PEC Has You and Your TV or Display Covered
Picture the bright colors and vivid imagery of digital signage found in the futuristic scenes of movies like Back to the Future. Compelling visuals flash before your eyes and information is at your finger tips. It’s mind-blowing how close we are today to that reality… perhaps we’re already mostly there. Beautiful, exciting, eye-catching, and even interactive digital signage is popping up across the globe at shopping malls, theme parks, restaurants, and more. It was once the future and now the future is today. Industries are investing quickly in indoor and outdoor digital signage as studies confirm the effectiveness of it. Protective Enclosures Company is one of the leaders in the charge of bringing the future to life today through digital signage.
But all great influencers have an origin story. Protective Enclosures Company was born when Jarad King and Justin King wanted to put TVs on their patios, but could not find reasonable solutions. From ineffective grill covers to astronomically expensive outdoor TVs, the options were less than ideal. They were determined to develop a better alternative so they started working on a weatherproof, sturdy, secure, and economical outdoor TV option.
As a result, Protective Enclosures Company (PEC) was created. After two years of troubleshooting, researching, and engineering, they created The TV Shield®, a weatherproof TV enclosure that enabled viewers to watch, protect, and secure nearly any TV in almost any environment.
Since then, PEC has expanded its product line and brand portfolio to become the leading US-based manufacturer of lightweight, cost-effective TV and digital signage enclosures.Today, PEC has become a household name in the US. The company is not only saving consumers and businesses money up front; it’s also offering long-term savings.
Inspired by the game-changing impacts of PEC, Insights Success interviewed PEC Co-Founder and CEO, Jarad King, to learn more about the company and their enclosures that are revolutionizing the consumer and commercial electronics market.
Below are highlights from the interview with Jarad King (PEC CEO and Co-founder).
Give us a brief overview of your company, its mission, and the key aspects of its strong foothold in the Consumer Electronics and Commercial Signage industries.
We launched PEC in 2009 with our original product, which was The TV Shield composite line of enclosures with protection for 19” up to 60” displays. We now manufacture multiple branded product lines, including our patented The TV Shield ®, The Display Shield ®, The TV Shield PRO ®, The TV Shield PRO Portrait ® and The TV Shield PRO Lite ® TV and display enclosures which offer protection for up to 86” displays. We have also expanded our offerings with anti-ligature and touch screen products, enabling us to enter multiple niche markets. PEC’s products are popular with residential, professional, and commercial customers throughout the world.
PEC stands committed to providing the most user friendly, affordable, versatile, and highly engineered protective enclosures in the industry. PEC is fueled by a desire to create US-based jobs and manufacture the highest quality products. The affordability and quality of our products and our deep dedication to customer service set us apart.
From top to bottom, the PEC team is committed to the research and development of solutions-based products to protect equipment in outdoor residential installations and harsh or extreme indoor and outdoor commercial environments. Customers trust PEC’s proprietary patented enclosures for installation in residential applications as well as arenas, stadiums, theme parks, restaurants, bars, airports, healthcare facilities, hotels, schools, training facilities, government buildings, retail environments, institutions, food processing facilities, a wide variety of manufacturing plants, and multiple other vertical commercial markets. As of 2021, our enclosures protect TVs, digital displays, and digital signage in over 31,000 locations in 44 countries.
Describe your top-notch offerings that address the need of your customers.
Thorough consideration is put into every product we develop. We have designed a range of TV and display enclosures that can handle various environments. Some customers need tamper or theft defense while others need to protect TVs or displays from hot or cold temperatures, rain, pool splashes, snow, moisture, dust, bugs, flying objects, and more. Some people need TV or display protection indoors and others outdoors. Enclosures are also needed in a variety of sizes. PEC has diligently worked over the years to meet all these needs and more as they arise.
Our top-of-the-line offerings include The TV Shield ®, The Display Shield ®, The TV Shield PRO ®, The TV Shield PRO Portrait ®, and The TV Shield PRO Lite ® TV and display enclosures. We have also expanded our offerings with anti-ligature and touch screen products. From digital signage to menu boards, scoreboards, and more, these enclosures fill various purposes. From engineering and attention to detail to consistent innovation, we work hard to ensure our products are of the highest quality built with industry-leading materials and designs at the best value.
Product Examples:
- The TV Shield is used in the residential market to protect any off the shelf TV from hot and cold temperatures, rain, pool splashes, moisture, flying objects and impact, bugs, tampering, theft, and more.
- The Display Shield and The TV Shield PRO are great for outdoor applications and indoor wet or harsh environments.
- The TV Shield PRO Lite offers great security against tampering and breakage in indoor applications. With The TV Shield PRO Lite, we also designed an anti-ligature accessory that attaches to this product and creates an impenetrable enclosure that abides by ligature resistant requirements.
What makes your company a preferred choice among your clientele over other competitors?
We are truly humbled and appreciative to be the leading producer of outdoor TV enclosures. Customers turn to us because we offer excellence in quality, affordability, and customer service. Having been in business for over a decade and being trusted by homeowners and businesses across the globe, clients know they can trust us. Our clients appreciate free shipping, our A+ BBB rating, and great savings, sometimes thousands of dollars in savings depending on how many enclosures are needed.
We offer the most diverse product lines with our five different brands and offer superior products from fit, function, and aesthetics standpoints. Our thought that goes into our engineering process is completely different. We focus on aesthetics, but we also focus heavily on ease of installation and use in the field for commercial customers.
At PEC, we use high-end parts and include things like custom-built aluminum commercial-grade power supplies (instead of cheap plastic extension cords), gas shock systems, and full-motion interior mounts. One example of our material and design advantage is that The TV Shield shatterproof front panel is UV stabilized polycarbonate rather than alternatives like safety glass. “A well-made polycarbonate enclosure easily steps up to the challenges of withstanding wind, water, heat, and more to protect the sensitive components within” (Polycarbonate Enclosures vs ABS Enclosures by Polycase). Polycarbonate costs significantly more but offers extreme impact resistance and safety for our customers and their patrons, especially over products like safety glass that some of our competitors use.
And The TV Shield back-housing is made of HMWPE, which is one of the best materials on the market for UV resistance. On the other hand, competitors use materials like ABS, which is known to have poor UV resistance and is not considered nearly as durable or reliable for outdoor applications (Polycarbonate Enclosures vs ABS Enclosures by Polycase). HMWPE also has a twenty-plus year lifespan in outdoor direct sun environments over ABS products.
Describe the values that drive your organization.
P= People: Treat every person, including customers, co-workers, employees, and others, as you would want to be treated, in every situation, every day.
E= Efficient: Get the customer what they need quickly. Work fast but check your work. Stay lean to always ensure profitability.
C= Continue: Continue innovating. Continue solving customer issues. Continue learning. Continue growing. Continue to remember where we came from.
As a company in digital signage, what advanced technologies are you leveraging to make your services more productive and approachable?
- We don’t fall into a service category per se. PEC manufacturers and sells products that are used within the digital signage industry. Some of the advanced technologies we use include the following:
- IR touch frame technologies
- Sealing and filtering technologies
- Thermostatically controlled cooling and heating technologies
- PEC products are produced with state-of-the-art thermoforming, CNC, metal laser cutting and forming, and welding machines
- PEC was humbled to have been listed by BigCommerce as one of the 19 Most Technically Innovative Ecommerce Brands of 2019 as a result of our e-commerce and product innovation
- We research resources and nurture partnerships with other technology and software companies to be sure our products accommodate the latest technologies (such as software for digital signage or devices like Roku and Apple TV for TVs)
In your opinion, what could be the future of The TV Shield market? And how are you strategizing your company’s operations for that future?
Residential outdoor living space investment, as well as indoor and outdoor digital signage implementation, are predicted to grow at a rapid pace between now and 2030. Our products fall squarely into these markets, and we provide superior products at a significantly lower cost than most options available. On top of this, we also provide things like unparalleled tampering, breakage, and theft protection that our competitors in the all-in-one outdoor TV market can’t compete with. Installation of our products in some of our niche markets has been taking off better than ever over the last 18 months. These are just some of the reasons that we are predicting significant growth over the next many years.
At PEC, we constantly innovate in our category, but we are also always refining our current products to make them better, smarter, and easier to use. In the next nine to twelve months, we will be launching a completely new product line directed mainly towards the consumer market. This product will be more affordable than our current lines, thus opening a whole new buyer at a different price point. We have multiple other products on the horizon that will provide solutions for current and future customers but will stay in our lane of product categories.
Other strategies we will continue or be implementing are staying on the cutting edge of new marketing technologies and continuing to lean heavily on online marketing. We are in the process of further optimizing our multiple e-commerce channels for UX and increases in conversions after a full redesign in 2020. The TV Shield and The Display Shield line of products recently underwent a complete overhaul of the aesthetics, functionality, and size ranges offered. We will continue to capitalize on this with increased awareness to our current customers through marketing efforts and the implementation of new technologies in our email marketing systems.
In what ways have you or your company contributed to the community?
At Protective Enclosures Company, we are passionate about helping others in our community and outside of our community. When it comes to giving back, we don’t focus on one organization, disease, or group of people. We regularly give and get involved with charities like Runway to Hope which is a local charity that helps families of children with pediatric cancer. We also recently offered a sponsorship for an organization called Touched by Type 1 that deals with diabetes. PEC regularly gives to Parkinson’s organizations. My mother is currently battling this horrible disease, and even if we can make a small contribution to organizations that are trying to find cures and ways to help affected people, we do.
On a regular basis, we speak to parents and caregivers of children and adults with autism and other disabilities. They are typically looking for a product to protect a TV so their loved ones can have one in their home. They sometimes ask for info and sometimes ask if we have a discount or a scratch and dent unit, etc. We have given many enclosures to people in need like this when we are able to, and it touches our hearts every time to provide that individual and family with a break for once.
In 2019 we created a new Christmas tradition at PEC that gets our whole team involved in giving back. We all go together to a local retail store, and each person is provided with a budget by the company. We fill our carts with toys like lightsabers, board games, barbies, squirt guns, and other similar choices that bring us back to remembering what we would have loved as a kid. We then donate those toys to a local charity for children in need. This is something my team and I really enjoy.
We hope to continue being involved in all these things, and more, for years and years to come.
What are your future aspirations? Where do you see your company in the next five years?
In the short term, we are very focused on staying on top of the ever-changing supply chain issues to ensure we can continue to produce products and fulfill orders in a timely manner. Along with this, we are continuing to be transparent and honest with our customers about product delays, shipping delays, and labor issues we are facing. At PEC, we aspire to always offer first-class customer service, which is more challenging than ever.
As we work through the current supply and labor issues, we are still focusing on product development, marketing strategy, improved web presence and conversion, and implementing new processes that can improve customer service and retention.
Over the next five years, we plan to launch multiple new products in the consumer and commercial marketplaces. We will position these products to increase our market share not only on the consumer side but also in many of the vertical commercial markets that we sell into today. At PEC, we will continue to improve margins and profitability while having double-digit growth each year over the next five years.
Giving back to the community and people will also continue to be a top priority for PEC. We hope to continue to receive wonderful stories from the folks we were able to help as we have in the past.
