CE Pro March 2024 - 4

From the Editor
by Arlen Schweiger
Which 'Fresh Horse' Are You
Riding to More Revenue?
" For those
unique
services you
have like
programming
and design,
we should be
marking up
more. ... We're
making them
front and center. "
-Chris Metaxas,
Architech
Designs
THE ROUGHLY 90 ATTENDEES in the
CE Summit track at Total Tech Summit
represented companies that earned a
remarkable $1 billion in aggregate revenue
and performed 60,505 residential projects.
These days, with the integration business
continuing to expand, it's fascinating to hear
about where that revenue is being derived.
That's why my favorite session every year
is " Fresh Horses: Technologies to Ride to
Success, " due to the emerging tech and
business practices highlighted. Last year, I
moderated the session with panelists Kyle
Steele, president, Global Wave Integration;
Chris Metaxas, COO, Architech Designs; and
Jay Dobensky, owner, Beverly Hills SMART.
Burbank, Calif.-based Global Wave was
among the early adopters of wellness tech,
and their portfolio now comprises Ketra
lighting; biophilic spaces; soundscaping and
acoustics; air and water purification; and
immersive activity rooms.
The integrator's new sister brand, FutureCare
Solutions Group, has set out to
bring home healthcare tech to the rapidly
growing senior population.
" I've been talking about FutureCare with
Arlen Schweiger is
Editor-in-Chief of
CE Pro. He can
be reached at
arlen.schweiger@
emeraldx.com and
@ArlenSchweiger
on LinkedIn.
my friends here probably for about 12 years, "
Steele says. " We finally went to market [in
2023] and have done about 13 assisted
living facilities. "
Its genesis was a 2010 installation that
included about 600 devices for a client who
loved the real-time info supplied by a widget,
but wished it could also provide health
and wellness data. The programming Steele
played around with at the time was admittedly
too early to bring to market.
" Now with AI, that's really changed the
game completely, " he says. " We had touchless
fall detection for years, but we had so
many false positives. Now that we have our
AI backend, 99.9% of the false positives are
gone, so now we can roll this solution out
4 | CE Pro March 2024
and the marriage of Global Wave and FutueCare
is really wellness. "
Metaxas's Long Island, N.Y.-based integration
firm has mastered the tricky task of
charging for design services, without client
objection - all kinds of system design, too,
from lighting to electric to AV, network,
control interfaces and more.
" I came in and I started looking at the
business and said we're just not profitable
enough. And how do you drive profit, you
focus on the most important thing ... and
it's really about making the customers feel
really great about the experiences they get, "
he explains.
" Well, the only way to do that is to design
properly and engineer properly. And it just
doesn't come for free, you've got to hire
for that. Sometimes integrators say, 'Oh it's
good to make a 50% margin,' but for those
unique services you have like programming
and design, we should be marking up more.
... We're making them front and center. "
Dobensky's Beverly Hills SMART caters to
super-affluent clients on both coasts and has
had success with massive microLED C SEED
solutions, marine installs, and 'Bel Air Circuit'
private screening rooms, to name a few.
" At heart, I'm still a geek. I'm still that
young guy who's passionate about technology
and I always wanted to make a conscious
effort to make sure I stayed that way
for clients, " says the 24-year industry veteran.
" If I lose that ability and I just become
a 'business owner,' I don't think I'm doing
them justice. If they know that I love what
I'm doing, then that's going to resonate well
with them - it's proven to me over time
that it's easier to convert sales that way. "
It's not too early to start thinking abut TTS
2024, taking place Nov. 4-6 in San Antonio.
Start by filling out our CE Pro 100 qualification
form, which can be found on page 60 and
on cepro.com. Hope to see you in Texas!
cepro.com
http://www.cepro.com http://www.cepro.com
CE Pro March 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CE Pro March 2024
