By adapting to market changes and by adding features specifically needed by its customers, handheld scanner maker Janam has not just survived but has thrived in keeping its products as an attractive option in the stadium entry technology marketplace.
“The handheld is the thing people fall to,” said Harry Lerner, CEO of the Bethpage, N.Y.-based Janam. “It’s the most flexible product, you can move it around anywhere in the venue, you can use it for suites and parking — the handheld is irreplacable.”
According to Lerner, “hundreds” of stadium customers agree, with “tens of thousands” of Janam units sold into the stadium-specific ticketing verification market since the company first launched its products in 2007. Along the way, Janam has kept pace with the inevitable technology changes, including the need to add better scanning technology when most bar-code scans switched from paper printouts to photos on phones.
The need for near-field communications (NFC) technology followed and Janam was right there keeping pace — so much so that one of the newest and most advanced venues anywhere, the Las Vegas Sphere, uses Janam products, according to Lerner. Janam also notes that even if they use other devices for ticketing, many venues still use Janam handheld devices for access to club and other premium spaces.
Even the Covid pandemic — which caused fans to avoid face-to-face contact when they came back to events — didn’t stop Janam. In its own cost-conscious and customer-sensitive way, the company didn’t just design a pedestal that could be used for self-scanning — it designed a pedestal that could use existing Janam handheld devices, which could just slide into a housing at the top of the pedestal. Janam currently offers two versions of the slide-in pedestal product.
“Rather than force venues to throw their handhelds away, we built them a mobile pedestal, one powered by that same handheld,” Lerner said.
Looking to the future, Janam sees the possibility of biometrics becoming more pervasive in the ticketing verification space, but the possibility doesn’t faze them. Since Janam was acquired in late 2022 by access specialist HID, which in turn is owned by the Stockholm, Sweden-based Assa Abloy, a access-specialty company with 61,000 employees and recent yearly revenues of approximately $12.6 billion, Janam can draw from the expertise developed by selling all kinds of products associated with access control.
Lermer, who does see “some headwinds with biometrics,” also sees challenges with the current offerings in the marketplace both with the technology and the societal acceptance of biometrics in general. But inside the parent companies behind Janam, Lerner sees work on advanced camera technology and other components, which could one day find their way into Janam products.
“That’s one of the benefits of being owned by HID,” Lerner said.
For the time being, Lerner said Janam doesn’t see existing verification technologies like bar codes and NFC being subsumed by biometrics.
“NFC is here to stay, for quite awhile,” Lerner said. “The tap and go economy is increasing everywhere.”
Getting back to handhelds, Lerner said that Janam stays close to companies like Ticketmaster and SeatGeek to make sure they are adding features that are truly necessary for the stadium market — like putting batteries at the tops of pedestals so they can be more easily replaced, and adding the ability to slide a scanner up and down the pedestal to address ADA compliance. Janam said it also works with Paciolan, vivenu, Tickets.com, and Leap Event Technology, among many other ticketing platform providers.
Notable venues that still use Janam devices include Madison Square Garden, American Airlines Center, The Ohio State University and Radio City Music Hall, according to Janam.
Lerner could also talk for quite some time about battery quality, noting that Janam’s self-designed technology has 27 hours of battery life and is built specifically to handle many multiple recharges.
“It’s the details that matter,” Lerner said. “We want to be practical, versatile and affordable.”
This profile is part of our recent Entry Technology Market Report. Here is the link to the main market report.
