Case Study: The New Model Home
Don Munce is the president of the National Research Center for College and University Admissions. Basically, he's the guy who sends out all the college recruitment letters and brochures to high school students on behalf of most of the colleges and universities in the country. But more importantly for Brewer, Munce loves to immerse himself and his home in the latest digital technology. He likes all the gadgets and what they can do without being overenamored with the details of how each one works. He and a group of his buddies go to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas each year the way others might go on an annual golf outing. "I'm a low-tech guy, but I'm a huge investor in technology," he confesses.
What Munce wants from Brewer and what Automated Lifestyles ultimately delivers may well define the emerging business model for digital convergence in the home.
When Munce built his home, he wanted the latest audio and video technology married to an automated system that could be controlled from virtually anywhere in the home. "The building contractor recommended factory direct, but those guys were so technical I couldn't understand them and they couldn't understand what I wanted," he says. "They wanted a huge price, but I didn't understand what I was going to get from them."
Brewer considers himself a solution provider. He's just 30 years old and he took over his father's home security business and made the transition to a complete home automation business. But he knows he's on the cusp of a digital convergence phenomenon that needs sorting out in terms of both technology and business models.
He thinks he's got a firm grasp on the business model. He's figured out that solution-selling is the way to go and the best person to talk solutions with is the homeowner. As such, he almost never works with building contractors. "All contractors want to know is how much it will cost," he says. "I only work on a time and materials basis. I want one-on-one contact with the customer. I want to know how the customer lives his life."
Munce agrees. "Jason puts [the solution] into a language the customer can understand. He takes complex technology and communicates in a simple way how we can accomplish what I want to do."
That philosophy to only work with the end-user customer has helped Brewer carve out a niche in the greater Kansas City area that he thinks will help him build a sustainable business model. Not only does he work exclusively with the homeowner, he targets only the high end. Brewer says his average digital convergence project runs between $100,000 and $150,000 with several topping $250,000. What's more, the bulk of his work comes from word of mouth.
"I'd rather have 10 clients at $150,000 than 100 clients at $15,000," he says, explaining that the cost of doing business with numerous small customers is prohibitive.
That philosophy yielded 75 percent growth for Automated Lifestyles last year, and Brewer admits that he has to resist pressure from clients to grow even faster. Many of his customers have second homes in other states. But he fears committing the resources to projects outside of Kansas City would stretch his five-person staff too thin and cause him to lose control over remote projects.
Instead, Brewer says he has a better plan. He wants to start with a base project of, say, centralized control of audio/video and then build on that over time to tie in virtually every electrical subsystem in the home. Lighting, telephone, music, security, heating and air conditioning all are fair game for digital convergence, Brewer says.
That's what he's doing at the Munce home. Brewer's updating an existing home theater and whole home control system. Two of his technicians are busy installing components in a rack-mounted control center in the furnace room abutting the home theater room. The theater and an adjacent bar are in a walk-out basement that opens onto a pool and patio area overlooking wooded ravines. The materials list for the project is impressive.
The new theater system features a Stewart Filmscreen fixed rear-projection screen and a Runco VX-5000ci DLP projector. Atlantic Technology speakers and woofers anchor the sound system. Crestron wireless touch panels backed by Crestron wireless gateways and Ethernet controllers serve as the control system.
Crestron wall-mounted video touch panels are the human interface to the whole home control and multiroom audio/video system. Brewer and his staff are taking out older Crestron touch panels and replacing them with larger, more functional ones.
Brewer demonstrates how the touch panels can send audio to any room in the house as well as the outside pool area. Munce chimes in that family members can store their individual playlists of music on the system and select the songs they want. Lighting is tied into the control system, too. The home security system is tied into the panel, and Brewer plans to include heating and air- conditioning control as well.
But planning for growth and flexibility is what's propelling Brewer head on into the new wave of home digital convergence.
Wireless technology is now standard fare for current and future enhancements. Just weeks earlier, Brewer gained authorization as a Linksys VAR, buying his Linksys wireless routers and other home products through D&H Distributing. And he's thinking about hiring more technical staff with PC and IP experience.
He understands that the stacks of components and subsystems filling his racks constitute a growing data center that will eventually require a PC server for control and data storage. And Munce, who with his wife, Marie, spends a lot of time traveling, wants remote video access to his entire house via his laptop so that he can monitor the home via an Internet hookup. "I can keep tabs on my teenagers' parties while I'm on the road," Munce jokes.
Brewer figures he can hire people to enhance his IP and computing capabilities, but gaining authorization from a major PC vendor could prove problematic. Linksys has a VAR program tailored to the SOHO and home markets, which matches nicely with the home digital convergence space. But PC digital home VAR programs are a different matter. He's exploring a VAR relationship with Dell, but he realizes selling a dozen or so servers a year doesn't cause a blip on Dell's radar screen. "I can go to Best Buy or go online to buy servers," Brewer says. "But by becoming a VAR I want to get better technical support from the vendor. I don't want to be just the average Joe who bought something from Best Buy."