Custom Home Theater Systems & Automation: Checklist Checkup

Last year, Lee Lareau made a list of goals for his company. Actually, the entire staff of Brunswick, Maine-based Custom Home Theater Systems & Automation worked on the list with help from a business consultant.

"That's what they always tell you do -- write things down," Lareau says, referring to consultants.

What's unique isn't that Lareau's crew made a list of goals. That's the sort of thing that integration companies are supposed to do -- especially during down construction markets.

What's unique is that Custom Home almost immediately started checking items off the list.

Lareau says he's proud of how his company has attacked its goals and evolved since those 2007 business consultant meetings. He also likes that every employee was involved.

"It's a lot better if everybody is part of that process. There's some ownership there," he says.

GOAL: Move on Up

Speaking of ownership, one goal involves Custom Home's building.

The company had been leasing in a building on Route 1 in Brunswick, just outside the town center and less than a mile from Bowdoin College. It was a good location in that potential clients could see Custom Home's signage whether they were driving locally or heading 25 miles south to Portland.

The problem, according to Lareau, was that the cold-looking building wasn't representative of the company.

"It didn't have a great look because it was cinderblock outside," he says. "They'd come in and say, 'Wow, this is nice!' The trick, though, was getting them to come in."

Lareau found a solution nearby on Route. 1. He decided to buy a house to serve as Custom Home's new showroom and office.

"There was just something about it," he says. "When I saw this building for sale, I said, 'That's it!'"

The new space is still in a transformation phase, but Lareau has plans to make it extremely welcoming.

"We're going to do landscaping to make it appealing. Big bay windows were put in specifically for merchandising," he explains, adding that occasionally the showroom lights will be dimmed so that passersby will glance through the windows and see movies playing on large screens.

In laying out the new showroom, Lareau is taking lessons from mistakes made with the previous space. In other words, it wasn't just the cinderblocks that made the old showroom unwelcoming to some potential clients.

Just beyond the front door, Lareau recalls, Custom Home had an intimidating -- albeit impressive -- rack featuring Macintosh 700 Series equipment.

"For some people, it was a little too much," Lareau says. "You'd open the door and see this huge rack."

One time, Lareau heard the showroom door open from his office near the back. Then he heard it close.

So he walked out front to greet the potential client and instead saw a guy walking down the front steps.

He opened the door and asked the man if he needed help. "Well, I was looking for an FM antenna," he said.

"I said, 'We can help you out with that,'" Lareau says, laughing. "He was intimidated."

That was an eye-opener for Lareau. Although most of Custom Home's business is high-end new-construction and retrofit work, much of which comes from referrals, he wants it to also enjoy walk-in customers.

Above all, he wants the company to be fun and welcoming.

The front door of the new place is friendlier. Walking up the steps, customers can peer through the French doors and see a wall of photos and plaques.

Instead of an impressive equipment rack, Lareau chose to greet customers with credibility. There are photos of him as he receives awards and certifications from industry leaders. The idea is to make people "know we're serious," he says. "And we are. We're just not uppity about it."

In terms of space, the new building has everything Lareau thinks the company needs, including room to grow. On the first floor there's a lobby area with some demonstration equipment, a small conference room, an office and two additional demonstration rooms.

If Lareau decides he wants another floor of demonstration area, there's one upstairs. If not, he may choose to rent the top floor of the house. The property also features a two-story barn, which he thinks can prove invaluable in terms of equipment storage.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of the new showroom, Lareau adds, is that it won't' be intimidating.

"We'll put the higher-end stuff farther in."

GOAL: Get New Wheels

Not every goal is as dramatic as relocating to a better showroom and office, and sometimes it's the easier ones that get pushed back.

It certainly appears to be within Custom Home's means to "get a big, big truck," which Lareau lists as one of its goals. It hasn't yet.

The hesitation hasn't come out of laziness. Instead, Lareau gives the same reason most Americans give lately for not wanting to get a big truck: gas mileage.

The average cost of gas in Maine is $3.95, according to AAA. It was just over $3 at the time of Custom Home's meetings with its business consultant.

"The big truck doesn't have much appeal now. We're talking about using motorcycles instead," Lareau says, only half joking.

He is also exploring the possibility of using Smart cars, which reportedly get over 60 miles per gallon, for sales calls and other trips that don't require hauling equipment.

GOAL: Repeat Revenues

Custom Home is far from the only integrator that plans to create a recurring revenue model.

A slow construction environment has reinforced the notion that continuous income is a good thing. Lareau, however, suspects that Custom Home's clients are perhaps more ripe for service contracts than typical homeowners.

This is thanks, in part, to the company's Maine location.

Many of Custom Home's clients aren't full-time Maine residents. Many have primary homes elsewhere, but they spend summer months fishing and boating along Maine's coast.

Lareau says he recognizes significant demand for equipment maintenance during clients' off seasons. The obvious benefit is that, when they return to Maine, all the equipment runs tip-top.

There's also an auxiliary benefit that Lareau didn't necessarily anticipate. Many of his clients, he says, like to enjoy the views from their Maine homes even when they're not in Maine.

Custom Home installs a number of IP cameras in its clients' homes. Some use them for security reasons. Some own docks and boats and like to keep an eye on how the winter waters are affecting their property. Some just miss the view.

Lareau recalls one client who called him from his primary residence in mid-winter to ask why his IP camera wasn't working. Custom Home had installed an IP camera so that the client could log on from his Arizona and Minnesota residences to watch the waves breaking in front of his Maine home.

"I look at that thing every day," the client told Lareau.

It turned out that his router had broken. To Lareau, the situation illustrates that his IP camera clients want to check in daily and they will probably pay to make sure everything works everyday.

Their Maine homes, Lareau says, mean a lot to them and it makes them feel good to enjoy the view. "We have a lot of people like that."

So instituting a recurring revenue model is an item that Lareau wants to knock off its to-do list sooner than later. After all, it can be quite treacherous installing IP cameras on clients' rocky coastal properties.

Custom Home might as well make some recurring income off it.

GOAL: Achieve Excellence

It's clear that Lareau is most proud of Custom Home's having attained its goal of winning an industry award.

With most other goals, the company controls its own destiny. When it comes to awards, somebody else had to decide that Custom Home was best.

That's probably why Lareau cracks a proud smile when talking about how the company earned a 2008 CEA TechHome Mark of Excellence Award in the Best Retrofit Project category.

Everything about the winning installation was difficult, Lareau says.

Most of Custom Home's projects are done with builders, although not all are new construction. Lareau explains that many affluent homes in Maine were originally small cottages.

Owners take the footprint and expand it while doing complete remodels with builders and providing Custom Home with ambitious retrofit opportunities.

So, the company was up to the challenge when a client wanted a nautical-themed home theater. Among the more staggering features are the portholes throughout the room. Custom Home placed LCD TVs behind the portholes so it constantly looks like there are fish swimming outside the windows.

"You'd swear that there's real fish in there," Lareau says.

Putting fish in the portholes was the easy part though. Custom Home ran into many challenges trying to isolate the home theater from the rest of the house -- a request from the wife.

There was noise from the adjacent furnace, difficulty properly balancing acoustics, energy issues and multiple reflections. Lareau says his installers got creative in meeting all the client's needs.

The riser level of seating is actually a bass trap, he says. Three hatched vents in the ceiling help control acoustic reflections. Mass loaded vinyl is used to isolate the room from the rest of the residence.

These were just the challenges that Custom Home was able to anticipate. Lareau says he started to notice some strange things happening. "We had some electronics fail, and these electronics don't fail," he says, referring the client's high-end equipment.

"So it was my impression that there were some electrical problems."

Lareau called Central Maine Power Company and had it monitor the home's electrical line for a month. "They called me and said there are some issues -- a number of them," he says.

The house is located on a peninsula, Lareau explains. As houses popped up on the peninsula, the transformers hadn't been beefed up to accommodate the need for additional power.

As a result, the memory was erased from a processor that Lareau estimates at $8,000. Once the power issue was addressed, however, there have been no more issues.

GOAL: Get Organized

Not all goals are glamorous. Without organization, however, integration companies are likely to fail -- which is also unglamorous.

"In this business, you have to be organized," Lareau says. "You have to prioritize as a business owner."

For this reason, he's made a priority of the small company's getting it together. It's already come a long way, he says, but "we still have a long way to go."

One particular area of concern is proposal writing, a task that takes up a tremendous amount of Custom Home's time, according to Lareau. The company provides its clients with extremely detailed proposals.

"Basically, it's like designing a system -- or two or three systems if there are different choices," Lareau says.

Custom Home recently came close to pulling the trigger on purchasing proposal software. A chat with Helen Heneveld, president of Bedrock Learning, an industry trainer, led Lareau to hold back.

"She said you have to have it down in an analog form before you make that jump," he says.

That's true, Heneveld says. "I gave that advice because … garbage in, garbage out. I believe that you need to know your business inside and out so that you will put the correct info [into a software program] and get good information back. You need to have a sense of your business before you turn it over to the [software] reigns."

Small companies like Custom Home often turn to software as an organization savior. It can be, but only if companies have a strong foundation of organization.

The other problem with small companies implementing software systems, Heneveld points out, is time commitment. "It's 100-plus hours to implement software," she says.

"Small, lean companies often don't have the manpower. Software is slick and quick when set up correctly, but it takes hours to set it up correctly. It's not just the cost of the software; it's the investment of a knowledgeable party to help you set it up."

Lareau is taking Heneveld's advice and preparing his company to adequately implement a proposal software program. He says he wants to make sure Custom Home allocates the "time, money and resources to devote to instituting it."