Product categories associated with biophilia/wellness trend driving sales growth.
As noted in my last post, I'm kicking off the 2nd half of 2020 looking at 3 product categories that have been propelled beyond "emerging trend" by the world's response to COVID-19. They generally all fall under the overarching trend wellness and/or biophilia. For our purposes here, specifically as related to air, water and light.
The wellness/biophilia trend has been gaining momentum the last couple of years. In fact, it was one highlighted in the CE Pro SPECIAL REPORT: TOP 5 HOME TECH TRENDS FOR 2020 (download full article here).
Author Arlen Schweiger gets straight to the point:
"Custom integrators have been selling and designing solutions for the "smart home" long before that phrase caught on in the mainstream. The question now is, besides creating a smart home for your clients, will you also give them a "healthy home"?"
This trend is top-of-mind for many consumers today, so being well informed can enhance your perception as a subject matter expert for home systems integration...moreover, each can contribute significant sales opportunity BEYOND existing product categories, adding all-important "plus money" to every new project.
If you're not already aware of WELL Certification and the real-life applications for sales, this article "How KB Home is Embracing Wellness" might provide some incentive to learn! Innovation loves company (copycat syndrome), so expect to see home builders in your market following suit.
In this first installment we'll tackle lighting as relates to wellness, with an interesting parallel for increasing demand of voice control of lighting as it relates to the heightened awareness of germ spread in the home (big shout out and sincere "thank you" to Alex Capecelatro, CEO of Josh.ai, for contributions to this post!).
In the lighting category, the focus is on LED fixtures...specifically, tunable LED fixtures. From a wellness perspective, this supports the concept of circadian rhythm lighting. Lutron's acquisition of Ketra in 2018 immediately followed by Savant's partnership with USAI this technology easily available to a wide swath of AV/smart systems integrators, and the Ketra website offers a nifty way to easily demo the effect of tunable light on interior spaces. These are just a few of the players in this rapidly expanding product category!
So...tunable fixtures provide the capability while control systems provide the brains for offering wellness benefits in lighting, but a concern that has grown out of the COVID-19 pandemic is the UI itself. As noted above, Alex summed this up nicely for me:
"We've seen a huge rise in voice control requests as a result of COVID-19 and people working from home. It's pretty simple -- touchless interaction stops the spread of germs. People don't want to share light switches, remotes, and touch screens which can hold germs for multiple days. There's also the fact that Josh is privacy focused, a huge concern in the home right now."
There is FAR more information than can be included in the space I have here, but if you're intrigued I encourage you to check out the links below. These are extremely informative and provide great "real life" examples of how innovative AV/smart systems integrators are leveraging these trends to grow their businesses...more to come!
* Jason Knott article on COVID-19 and the technologies primed to increase safety (Link Here)
* Josh.ai and Lutron panel - Voice, Lighting, and Wellness (Link Here)
* Josh.ai and Crestron panel - Post-Coronavirus Upgrade Opportunities
* Josh experience (Link Here)
Didja know...??? Is a series of "information bits" by Curt Hayes, BlueDog Group co-founder and managing partner, and architect of the BlueDog Database.
Comments