The New Allied Vision: A Smart Move and a Promise Yet to Be Kept
TKH Group has announced that all their 2D vision hardware brands – except Euresys – will now be consolidated under the Allied Vision brand. This move has been a long time coming, according to Vision Markets’ marketing consultant, Jean-Philippe Roman.
TKH Group stated yesterday that their 2D imaging companies are now fully integrated under the Allied Vision brand. The company has also launched a new website that brings together all products formerly branded as SVS Vistek, NET, Chromasens, and Mikrotron, as well as Euresys’ frame grabbers and Open eVision software solutions. All individual brand websites are now redirected to the alliedvision.com homepage, with the exception of euresys.com. This is likely because Euresys products can also be used with cameras from other manufacturers.
The promise of the newly integrated Allied Vision is to deliver more customer-centric service, offering a “one-stop shop” for TKH Vision’s full range of products and solutions for 2D vision.
A Long-Overdue Move
From a marketing perspective, this consolidation was only logical and had been anticipated for some time. Maintaining so many separate camera brands made little sense, both in terms of brand awareness and organizational efficiency. To add to the confusion, TKH Group had created the TKH Vision umbrella brand, which then needed to be established in the machine vision market. It is questionable why the company bothered with this intermediate step and did not consolidate everything under the – literally suitable – Allied Vision brand from the start. Internal processes, personal sensitivities, and the desire to create investment stories for stakeholders often get in the way of such decisions.
Choosing Allied Vision as the unified brand makes a lot of sense. It was the strongest and most recognized of all the brands, and the word “Allied” made it a natural choice for such an integration. This consolidation will certainly strengthen the brand as one of the top players in the industry, alongside companies like Basler, Teledyne, and Zebra.
Our Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP) reports have shown a decline in the alliedvision.com domain’s performance in machine vision camera searches over the past few months. It will be interesting to see whether the new website can return to top rankings.
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The Challenge Ahead: Delivering on the Promise
While this long-overdue consolidation is a sensible step, the greatest challenge for the new Allied Vision will be to deliver on its promise. In its new corporate video, the company claims that “new challenges can’t be solved by components alone” and promises a shift “from components and software to complete vision solutions.”
“Solution” is a word that offers a compelling response to the commoditization trend in machine vision components. From a marketing standpoint, it conveys the positive message of solving customer problems, rather than just selling technical products based on datasheets. However, the challenge in the vision industry – and for Allied Vision too – is to define what a solution offering actually looks like. The most obvious definition refers to turnkey vision systems that perform specific tasks, such as defect detection or part sorting. Like other well-known companies in the industry, Allied Vision will need to ensure it is not perceived as a competitor to its primary customer base when it pivots or expands from supplying only machine vision components to offering machine vision solutions.
So what might a “vision solution” from Allied Vision look like? Most likely, it would be a subsystem that simplifies the process for system integrators to design their own application-specific vision systems. This could include hardware and software tools like Euresys’ Open eVision. The new Alecs smart camera is a good example of this approach. Allied Vision’s ability to deliver more solutions like these in the future will be crucial to maintaining the credibility of its brand.
Good Branding Must Reflect Reality
Allied Vision is a strong brand, and TKH Vision made the right marketing decision by consolidating its 2D vision business under that name. But a brand can only be strong if it is consistent with customer experience. That’s why branding is not just a concern for the marketing department. A brand is a promise, and it takes the entire organization to deliver on that promise every day. Now, it’s up to the group to make good on its word.
Good luck, Allied Vision!
