Dennis Hickey, SNA Displays

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT I spoke recently with a consulting firm that was looking at the outdoor LED space, and trying to wrap its collective heads around who the LED leaders were in North America. They rattled off a bunch of vendor names, but did not mention SNA Displays. I sorted them out, noting how the company was a significant player, and how they were a rare Chinese LED manufacturer that was doing a great job of building up a presence and business in the U.S. market. SNA is interesting for a whole bunch of reasons. The name is short for Sansi North America, with the parent firm being back in Shanghai. But SNA seems to run very much as a U.S. company, with full offices and support systems over here, as well as marketing developed and managed on this side of the Pacific. The difference is not subtle, as I get a lot of marketing stuff from China-based vendors that just won't resonate over here and, probably, in Europe. SNA is also interesting because it doesn't just manufacture and sell indoor and outdoor LED displays, it becomes a direct partner in jobs - helping finance projects that might otherwise remain just ideas. I had a great chat with Dennis Hickey, who runs SNA and the related company that does financing, Infuse Digital. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Dennis. Thank you for joining me. Where are you today?  Dennis Hickey: I'm actually working from home in New Jersey, right outside of New York in Short Hills.  Okay. Went to talk about a couple things today. First of all, could you tell me about Infuse Digital, which is the newer of the two companies that you run. I know they are related. Dennis Hickey: Yes. Thank you. Infuse Digital came from the SNA Displays side as a company that wanted to hold hands for clients that were interested in LED products or digital products LCDs, kiosks, et cetera, and clients just didn't understand the process, and so where it came was from the fact that SNA displays was bidding multiple projects through multiple clients. It always seemed to be a price war, and if we didn't have intelligent digital consultants involved in the project, it usually just came down to price, and unfortunately, Based on the fact that we have 2,500 employees and 2.5 million square feet of manufacturing, our prices are usually tied, maybe some of the smaller folks. So we decided that we wanted to hold hands with these clients, help these clients. We wanted to make sure the clients were getting the best product, the best solution that will have the maximum return on investment, and so we told the clients that essentially, we would be the investor, and we would put up the funds and the financing, and then we would hold their hands and do the at-home advertising and the sponsorship revenue that could be generated from these, not selling the advertising or the sponsorship ourselves, but utilizing some of our partnerships to bring them to the project. So that was the spearhead to everything here.  So that's pretty widely different from what most LED manufacturers do.  Dennis Hickey: Yes, Obviously that's always been our case. We are probably number one in boutique products. Making the human head once and obviously our custom fabrication.  For the major spectaculars on the SNA side. So we needed to think out of the box more, and thinking outside the box, we know there's clients and we know clients will Google this, or maybe see a post, maybe read an article and then want that product. But they have no idea what the cost is associated with that. They really need their hands held more. And so that's where the concept of infused came from.  So is the core part of it, the financing end or is it the whole turn key? We'll take this from start to finish? Dennis Hickey: It is always going to involve some form of financial abilities. If you can provide your own finance, if you can build it yourself, you'll probably want to maximize the