We’re Moving

Throughout my life I have always been proactive. I have the type of personality that would rather deal with an issue than hope it goes away. To that end the economy is forcing us to do some things I would rather not. No, we’re not going out of business, but we are making some pretty major changes.

 

In the spring of 2007, after three straight years of multi-million dollar revenue’s, we decided to move into a facility and staff up to support that volume of business. Unfortunately shortly after we did this the economy started to slow. We were able to support the staff and facility until recently, but the near total stagnation in the economy, and especially new home building, has forced us to act before it is too late. By acting now we will be able to preserve the company and to live up to the commitments we have made to our current and previous clients. Recently Lehman Brothers waited too long and were done, while Merril-Lynch, recognizing their predicament, acted early and were able to avoid disaster. We’re taking the Merril-Lynch approach.

 

At the end of this month we will be moving our offices to our off-site theater showroom facility. The off-site theater showroom happens to be my house.  It’s strange how things work out. Two years ago when we bought this home we were not looking for a home this large. Now it will be a big benefit as it has a large basement with a separate street side entry. We will house all business operations there as well as maintaining a high performance home theater display, our theater seating display, motorized window covering displays, and will be able to demo the new products from Lifeware (www.exceptionalinnovation.com), Sonos (www.sonos.com), Pioneer Elite, Lutron, and a very cool new movie server from Escient. We’re very excited about the new digital entertainment technologies and our new facility will allow you to experience them in an environment much like your own home.

 

We are trying to retain as many of our staff as we can. I can tell you that our core personnel are in tact and staying that way. You are going to see Rick and myself in the field more often and as long as we can do enough business to support the rest of our staff we obviously want to keep them. We have established relationships to allow us to handle the large projects that we are so well known for. One change that has already happened is that we laid Sandee off a couple of weeks ago. My wife Sheri has returned to her former position as business manager. Her email is sheri@connected-technologies.com.

 

I have spent 25 years in Colorado Springs in the electronics field and have worked very hard to establish an outstanding reputation based on honesty and integrity. I realize that the moves we have made and are about to make could cast doubt on our solvency. It is my hope that this letter will dissolve any fears that you may have. I realize that this letter may be unusual in its openness, but really we don’t have anything to hide and our future has always depended on the maintenance of our relationships.

 

On a positive note the downturn has allowed us the time to fix a few things that we have been meaning to address for some time. First, we would like to communicate with you more often. With our updated website we have started a blog. You can read it anytime by clicking the link at the bottom of our home page. Second, we would like to send you occasional emails with pertinent information about what is happing in the technology world. Unfortunately we don’t have very many email addresses in our database. You can let us know your email address in one of these ways; log onto our website (www.connected-technologies.com) and select the “Join Our Email Update List” button at the bottom of the home page. You can also call the office at 598-3933 and leave the address. You can fax the address to 719-598-0927, and finally you can email it to me at robert@connected-technologies.com. Of course we won’t share it and will be very respectful of your time.

 

Finally, we need your help to weather this slowdown. You can help by calling us with your electronic systems needs and referring Connected Technologies to your friends. There are a lot of really positive things happening in our world and you are invited to come to our new offices and experience much of it. We’ve been working hard to find the easiest to use products for our clients and have worked out many ways to integrate these products into your existing systems. By stopping by you can experience lighting design, lighting control, digital media distribution, 2.35 aspect ratio home theater, motorized window coverings and whole home automation. We can now provide you with interactive access to entertainment in ways that simply were not possible even a couple of years ago. Just like photographs, music and movies are migrating from hard media (like CD’s and DVD’s) to virtual media (which means it is stored on a hard drive or on the internet). The virtual world has opened many new features and unbelievable amounts of media.  

 

Thank you for your time and for allowing me to spend over 25 years doing something I enjoy in a town that I love. I am confident these changes will allow us to survive the downturn and that we will emerge in a stronger position when things pick up again. I’m looking forward to working with all of you to re-build Colorado Springs and its economy.