#374: Henri Beaudoin on Building a Luxury Integration Firm the Engineered Way
In this week's episode of AU, guest Henri Beaudoin of Elite Automation joins Ron to discuss why smaller projects have slowed down while high-end luxury work has held steady.
This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features Henri Beaudoin, Founder and President of Elite Automation, a luxury technology integration firm serving clients across Washington and Texas.
Henri is a former software engineer who built Elite Automation around a high standard for quality, strong engineering, and a great client experience. He's passionate about developing great teams and raising the bar for what a modern integration business can be.
In this episode, Henri and I discussed:
- Why smaller projects have slowed down while high-end luxury work has held steady
- How keeping inventory in a 10,000 square foot warehouse kept Elite building through COVID supply delays
- And His rule of never promising a client anything his team hasn't tested and engineered first
Whether you're running a luxury integration firm or building toward one, Henri's approach to engineering, people, and client trust is worth hearing. So settle in and enjoy my conversation with Henri Beaudoin. Let's get started!
SEE ALSO: #373: Ian Williams on Putting AI to Work Across an Integration Business
Transcript
Ron:
Hello, hello there. Ron Callis here with another episode of Automation Unplugged. I hope you’re all having a great morning, or afternoon, or evening. Some of you love to watch and listen to our shows right on the day that we release them, which is every Wednesday. And some of you listen when you can. Maybe it’s on your drive into the job site. Maybe it is on the weekend when you’re out doing a weekend walk, or maybe your workout. But whenever that is, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, Automation Unplugged is brought to you by my day job here at One Firefly and Amplify People. There are a lot of hardworking professionals here at One Firefly and Amplify People that work hard every single day to help our clients grow their business. And it’s because of their hard work that it frees me up to be able to have these conversations with all of these fun and interesting personalities that make up our industry. And I have another one, a fantastic person to interview. He’s running a great company and operation, actually a multi-state operation, and we’ll dig into some of that. Today, I am bringing you Henri Beaudoin. He is the president of Elite Automation, and he is based out of Redmond, Washington. He also runs operations in the state of Texas, in, I believe, North Dallas. And so with that, let me go ahead and bring in Henri and let’s get the conversation started. Henri, how are you, sir?
Henri:
Hi, Ron. How are you?
Ron:
I am good. As I often say, and maybe people roll their eyes, it’s another beautiful day in paradise.
Henri:
Awesome.
Ron:
Are you in paradise? Actually, where are you coming to us from, Henri? Where are you on this lovely day?
Henri:
I’m in my office in Redmond, Washington right now.
Ron:
Okay. Redmond, Washington. For those that are not familiar with Elite Automation, give us just kind of a peek behind the curtain. Tell us a little bit about the business.
Henri:
I started Elite Automation coming from the software industry. I was a software engineer prior to starting Elite Automation. I had always had a passion for low voltage systems and luxury construction and lots of different parts of this industry, dating way back to when I was a kid. And just kind of the daily monotony of writing code and doing the traditional software engineer roles kind of wore on me over the years.
Ron:
Get bit by the entrepreneurial bug, as they say.
Henri:
Exactly. And over four or five years, I kind of decided it was time to start my own thing. And here we are.
Ron:
Tell me what type of systems or brands, you could answer the question in a way that feels most comfortable. What are typical types of solutions you’re providing, and maybe what are some of the brands that you really enjoy backing?
Henri:
Absolutely. We kind of dabble in the full spectrum of our industry, from lighting and shading solutions to home automation solutions, audio video, networking, security, surveillance, and even central vacuum. So we do all that in-house here.
Ron:
Oh, interesting. And do you do those projects typically right there in the Washington market or the Redmond market, or do you go throughout the state? And I know you also do work in Texas. So maybe geographically, where are you typically bound when you’re doing your work?
Henri:
Yeah, in Washington, we do projects all over the state. We do everything from the western side of the mountains, the Seattle metropolitan area, to more of the vacation homes and residences in the eastern part of the state as well. So everyone here in Redmond is used to traveling all over the state of Washington, and to our Texas office, as well as pretty much the entire country. We’ve done projects everywhere.
Ron:
Okay. And back to the question around brands. What are some of your favorite brands that you don’t mind mentioning that you care about?
Henri:
Of course, yeah. We lead almost all projects with Lutron. We’re a huge Lutron house. We love the products and the engineering solutions from Lutron. We also sell products from Control4 to Stealth Acoustics, Wisdom Audio, and it kind of just trickles down from there.
Ron:
Stealth. I could have my geography wrong, but aren’t they HQ’d in your neck of the woods?
Henri:
Absolutely. They’re up in Mount Vernon, Washington. All the speakers and their products are manufactured there. We have a fantastic relationship with the team up there at the factory, and we deploy their products on almost every one of our projects.
Ron:
Okay, love it. What’s a typical project? Again, just keep helping people understand the type of work you do. This is the way I ask it, for better or for worse. What’s a small job? What’s an average job, and what’s a big job? And whether it’s size or complexity, you can answer that in a way that seems most natural.
Henri:
We specialize in projects in the high luxury tier. Most of our projects end up being the two hundred thousand plus type of jobs. They kind of top out in the three to four million dollar range on some. It really depends on the house, the client, the expectations they have.
Ron:
I just want to stop you. Three or four million dollars, from a proposal from you to them, that would be a job?
Henri:
That’s correct.
Ron:
That’s a big job, man.
Henri:
Yes. It’s a lot of work.
Ron:
That’s a multi-year project.
Henri:
Absolutely. And a lot of overhead and resources to make sure that those projects go smoothly and we’re maintaining the client’s expectation, as well as the client’s agent’s expectation, the general contractors, the designers, every other industry person that’s a part of that project, to make it go successfully. It’s a lot of work.
Ron:
That’s really interesting. I’m curious, just on that concept, and I’m going to go a bit macro, so bear with me. I’ve talked to lots of people. I’ve talked to people all over the country. I talk to them every day. My team talks to people every day. And I’m curious if there’s a trend. So I’m just asking you a trend question. Is there a trend, Henri, in the markets that you serve, around more or less of those bigger projects, and more or less of those two hundred and fifty K projects that you’re seeing? And it’s really like an economy, not getting into politics, but in this recent season of our country, are you seeing more or less of those projects right now?
Henri:
We’re seeing a consistent amount of the very high dollar value projects. Those, I think, have been kind of stable or steady. Obviously, they’re not all the time. They’re very niche projects for us. We still do projects below the two hundred thousand dollar threshold, of course. I feel like those have kind of severely quieted down recently.
Ron:
I agree with you. I say I agree, but that’s your reality. I’ve heard people say versions of that, that whether it’s the project below two hundred, or the project below one hundred, or I’ve heard some say the project below fifty K, those have not been in the same volume, certainly, that they were during COVID. We’re here post-COVID. I’m just affirming what you’re saying. I’ve heard other people from other parts of the country say the same thing.
Henri:
Yeah, I think that portion of the market has kind of softened a little bit. And that could be related to a multitude of reasons.
Ron:
Do you have the hope or ambition, and this is the trick question now, there’s no right answer to this one, do you have opinions that that will change or come back in the next couple of years?
Henri:
The entire industry hopes so. I think that it’s likely to, is my guess. I think people are just a little uneasy right now.
Ron:
Yeah. A lot of uncertainty and anxiety out there, for sure. You and I were just at CEDIA. I saw you at CEDIA. You came by, you said hello. And I also heard from a birdie that you were shooting some video and doing some neat production stuff for one of your vendor partners. What was CEDIA like for you, just at a high level, in case people who are tuned in didn’t go to CEDIA? What caught your eye and was interesting?
Henri:
For us, CEDIA is always, I call it our industry Super Bowl, where we have the ability to connect with our existing relationships, from other dealers to vendors. And whether or not you find a new product or something new is kind of irrelevant. It’s an important time for us to gather as an industry and to have a common place where we can just come together.
Ron:
Were there any product announcements or launches from anybody that caught your eye? Was there a twinkle in your eye?
Henri:
The obvious expansion of Lutron’s intelligent lighting platform with Orluna coming to the United States market. Obviously, that was launched on the European side at ISE in February, but it’s finally coming stateside. So that’s going to be, I think, huge, to provide another intelligent lighting solution at that price point for our clients.
Ron:
Okay, for those that are tuned in, we’re going to dig into Lutron and Lutron products, and Henri’s very tuned into what’s happening there. And so I’m reminding you to remind me, Henri, to make sure we go there in more detail before this interview is over. But before we go there, I want you to help us understand your background a little bit. Where does Henri come from? You’re clearly running a successful operation today, well-known, well-liked, growing and profitable. So congrats on all those things. Many would aspire to have all those adjectives put in front of their name or their business. What’s your background?
Henri:
Before starting Elite, I was a software engineer. I worked for many Fortune 500 companies doing different types of web-based software applications, as well as server-side data stack applications. I didn’t really find that very fulfilling. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. As a kid, I was kind of dabbling in low voltage systems, Honeywell and Ademco alarm systems, and things like that. It was just a way to learn new things. I was taking apart things as a kid. So this industry allowed me to bring all my passions around electronics, software, business, and high-end construction all into one perfect storm, basically.
Ron:
What’s an example of the type of software dev you were doing for Fortune 500? Enlighten me. What is the sort of tech stack or coding application things you were doing?
Henri:
Everything from SQL Server database design, to server-side data layers that would extract data from different database sources, to the entire front-end web development of certain web applications.
Ron:
Okay. And you did that for years, I’m assuming, but you didn’t enjoy it. Your words, not mine. It’s a good career, but it’s maybe not great if you don’t enjoy the work.
Henri:
Exactly. Yeah. I felt like I was cycling on the same thing over and over again. The projects would just continue on in perpetuity. There would be no new, fresh start.
Ron:
No beginning, no end. You’re in the Matrix.
Henri:
Exactly.
Ron:
Punching cards, but figuratively. How did you become exposed to our industry? For so many, you and I were chatting before we went live, but I was plucked out of school by Lutron and placed here. I didn’t know about it. I certainly wasn’t exposed to it where I came from. I was put in the RIS division at Lutron because I was an engineer by education, and they’re like, “Well, great. You’re an engineer. You go in RIS.” And I’ve never left. How did you become exposed to this space?
Henri:
I really didn’t know this industry existed as an industry. I’ve been exposed my whole life to systems deployed by some of my now competitors in this space. And I had friends with home theaters and things in their houses growing up, or they had Lutron GRAFIK Eyes or early generation HomeWorks systems, things like that. I knew the products existed, but I didn’t realize there was an industry centered around it.
Ron:
Right.
Henri:
And I was always fascinated by it. But as soon as I started this business and realized there was an industry behind what we do here, it was like an immediate click. It was like I was home.
Ron:
When you were exposed to it and learned there was an industry, at what point did you flip the entrepreneurial switch and go, “I’m going to launch a business doing this”?
Henri:
I had already done that. I had almost found out about the industry after I had started the business.
Ron:
Okay, then what was the business originally? Walk me through that. Sorry, I’m digging deeper. Help me understand. What was the business, and then how did you land on custom integration?
Henri:
We were doing a lot of security, alarm, surveillance systems, audio video type things, mostly for residential. It was something I had started while I was doing software, as something to get me away from my desk and out in the field doing some field work, not just rotting away.
Ron:
It’s another way for you to express your ability to program and configure, and systems thinking.
Henri:
Exactly. It progressed into that business.
Ron:
And then I’m assuming at some point you heard about this trade show called CEDIA, or this industry.
Henri:
Yeah, it actually came about when I was trying to source some product, and I came across, at the time, it was AVAD. And I was like, “Oh, what is this?” So I reached out to the local AVAD branch, and I went in and met them and understood that, wait, I can source a lot of this stuff here. It was completely foreign to me. And then I connected with our local Lutron reps, and at that point, the rest is history.
Ron:
That’s interesting. You mentioned AVAD, and I know a gentleman that worked at AVAD in the early 2000s. He grabbed me at CEDIA and we reminisced. So I just have to tell, this is for him. He knows who he is. He grabbed me at CEDIA and we were reminiscing, because I used to travel the country and visit AVADs and do RadioRA training. And so I was on that roadshow, hitting AVADs all over the country at different points. So anyway, a walk down memory lane. That’s for you out there. You know who you are. And I’m sure he’s getting a chuckle out of that. So you launched the business, and I heard Lutron. So right at the inception of your business, you were learning about Lutron and getting trained up on their products.
Henri:
As soon as I had realized that Lutron was a part of this industry, and being exposed to it growing up, I already understood it a lot, and I was already passionate about the product. So realizing it was in our industry was awesome. And I was given the leash to start doing shading systems and lighting systems by Mark Chair, our reps here, and they’ve been phenomenal. They basically fast-tracked us to being a leading Lutron dealer in our market.
Ron:
All right. You’ve got to give me the COVID story. So you’re two, three, four years into your business. What was the COVID rollercoaster like for you in the Washington market?
Henri:
COVID was interesting. At the very beginning, no one knew if we could work in people’s homes. There were a lot of rules, especially in Washington, about trades-based jobs. We were lucky that the first thing we did out of the gate during COVID was all the networking and facilitation behind the scenes for the Seahawks to do their draft at their homes.
Ron:
Did you support some of the players, or were you hired by the organization to, organization-wide, make sure people were online?
Henri:
The organization, and more of the higher level management. All their networks in their homes had to be upgraded in order to facilitate a reliable draft experience at the time. So that was what kicked off COVID for us, because that was right around the same time.
Ron:
Yeah.
Henri:
And no one really knew what was going to happen.
Ron:
You’re like, the world might be ending, but damn it, the Seahawks are going to have some players.
Henri:
Yeah, I mean, we were just hired to do a job.
Ron:
No, I’m just joshing with you.
Henri:
But since that project kicked off and completed, there was, as you know, a full rollercoaster of stages the industry went through during that time. We went from uncertainty to all of a sudden everyone’s at home and wanting to do all these different projects. They’re building new homes, and all the interest rate things happened at the same time. It was crazy. A lot of our vendors had, it was a tough time getting product. But we have a ten thousand square foot facility here in Redmond. We have a lot of warehousing, and I’ve always been a fan of holding product ourselves, internally, so we are able to execute projects quickly. So during COVID, because we had all this inventory and space, we were able to start doing projects and backfill our inventory through the delays, for example, from Lutron or Control4 or other vendors that had long lead times on products. We were more insulated from that. And other integrators were actually coming to us and buying product from us because we had it on the shelves.
Ron:
Wow, that’s impressive. COVID ended. The whole world is off that sugar high of the government printing money and the home construction boom that occurred because of that. Just to finish the story of getting your business launched and bringing us to the present, what has it been like on the other side of COVID for you?
Henri:
We’re growing consistently, about twenty percent annually. It’s been a wild ride every year. I have a lot of fun. When you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life.
Ron:
I’ve got to ask you, and I don’t know if it’s a thousand dollar question or a million dollar question, but I’m curious where you’ll take it. What has been, for you, the hardest part of running and growing a business?
Henri:
I definitely think any small business, not just custom integration, any business in general, from my experience in Fortune 500 to small business now, is people. Finding the right people with the ability to carry my vision forward. And it’s very tough. We’ve definitely had our strengths and weaknesses in that area, but we’ve navigated around it, and we’re in a fantastic position now.
Ron:
I would tell you, I agree. I’ve been an entrepreneur now, this is my nineteenth year. Help me do the math. I started in November of ’07, so I think it’s nineteen years. I agree. People are tricky, man. And I would also say for everyone listening, at least from my perspective, I’m not going to tell anybody if they’re right or wrong or what their truth is, but I can tell you what I’ve observed. So many businesses are stuck, whatever stuck means to you. For some people, it means they’re stuck in the type of work they do, or the size of revenue they do, or the profitability they’re in, or they’re stuck maybe as an owner operator, continuing to carry a lot of weight or responsibility in the business. Most of the time that is around people. And a lot of times, the owner operator is the problem. It’s learning how to hire the right type of people, the right people in the right seat on the bus, and delegate off roles and responsibilities. You hear people talk about letting go of the vine, giving people those responsibilities, which is really hard, maybe for people like you and me.
Henri:
It’s very hard for someone to execute at the level of an owner, right? So you have to conceive that they might only output forty, sixty percent of what you could maybe do in a day, but that’s okay, because you’ve got to learn to be okay with that.
Ron:
Yeah, you have to be okay with it.
Henri:
And in the end, it’s going to be a stronger team. The entire product your company’s offering is going to be better off.
Ron:
Yeah, I agree with everything you said. And I’m going to correct myself on something I just said. Oftentimes, when you hire really well, that person can actually do that thing better than you. And that’s the trick. We get inside of our own head. Certainly I’m looking in the mirror when I say that, about some particular thing I do that I think I do particularly well, and feeling concerned about somebody doing it at fifty percent of the way I would do it, and being okay with that. But I can tell you, in my business, I’ve scaled my business to some extent, and the better I’ve gotten at bringing really great talent in at different levels and delegating to them and supporting them, that has been what has enabled growth. Growth would not have happened otherwise. And I can say that because I ran my business for eight years, my first eight years, and there wasn’t a whole lot of growth in those first eight years. It’s very, very hard. And then on the other side of those eight years, there’s been more growth. And it’s really been my personal ability to learn how to bring in good people and delegate to them. And the rest is history. If I pivot, you have a very interesting background in software and in technology and integration. And I would also say you have a very interesting background in the people that you’re talking to, probably a lot of your clients, probably a lot of the circles that you run in, because you’re in Washington. So I’m making an assumption here. You’re around a lot of the tech community in Washington. Is that a fair statement?
Henri:
Yeah. A lot of the tech community, or a lot of people that have been in business centered around tech. They might not be directly in technology, but they’ve been successful in the industry.
Ron:
I’m going to ask you a very softball pitch of a question, not very pointed yet. What’s your feeling about everything that’s been going on with AI? From a software development standpoint, are you excited about what’s possible for your business and for society?
Henri:
I think there’s a lot of positives that are going to come out of AI. I think there’s also a lot of negatives. We might be in a little bit of a bubble, kind of reminiscent of the dot-com bubble a little bit, especially around compute prices from hardware manufacturers, things like that. It’s a little interesting. I think a lot of our clients, especially in the high luxury tier, are starting to think the same way. Especially in the last six to eight months, I’ve been hearing more of these clients make comments that they think we’re approaching some sort of bubble.
Ron:
A bubble in stock prices, or a bubble in the hype around AI, or a bubble in data center build out? What’s your prediction on where the bubble is?
Henri:
I think the hype around AI, as well as the stock prices around some of these vendors that are supplying data centers and things. We’re not going to get rid of AI. No matter what, it’s here to stay.
Ron:
Right.
Henri:
But you have every X, Y, Z brand out there, from software companies to some other SaaS product that you might subscribe to, and they’re all trying to find a way to put AI into their product. I feel like that’s almost a little bit more on the marketing side, and it’s not actually useful, and they’re putting big investments into this. Will it pay off for them? That’s kind of the question.
Ron:
Based on some of the data that I’ve consumed, there certainly seems to be a tremendous global shortage of data centers and inference, the ability to have compute to do the processing for what looks like an infinite demand for AI. And thus, Elon’s looking to put data centers in space. And that seems to me like that might be a really good idea, although it seems super science fiction-y.
Henri:
Terafab.
Ron:
Yeah, put it on the moon, man. Let’s go. So I think that’s one perspective. And people have certainly bid up stocks, and the suppliers for all the chips and the bits and the pieces to make those data centers are for sure at an extraordinary peak of valuation from a historical perspective. And can they stay consistent? Can they continue that demand?
Henri:
Yeah.
Ron:
And there’s so much above my pay grade when you look at Nvidia and the deals they do with the Anthropics and the ChatGPTs, or OpenAI, and the chip makers, and the way the money moves. I’ve heard enough about it to go, “Yeah, I don’t understand it.” I’m not sure many people do. I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know, if you look at the curve of a typical hype cycle, we’re somewhere on that upper end of that hype. That certainly seems reasonable. But at the end of the day, net-net, it does seem like there’s going to be more and more AI in our lives, whether people talk about it in their marketing or not. It’s not going away. The world is forever changed. Do you agree?
Henri:
I completely agree. And especially as we see more physical AI products, I think that’s where we’ll see the most value out of AI going forward. For example, self-driving. As a company, we own about ten Teslas. I don’t really drive anymore. I sit there and work. So I think we’re going to see a huge productivity increase from things like that, that automate parts of our lives that just waste our time. Or humanoid robots, things like that, I think are going to have a larger impact than a lot of people think.
Ron:
When do you think humanoid robots make their way into your home and mine?
Henri:
As soon as possible.
Ron:
You’re going to have a humanoid robot doing your laundry?
Henri:
If I can get one here at Elite doing things, that’d be fantastic.
Ron:
Which one are you going to go with first?
Henri:
Of course, Tesla.
Ron:
Of course, Tesla. Yeah, of course.
Henri:
We’re huge Tesla fans here. We sell Powerwalls and their Tesla energy systems.
Ron:
Okay. So, of course, Tesla. So you’re probably tapped in. They’ve pulled car lines off the assembly and they’ve retooled them for their humanoid robots.
Henri:
Yeah. As you know, they discontinued the Model S and Model X for Optimus production in California. They did a final run of the Model S and X, the Signature Series, and I now own a Model S Signature Series at our Texas location. It’s a phenomenal car. It’s sad to see the car go, but it accounted for a very small percentage of their sales. So, exciting things to come.
Ron:
So I’m going to put you in the class of a younger demographic of entrepreneurs and custom integration business owners. You have a background in software, you’re in our space, and you’re into technology. So what’s your vision of where our country’s going in terms of robotics and AI? Is it a future of abundance and prosperity? Is it a future of turmoil? We just had this Anthropic engineer quit, in the last few months. People that follow the news say the world’s going to end by 2030, or whatever the doom and gloom story was. So if there’s a pendulum here, which end of the spectrum are you on when you cast vision out to the future and you think about your family, people you care about? What do you believe?
Henri:
I think as a country, if we can onshore a lot of compute development, IC production, silicon production, things like that, and we can go back to Tesla, for example, the Terafab project. If we can do things like that onshore, or TSMC, or whoever the company might be…
Ron:
You say if. It certainly seems like we’re on a trajectory for that answer to be yes, we will and we can.
Henri:
Then I think our future will be bright as a country. But we have to be able to stay on the cutting edge of the development and the manufacturing of this stuff onshore here.
Ron:
Is there anything that seems obvious that we wouldn’t be able to do that? Or is it just potentially politics could get in the way?
Henri:
Politics, or just the expense of doing it. To spin up any silicon plant is billions of dollars, right? And you have to continually invest.
Ron:
Well, when you have the Federal Reserve and you can just print money out of thin air and devalue the dollar, there’s really no limit to the money.
Henri:
Yeah.
Ron:
Sadly, I say sadly, I don’t know. And I say that mindful that I have a global audience that listens to this show, and not everyone finds that funny. But our country has a forty trillion dollar debt, and it’s because of lots of reasons, including going off the gold standard and the fact that our Federal Reserve can just print money. And there are pluses and minuses to that. One day that check will come due.
Henri:
I’ve been watching this my entire life. My dad was a corporate bond trader for thirty-five years. So I’ve had a unique perspective on this whole financial quandary we’re in.
Ron:
Yep. The whole world, I want to say the stat is almost every country in the world, maybe except for a few, their debt is greater than their GDP. And so how do you pay back debt that’s greater than your GDP if you’re going to pay for it out of some net proceeds from your GDP? It’s a real math problem, but above my pay grade. So let’s move on. Lutron. Why Lutron? Tell me why you are such a big fan of Lutron. What has you so jazzed about that company, the lines and the products and the categories they’re in? And then educate me, because I’m not totally up to speed on all their different pieces and parts and categories. And you are. You’re freshly back from CEDIA, you’re trained, and I know you’re a big enthusiast. So help me and help those listening understand.
Henri:
Lutron is a company that develops products where they’re not trying to get it to market as fast as they can. People that are buying Lutron systems, especially the clients that we service, are in the higher luxury clientele. They’re looking for solutions that work, that last a long time, that add value to their properties, not necessarily just tech gadgets and crap like that, right? Lutron is a company with phenomenal people that work there, phenomenal engineering teams that really think about how to put to market products that can enhance the lives of the luxury clientele, as well as everybody, from their DIY entry-level Caséta product, to the top-of-line HomeWorks solutions with Ketra and intelligent lighting, and the automated shading systems, everything in between. It’s very thoughtfully brought to market. We love the quality of their products, as well as their attention to engineering and everything.
Ron:
What do you think they do better than some other brands in our industry? We don’t need to name any other brands. That’s not a pointed question, but rather, what do you think, philosophically or through execution, Lutron does better?
Henri:
Lutron is the only brand that’s able to, in the same system, bring high-end lighting products, from the intelligent lighting fixtures, to the quality of dimming, to the controls, and in the same system, run automated window treatments and treat them as one system. As Joel Spira would say, especially with shades, if you can’t control the world’s largest light source, you don’t have a lighting control solution. So having the shading system be all together as one is super important, and no one else can do that.
Ron:
Yeah, I’m going to brag. Maybe people that are listening are going to roll their eyes, but I think you, Henri, might find it fun. When I started at Lutron, they had just purchased Vimco out of Richmond, Virginia. And that was the beginning. It wasn’t the first product. They had a product, and I could get the name wrong, I want to say it was called Serena, but it was a fairly difficult product to install and service. But in 2000, we were bringing Sivoia to market. I mean, this hunk of an external motor that you attach to the side of a drive, a rotisserie drive, on the window. That was almost at the beginning, maybe I missed it by a year or so, but almost at the beginning of Lutron’s entry into the motorized window treatment game. And then here we are, twenty-six, twenty-seven years later, hearing you excited and passionate about Lutron’s attention to total light control, artificial light, the lights in your ceiling, and natural light, the sun. And I had the pleasure of being in rooms with Joel Spira when he talked about that exact subject. So that’s neat for me to hear you say that that’s inspiring to you.
Henri:
Especially artificial lighting. Especially LEDs now are awful. As humans, we’ve been used to natural light sources: sunlight, moonlight, firelight, starlight. That’s a natural source of light for us as humans, nothing else. Incandescent lamps were a black body emitter. They emitted light, including infrared light, that mimicked natural sources of light. And as we’ve moved away from that and gone to LEDs, our spaces have become cold, horrible, dim, gray, and kind of drab. It’s a really poor experience. And frequently you see all these luxury projects where the lighting is overlooked. We’ve made a huge effort to try and change that perspective.
Ron:
Walk me through, and I’m remembering, I wrote it down so I’d circle back. What was the lighting product that you were saying Lutron just brought to CEDIA that was in Europe? What was that, and where does that fit into the lineup?
Henri:
Lutron purchased a lighting manufacturer in the United Kingdom called Orluna. Orluna had some beautiful small fixtures and different manufacturing implementations of LED fixtures. And I think Lutron saw that as an opportunity to integrate the Type X control into their products. Lutron acquired Orluna, and at ISE, Integrated Systems Europe, the trade show in February, Orluna was launched to the European market, obviously a fifty hertz product, with the Type X control, so native to HomeWorks and RadioRA solutions. And obviously, they were going to bring that to the United States. And at CEDIA, they did launch Orluna for RadioRA and HomeWorks, I believe, as kind of the entry-level luxury Type X fixture. That’s not the Lumaris downlight, which I’m guessing is probably going to go more towards the consumer DIY side.
Ron:
Okay. Give me and the audience a general category explanation, if you can, about the fixtures in Lutron, and then we’ll go to control systems, and then we’ll go to shades.
Henri:
Sure. There’s an intelligent fixture now at pretty much every price point in Lutron’s offering. From the high luxury products, Ketra, which is honestly probably what we sell the most of.
Ron:
That’s the premium product.
Henri:
Premium product. We’re a huge fan of Ketra here. I’m in a room with Ketra right now.
Ron:
That’s Ketra light bars?
Henri:
Light bar slim back there, yeah. Ketra throughout this whole space. And once you live with it, it’s kind of hard to go back to something else. And then there’s Rania, which is a high-quality white light only product, but that’s still a phosphor-coated LED diode. It’s not the homogenized white light from a multi-color RGB LED blend forming a warm dim or whatever your color preference is. But personally, I think it’s still better than every other white light fixture on the market at that price point. And then Orluna now fills that entry-level price point. I think Lutron probably thought Lumaris was going to fill that, but I think it’s better off being relaunched as a Caséta product, is my guess.
Ron:
Interesting. Okay. So you feel today, with their lineup, you’re able to hit many, are you willing to say most, lighting fixture categories you need in a project?
Henri:
All. We only sell Lutron fixtures, and we can engineer a Lutron solution for every single one of our homes with their products.
Ron:
Wow. Okay. Take me through, and this is helpful for me, the control lineup.
Henri:
Yeah. We, as a company, sell mostly HomeWorks solutions. Again, my programming background, and everyone else at Elite, they’re all from more of an electrical engineering or software engineering background. The capabilities of the HomeWorks solution, I think, are more in tune with what we’re looking to deploy for our clients. But RadioRA 3 is still a great product, and we occasionally use it as well. And those are, I think, the two professional solutions that companies in our industry will use from Lutron. Occasionally you’ll have the client that wants a Caséta product, but that’s more of a DIY solution.
Ron:
Yeah. Okay, I understand. And the software that you program HomeWorks with, is that the same software as you program RA3?
Henri:
Yeah. It’s all Lutron Designer now. It used to be two completely different programs. In RadioRA 2, there was the RadioRA 2 software, and there used to be HomeWorks QS. But as they’ve brought everything together with the Lutron cloud, it’s all under the Lutron Designer application now.
Ron:
And what about Caséta?
Henri:
Caséta is still app-based programming.
Ron:
App-based programming, on the phone. Okay. And then shading. I’m just admitting, full transparency, in my house I have Caséta and I have Triathlon. That’s the shades.
Henri:
Triathlon shades. Great.
Ron:
I love it. That’s the one thing in my house. My wife said, wherever we move, “I’m not doing without motorized shades.”
Henri:
Yeah. Automated shades.
Ron:
Automated shades. It’s non-negotiable. Henri, set me straight. Take us through the product families for shades.
Henri:
Obviously, the Palladiom shading system is Lutron’s new top-tier product. It’s a premium price point, but beautiful handcrafted metal brackets and hem bars, and curated fabric selections. They’re stunning products. Designers and homeowners love the Lutron offerings in that regard. Because it’s an exposed roll, the function of the shade is kind of visible, but it’s uniquely beautiful in that regard. So Palladiom, and now the Palladiom drapery system, as we’ve seen soft treatments come back in full force. People are asking for drapes on almost every project now, either for acoustical reasons or just to make a space seem more homey. For a while, everything was going super modern, super minimalist, but we’re starting to see things go back the other direction a little bit. So having the Palladiom drapery option to match that same aesthetic is huge. And they just launched an option for the finial on the end to have a Swarovski crystal, which is kind of cool. That’ll probably be a unique client that wants that, but it’s cool to be able to offer it.
Ron:
When I think of draperies, I think of custom fabrics, and often there’s got to be an interior designer in the project. Are they involved in the selection of fabrics, and can they bring a fabric to the table, or is it a Lutron selection of fabrics?
Henri:
No, Lutron doesn’t offer any soft treatment materials, soft treatments being drapes or Roman shades, things like that. Those are usually fabrics either the client brings to the table, or the interior designer, or someone on the specification side. And we do have some fabric options in-house, for when a client calls us for some drapes and they don’t have an interior designer and they just want a solution that works for them. We can also help. But by no means, there’s so much out there in the soft treatments world that anyone can pretty much do anything they want.
Ron:
Thank you for that. I hope everyone enjoyed that breakdown. I very much appreciate Henri taking us through that and doing a little bit of education. In all my shows, all my discussions, I’ve actually never done that with the Lutron lineup. I know that was helpful for some that were tuned in. If I were to ask you a big picture question about your business, in the markets that you’re operating in, what has you most excited, most jazzed about what’s ahead?
Henri:
To be honest, everything in this industry excites me. Again, if you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life. I come to work every day extremely excited about what the day holds, what the week holds, the month holds, the year holds, the future holds. And I really love to see the adoption of more of the automated home. Not necessarily the house with speakers in it. Of course, that’s a part of our industry and it’s never going to go away. But as we have an option to integrate and provide clients real value, reducing, say, the number of apps on their phone is huge.
Ron:
What’s your perspective on the role of voice as an input for systems? Do you see it changing?
Henri:
I have a mixed opinion on voice. I feel like a lot of luxury clients don’t really care about voice control in their spaces. That’s just from personal experience. They tend to want to silently interact, either with a keypad, or maybe a touchscreen in their home, or their phone. I think sometimes voice can seem a little bit silly or clunky to a lot of people. And maybe that comes from, some of our clients, for example, work for Amazon and have had experience with Alexa, or they don’t want things in their house that are listening to them and violating their privacy. And I know there are solutions out there that are a little bit more privacy-centric, but I still don’t think people really seem to care as much.
Ron:
That’s good. Let’s close out. I’ll let you decide, but what’s something, or some things, plural, for businesses that are earlier in their journey, or in this place, this mindset where they’re ready to grow their business? Maybe they’ve been at it a year, maybe they’ve been at it ten years or longer. What’s something that you’ve learned along the way that you wish you knew at the beginning, that would help others?
Henri:
You stumped me there.
Ron:
I know. It’s not a trick question. Nothing jumps out at you, a lesson you’ve learned or something you’re better at now?
Henri:
Honestly, behind the people thing, that’s about it. That was a hard thing.
Ron:
You’re acknowledging that, but you also didn’t have an answer. And that’s okay, because I don’t have an answer either. But what is something that you did learn? Either you fumbled it, or you nailed it right out of the gate, and you’re like, man, if other people nail this, they’ll cruise as well.
Henri:
I think a position that we held from the beginning, I see a lot of companies that tend to promise clients things that they might not understand. There’s a lot of, “Oh yeah, we can do that,” but they don’t actually know if they can do it or not. And so Elite as a whole, as a company, if we can’t actually do something, we’re not going to say we can. Everything we sell is tested internally, at my house, at other employees’ homes, extensively, before it’s something we even offer. That’s the reason, with Lutron for example, we lead passionately with the products, because we know it works and it’s going to provide a solution for our clients that’s going to be perfect. No one wants to deal with tech headaches or gadgets, right? And we’ve always had the mentality of, can we do this? Let’s actually engineer a solution, and not just yes-man something in order to get a project. It ends up being a much better end result for our clients.
Ron:
That’s a drop the mic moment right there. Well done, Henri. For those that are tuned in who want to get in touch with you and learn more, where can we send them?
Henri:
You can either send me an email at
Ron:
All right. I’m going to reread those for those writing this down. That’s Henri, H-E-N-R-I, at Elite, E-L-I-T-E, Automation, A-U-T-O-M-A-T-I-O-N, dot US.
Henri:
Yeah, you can always reach me at 425-285-7928.
Ron:
Ooh. That is a different phone number.
Henri:
Or our 800 number, 800-347.
Ron:
For my visual aids here, I’m going to put your 800 number.
Henri:
The other number was my direct line.
Ron:
Oh, that is even better. You know what, Henri, give me the direct line as well, and we’ll put it down in the show notes for people.
Henri:
Okay. What was that again? 425… We just moved to Dialpad, so I’m looking over at my desk phone here to make sure I have my direct line correct.
Ron:
We were on Dialpad for years. It’s a great company, great operation. Henri, thank you for coming on Automation Unplugged, man. It was a blast listening and learning from you. You’re running a great business. Proud of you.
Henri:
Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on.
Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.
Resources and links from the interview:
Show Notes:
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/eliteautomation