Media Resources CEO Jeff Rushton gave a talk on digital billboards at last week’s IBO show. Billboard Insider interviewed Rushton after the conference.
You’ve implemented several initiatives in the past year. Can you elaborate?
Well that is a short question and a longer answer. To name a few:
- 3x expansion of our US digital production capacity
- Launched many new products
- Digital Billboards: eQVISION next generation with >50% reduction in power, better light control and 20-40% increase in lifetime. Will become our dominant product over next year
- Digital Transit: LED transit shelter and transit system products & services. Now being trialed with several major operators
- Digital Indoor for Airports/Transit: leveraging our tried/try “TruVIEW” flipchip product line…deploying in several major cities
- Achieve ISO45001 safety certification in many of our plants and hope to have done in all facilities before end of year!
- Beginning international expansion
Talk about your SITELINETM product and how it was used in an installation in Utah.
I believe you are talking about the implementation we did with YESCO Outdoor to have a double face digital nearly integrated with a new apartment building. This was possible only with our patented SITELINETM technology to block light so the light would not impact the apartment residents. Nathan & Mike Young were the developers of the property and required very special light studies and development to fit exactly the site. We were honored to be part of it and have similarly helped countless other operators across the USA and Canada with similar applications. At this point we are well over a hundred SITELINE implementations with a 0% complaint rate after implementation, though this project absolutely sets a new precedent for what is possible. Hats off to the Young family and the Media Resources team for pulling this off!! You can see a video of the digital billboard in action on YESCO’s linked in page.
Has there been any further definition on tariffs and digital billboards?
It literally changed three times last week including over the weekend. We do believe however temperatures are cooling and hopefully the world supply chain can find some stability. As we have our longstanding USA, Canadian and overseas production footprint, I think we have very good capability to maneuver through tariffs via US stockpile of inventory, USMCA, HS code exemptions and US manufacturing to minimize the impact to our customers. Unfortunately the changes come rapidly so we have our own internal task force and external expert consultants to review on a change to change (sometimes day to day) basis. . Thank goodness we saw this coming and have been preparing since November last year. As we always say we are in it for the long-haul whether it was COVID several years ago, to tariff changes today, to whatever the next “black swan” event it. It for sure keeps it interesting.
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