I used to work for one of the biggest SMART dealers in my area and went through the process of setting up a dealer twice. Service definitely went downhill with the explosive growth, but I'd still say they are a good company to work with, have great marketing, excellent tech support, etc. The Kentucky distribution center helped a lot with customs issues. While they had fits and starts into corporate, education and particularly K-12 education is their focus and yes the main focus is district-wide deals, which is just to be expected. My rep had an M. Ed. For example. They have a crew of people with education backgrounds working the big school districts. Margins aren't great, but I don't think I discounted a SB more than maybe once or twice.
They are very protective of their dealer base. They are typically looking for decent volume, but there are also training and staffing requirements. If you do get approved there are geographic and vertical market restrictions. In most areas they aren't taking on any new dealers for k-12 for example, even though that is the core market, but you might have a shot at getting approve for corporate only or gov only or something like that. Thats really the only line I've run into that with other than back when every display manufacturer had Ed. pricing.
They are a public company now, so you can look up the financials, etc. If you are in a lot of k-12 schools, absolutely go for it. If not, it's only really worth it if you are going to make a big commitment to it. They are selling tons in K-12.
They absolutely have the brand recognition, but as touchscreens become more and more ubiquitous, there is a ton of competition out or coming out. Hitachi was mentioned. There is also ibid, ebeam, polyvision (same parent company owns multiple commercial av integrators), Panasonic. Sharp has a relatively inexpensive flat screen based product coming, etc. The biggest competition in my mind is going to come from iPads, especially with ios5 and AirPlay mirroring. A lot of schools are issuing iPads to teachers. For the price of a cheap projector, $100 applets and a $10 app you have a pretty good wireless annotation/teaching solution compared to a $2k smartboard
Yes, a short-throw on wall projector works better with the front projection boards to prevent the shadowing. Doesn't have to be theirs, they oem displays anyways (used to be NEC, not sure who it is now), but that would be the least of my concerns if I was going to try to become a SMART Tech dealer again.
