Last year, we announced the Russound Certified Installer (RCI) program that is designed to drastically reduce unauthorized online sales of the company's products while ensuring that consumers receive the benefits of working with certified installation professionals. Russound products designated "RCI Required" are locked, and can only be installed by Russound installers who buy the company's products through all authorized sales channels, whether it is through a distribution partner or direct dealer.
One year later, the program is thriving, with a massive 8,000+ CI professionals certified, and more joining every day.
RCI went into effect with the availability of the company's new line of multizone controllers (MCA-66, MCA-88 and MCA-88X), and is part of such recent additions as the XSource streaming audio player, and the XZone 4 Four-Stream, Four-Zone audio system, and it will be part of upcoming network-capable products as they are introduced. In all cases, the products ship "locked," requiring a certified Russound installation professional to unlock them via the Internet in order to be functional. Products are tracked through unique ID numbers that will be paired with the installers who performed the installations. No customer information is entered or shared as part of the process.
The RCI program is an important weapon in Russound's war against unauthorized online sales. Thanks to the thousands of professionals who have joined the team.
Hats off to the winners of Russound's Product Survey Speaker Giveaway!
Part of our mission at trade events, training, and, of course, daily communications with our dealers, is to maintain an ongoing conversation about what products and features make the most sense now and in the future.
To this end, we recently distributed a survey on the subject, and, in return for taking the survey, dealers' names were entered into a sweepstakes for a pair of the company's RSA-635 speakers.
While we are still sifting through the feedback (update to come soon), we're thrilled to offer our congratulations to the winners: Phil Farber, A/V Technology Group; Ronnie North, North Star Audio/Video; Jayanth Gowda, Audio Communications Home Theater; Takis Sarikas, Sarikas Technopro Ltd.; and Donnie Rodgers, Rogers Audio/Video!
