Boy am I on the rant trail now! I'm sure you're all familiar with AVAD... I've been buying from them since theri intro to the Northwest. They've been a really good distributor and have helped me grow my business through the years... I've made a lot of friends there.

I'm sure, like me and my partner, you all work damn hard and put in way more time than you'd like to to manage, market and grow your businesses. Well NOW you have this "fantastic opportunity" to join AVAD's D2B program. They're going to take all of their deep pocket profits and massively market to every home builder in the country.

This program sounds great at first and certainly raised some eyebrows and filled some seats at CEDIA... but now the catch(es)... This "fantastic opportunity" costs you $2500.00 per year for two of you and $1000.00 for every other person in your company that wants to get "trained". To join, you have to be a CEDIA member and at least half of your staff must be CEDIA certified (obviously that means beaucoup bucks for those of you with say 20 or more employees). You also have to commit to buying all of your product from AVAD unless they can't provide one.

So let me see... pay a bunch of money... buy distributor products instead of supporting the direct relationships you have established... spend a bunch of valuable time becoming "certified in categories" (you have to be certified in all 7 to be a "Premier" dealer) and then someone else will decide (undoubtedly based on your "commitment level") which builders to refer you to.

This is an insidious program... I'm sorry but why the hell should I support someone who is now going to spend a bunch of money to market against me and try to tear away the relationships I have spent many hours cultivating. You are a seller of products... NOT A F------G DEALER! I'm obviously not about to sign up for this... but some newer companies are going to gamble on it... and my own distributor who I've personally helped grow through hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sales is now going to use some of my own money to tell my builders that I am not as good an option as their guy (who they successfully extorted money from). Sorry but this chaps my ass.

The program will be launched early next year and will definitely generate interest in every market in this country. Know about it and prepare yourselves by either joining up or letting your builders know what is coming before it does. Good luck to all. Got trick or treaters coming to the door so sayonara for now.