group for select car stereo retailers called In-Car Experts (ICE) said its members, with 240 storefronts, are not experiencing the sharp declines seen in the general autosound market as the average ICE member has been in business more than 23 years. Executive director Rob Elliot said ICE retailers are finding that they are benefiting from the demise of other car stereo retailers who have left the marketplace, including Tweeter and Circuit City.

Ford Study: Sync Reduces Driver Distraction

Dearborn, Mich. — Ford said its Sync radios reduce driver distraction compared to using MP3 players and other devices while on the road, according to research conducted by the company.

Participants in the Ford study spent an average of 25 seconds with their eyes off the road to select a song on an MP3 player compared with two seconds to perform the same task via the Sync.

The study included 25 regular Sync users who were tested in a driving simulator performing tasks such as recalling a name from a cellphone phonebook. Ford then measured any deviation in their lane position, and other changes.

Drivers wandered over their lane lines in more than 30 percent of the trials when trying to search for a song compared to zero percent using the Sync. Reading a text message on a handheld phone typically required 11 seconds of eyes-off-the-road time compared to 2 seconds with the Sync, which “reads aloud” text messages from a cellphone.

The Sync is a voice-controlled car radio that also uses voice commands to call up music, including music on ipods and other devices that link to the radio.

Another study by the U.S. Department of Transportation followed 109 drivers for one year and found that manually using a handheld device while driving was almost three times riskier than normal driving. The study found that just talking or listening on the phone while driving was no riskier than normal driving, said Ford.