Jacob Horwitz, Illuminology

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

All kinds of people in this industry are very aware that while there is lot of dodgy stuff, there is also lots of well made display technology available from Chinese manufacturers who have zero brand recognition outside of that country. Buy potential buyers don't tend to have the time or resources to make the big flights over the Pacific to visit China and directly source reliable manufacturing partners.

And they really - if they're smart - don't want to just order stuff, and then cross their fingers and toes hoping the stuff shows up, lines up with what was ordered, works, and then meets necessary certifications.

Jacob Horwitz saw an opportunity to create a new company that functions as something as a boutique digital signage distribution company that sources, curates and markets display and related technologies that its resellers can then take to market. Horwitz will be familiar to a lot of industry people for a pair of installation companies he started and ran the U.S. - IST and later Zutek. In both cases, he sold the companies, and he could have just retired ... but he didn't want to retire. Nor did his wife, because a Jacob with too much time on his hands would make her crazy.

So he started Illuminology with a longtime industry friend and business partner Stephen Gottlich, who for many years ran the digital file for Gable.

I caught up with Horwitz to talk about the origins and rationale for Illuminology, which is just spinning up but has some big plans.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jacob, it was nice speaking with you. You have started a company called Illuminology, which sounds like you started a cult, but I think that's not what it is. 

Jacob Horwitz: Not yet, no, We hope it will be at some point, a good following, but first off, Dave, thanks for having me. It's been nine years since you and I first chatted on a podcast. I don't know if you realize that. It was December of 2016, and we had just finished, I think maybe the nationwide rollout of Burger King, you and I had a chat about that, and it's hard to believe nine years have gone by. 

This was when you had IST? 

Jacob Horwitz: Installation Service Technologies was a nationwide installation and service company, that was sold in 2018 and then a year later, I restarted a company called Zootech, and I was approached by a customer who was looking to be entrepreneurial and that company is now owned by Karen Salmon. It's a woman-owned business mow, and her father was the founder of Powerpoint of Sale.

I took a couple of years off. I have a person that I have worked with for 30 years, my business partner, Stephen Gottlich. I think you've met Stephen, and he has been working with Gable Signs for the last 17 years and I think what Illuminology is now is a culmination of really two parallel journeys. Stephen took a traditional sign company 17 years ago down a path of innovation, and Gable went from a bending metal traditional sign company to a visual solutions company my background, which has been installation and service for the last 20 years, brings together two people who are a little bit older than when you and I first talked nine years ago. 

It was probably 60 pounds ago when I talked to you for the first time. I'm a little gray or a little wiser and a little bit older. So the two of us come from really parallel journeys in different areas of digital signage, and we wanted to create something a little different in the United States. We'd seen some business models and other parts of the world that seem to be working. So we wanted to create a marketplace that would expand digital signage to companies interested in expanding their scope of business. So we focus a lot on traditional sign companies other technology-type companies, and installation companies. They all have some type of footprint in the verticals with technology but they're not carrying digital signage. 

So we thought, how do we expand digital signage to reach a lot more people? And we've come up with this business model. 

So for people who are completely unfamiliar with it, how do you describe it in your elevator pitch?

Jacob Horwitz: The easiest way to describe it is to think of us as a traditional distributor of digital signage to authorized resellers. Much like a Blue Star, B&H, except that we're very boutique, and we're very focused, and we're very passionate. Stephen and I are not, we've been fortunate in business. I'm 65, Stephen is 70-ish, so we know we don't have a lot of time to build something that's going to take years and years, but we wanted to build something