The real story on Express and Expression

dlincecum — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:59:00 GMT

Many of you may have heard that we had to abruptly stop taking orders for Express and Expression consoles a couple of weeks ago. With the dust having settled a bit I wanted to offer a clear (we'll see how clear!) explanation of what is up with these products. This may be the longest post ever on a blog. But I am also revealing a lot to you all in this public blog. I probably should seek permission to post all this – but I won’t. I’ll just ask forgiveness later. Enjoy – or hate this post as you see fit. ( I switch liberally between I and we in the post as I and telling you about the process that We went through.)

First – let me say that the abrupt announcement (our customer service reps refer to it as the “stop sign”) was in no way a part of our plan. We have known for some time that some day we would reach a point where we could no longer ship them. Both Express and Expression include parts that are simply out of production and we have done multiple “lifetime buys” in order to keep the hardware alive. No doubt we could have made a decision to develop new hardware – but we chose not to – and I will address that decision as well. We recently were faced with a shortage on a part that couldn’t be replaced and therefore we had to look at what we had on order, what it would take to service thousands of consoles in the field; this resulted in the stop sign. We had planned to be able to phase these products out over the remainder of this year – but things don’t always work according to plan. Let me first apologize to many of you who considered this event to be sudden and unexpected. It was necessary to assure we could meet our commitments to customers.

Now let me speak to the background on this. To stay organized I am going to number the items I will cover.

1. Decisions on platforms we would develop and why we made the choices

2. Results of those decisions and the various issues going with them

3. A few other points

Part 1 – background on decisions we made on platforms we would develop and why

A couple of years ago we chose to make a commitment to the SmartFade, Eos/Ion and Congo platforms for future development. This means we had to make a decision to cease any future development on Expression and Express. This was really tough for us. The Expression platform is the most popular in the world and I would tangle with anyone on that claim. ETC has grown up on the Expression. We love it and there are thousands of fans worldwide. The market for Express and Expression was shrinking however. The sales trend was down with many mid-range customers defecting to products like Hog 1000, Whole Hog 2’s and yes – the Strand 500 series. We had to accept that Expression was not the right platform for the future for many reasons. We had incremented the development for about 20 years and there were some fundamental concepts in the console philosophy that kept it from adapting much further.

We already knew then that the Eos software platform would become the primary platform for ETC. We also knew that Congo was doing great in certain markets and had a broad acceptance – sales are very good and it is a powerful platform. It was clear that Congo would never enjoy the widespread acceptance in the US market – where we already had a huge market-share and therefore we needed to put our muscle behind Eos in the US. This meant that we need to replace Express, Expression, and Emphasis with derivatives of Eos (these represent thousands of units sold per year in the US.) Ion was designed to replace a majority of these sales.

Are you following me so far? I am trying to be as concise as possible – but this is a complex matter – so bear with me.

So what did this transition mean for us, philosophically speaking? We had to make some decisions based on a few criteria: Where the market development was; what we needed to make a complete and consistent console offering, and where we thought the market needed to go to be ready for the next ten years in lighting control. Reviewing these criteria, we made some decisions:

1. We felt that the market was ready for using a tracking, last action, move fade console like Ion – as opposed to a preset based platform like Expression. This was a gating decision as we knew that Eos was built on these philosophies.

2. We also knew from that many ”would-be Expression customers” in the US were able to learn the Congo platform and were having good luck with it, especially churches and some universities and regional houses. Congo is funny – either you love it or you hate it! It has many major fans and I am one of them. But it would not be right for many customers, especially in the USA. An Eos derived console was a much better choice. My point here is that we learned that the user base was more flexible than we thought.

3. We felt that 2 scene preset was basically dead in anything over 24 channels. It is unreliable (prone to human error,) requires significant paperwork and is ultimately a big hindrance to add-on to a console from a development point-of-view. We developed the point-of-view that 2 scene is basically a teaching tool and we would support it in the SmartFade. We also discovered that very few customers could be found who were actually using it on the Express.

4. We determined that outside of 2 scene preset there was still a reliance on faders that some segments of the market felt comfortable with. We also determined that this reliance was fairly limited in actual usefulness. Once you set levels on an Express with faders and record them to a cue – you have to clear the faders to play the cue back. You also cannot take a channel down below its recorded level with faders because they operate in HTP. This means that after you record a preset you have to use the keypad to modify it. So the reliance was there - but of limited use. The faders did serve to make people comfortable and this was important.

5. We saw that new technologies like LED’s, moving lights and color changing devices were becoming more prevalent every year, and that ETC had product strategies that would seek to popularize these products even more. We wanted our console platforms – even in the least expensive market spaces – to support these devices.

Ok – these were our assumptions and you can argue with them. I accept that. Since I am telling you our entire strategy here I expect you can take issue with any part of it – and I want to hear your input -- but at least you know why we did what we did. We developed Ion and made the decision to step away from Expression for new development.

So – this is where we stand. We very much believe that people will benefit from moving to Ion for many reasons. End users will get in on the ground floor of a platform we will develop for years. They can control many types of products beyond dimmers. They will learn a lighting philosophy that is the most prevalent on Broadway and in large theatres (ok – this is a very American point-of-view, but they are also the main customer group who is affected by this change. Only 10% of these consoles went to Europe.) These Ion customers will get a lot more console for their money. Dealers will be able to offer these Ion customers more products in the future; networking, moving lights, LED’s, color changers. Customers will be able to adapt to these products using a console designed for them. This is a good thing for everyone.

We are also listening carefully to the feedback we’re getting on this. Not all customer segments are happy with our reasoning.

Part 2 – Results of our decisions

Let me start by saying we are thrilled with Ion – sales are great. Now let me tell you where we made errors. An Ion with a 40 fader wing has a list price of about $9,000. The same Ion with 20 faders is about $8,000. Many, many buyers should consider these options. We feel that they will be very happy with the value we offer in this range. We recognize that buyers (and sellers) in the least expensive end of this market feel we have left a gap. This represents the $5,000 to $7,000 market, a market that we defined with Express. These buyers also want more faders than we can offer in this price range.

I could make a lot of excuses for this. The cost of the wings was much higher than anticipated and the Ion unit costs came in higher as well, yada, yada, yada. OK – we are not perfect. Far from it, in fact.

We also realize that some people have an issue with the perceived complexity of Ion. The encoders and numbers of buttons have made some people feel that the console will be hard to use. We ultimately feel it is pretty easy to use – but we have to accept that people differ with us on that. We are soon rolling out training videos geared toward first-time users and we will build this library as fast as we can. We believe this will help – I guess we will see.

We also have been helping our dealer and rep network learn Ion and help buyers feel comfortable learning to use the console. We know that most of our dealers and even many of our reps knew Express like the back of their hands and felt comfortable selling it because of that. They had many customers who were having good experiences and this made them confident. We have “moved their cheese.” In fact we have moved everyone’s cheese. Even our own.

OK – so we are catching some flack about all this – the pricing gap between the SmartFade consoles and Ion, the perceived complexity of Ion, and the retirement of one of our dealers’ go-to products - and we are trying to respond. It is hard to keep everyone satisfied (including ourselves.) We realize we have some things to overcome here. Some of it is training and acceptance among dealers, we need better training aids for end customers, and we may need a simpler piece of hardware for the low-end market. We are working on how to deal with these issues.

Part 3 – a few other issues

In closing let me say that I know this is a really long bit of an explanation. If you are still reading I thank and admire you. There are a few more things you should know.

1. We do still have a few Express consoles if you just have to have one. We understand that there are reasons you may prefer Express at this time. We’d like to see you make the move to Ion and we feel you will be happier if you do – but we respect your opinions too. We are not 100% out of these consoles and while we have officially stopped taking orders you can speak to your ETC regional manager (or ask your dealer to do so) and they may be able to get you a console. (They will kill me for posting this)

2. We are executing a strategy that we believe in and we are committed to it, but we aren’t immune to making some errors and adjusting the strategy. We also encourage your feedback. Please post comments here on the blog.

3. I’m not just pitching Ion in this post. The SmartFade and the Congo family offer great solutions for hundreds of customers. Take a close look at them.

4. We are planning expansions to the Eos/Ion family.

5. When? That is the question. We are working on a lot of projects; releasing all new Architectural products, finishing ACN implementation in all products, adding more network gateways, in addition to expanding software for Eos/Ion and Congo. I cannot begin to make promises and I simply won’t. You will just have to trust me on this.

I encourage you to give our new platforms a try. Take a good look at what we have done with the Eos, Congo and the SmartFade platforms.

So – that is the best I can do for now. If you have questions – ask them. If you have opinions post them. Please be open with us – I have been open with you. Have I missed anything? I look forward to hearing from you.

David Lincecum

Light Minds Think Alike : express

The real story on Express and Expression