D&M Holdings will target OEM customers more aggressively through its newly created Advanced Center for Technology, populated with engineers from D&M companies and structured as a profit center that sells to internal and external customers, president/chief operating officer Vic Pacor told TWICE.
D&M is the parent company of Denon, Marantz and McIntosh, and the supplier of the ReplayTV, Rio and Escient brands. D&M continues to look for companies to acquire in the audio/video market, including speaker companies. “We could use a couple speaker brands,” Pacor said.
Replay PVR technology has the “most OEM traction,” he said, because of a “big appetite for speed-to-market in PVRs,” which can be built into TVs, DVD recorders and set-top boxes. The company is targeting an OEM PVR-technology contract for its current fiscal year and hopes to close it before the end of the calendar year. Opportunity also exists for selling Rio MP3 technology to OEM customers, he added.
“We can grow our profits from our know-how and stay aligned with our current brand customers and channels,” he explained.
D&M’s previous involvement in the OEM business came with its acquisition of Escient and its OpenGlobe business, which marketed digital media management platforms that accessed free back-end services. OpenGlobe, now part of D&M’s technology center, had partnerships with Compaq, Kenwood and RCA for hard-drive-equipped component-style music jukeboxes.
In other comments, Pacor said D&M is “nursing back to health” the Replay, Rio and Escient brands, and that D&M profitability is “okay.”
As for potential acquisitions, D&M is looking for a company “with the potential to benefit from our global [marketing] reach,” he said. Such companies haven’t expanded globally, or if they have, only through distributors without local management.
