Integrator Finds Commercial Niche

The bar employees and patrons don't exactly yell "Cory!" when he walks in the door. Even so, Cory Plummer of Home A/V Solutions enjoys the camaraderie of working in sports bars.

For a guy whose one-man shop does 80 percent residential projects, the hands-on and social nature of bar clients provides a nice transition to the more stable commercial market.

"I don't want to do board rooms, teleconferencing and stuff like that," Plummer says. "I prefer residential because I enjoy dealing with personalities. That's the fun part. [Bars] aren't like a bank where you're probably just dealing with a project manager who will never use the system. In bars, the managers and bartenders actually use the TVs, audio and control."

Given Plummer's location, Gray, Maine, which is just north of Portland, he couldn't have picked a better commercial niche. Portland is well known to feature the most bars per capita of any city in America (that's according to Wikipedia and every guy who has ever tasted Gritty McDuff's). "Yeah, I've heard that," Plummer laughs. "It seems like it might be true."

Over the last five years, Home A/V Solutions has installed eight bar systems. During 2009 - a year in which the industry averaged a 51 percent revenue dip, according to a CE Pro survey - Plummer doubled his revenue. His residential business wasn't immune to the downturn but one large sports bar project helped anchor his business.

Finding his Commercial Niche

Socializing behind the bar, he looks as comfortable as a bartender. Upon a closer look, though, Plummer isn't tidying up the bottles; he's tinkering with the Savant in-wall touchscreen and glancing at the rack of nine ZeeVee ZvPro 250s.

Plummer ought to be comfortable at Binga's Stadium Smokehouse and Sports Bar in Portland; he spent much of 2009 there installing:

• Nearly 40 flat-panel TVs
• Five projectors
• Four 120-inch screens (and one 92-incher)
• Countless SpeakerCraft speakers
• A ZeeVee HD-over-coax distribution system
• Security cameras and more

The total installation price, including labor, for Binga's electronics renovation was about $115,000.

Sound cheap? "I probably treated them a little better," says Plummer, who has previously worked with the bar owners at other sites. "I don't do this to get rich. I do it so I can compete and keep growing. I don't want to be the cheapest around, but I don't want to feel like I'm gouging people either."

Not gouging sports bar owners is probably smart business, given that Plummer says his projects are 100 percent referral generated. Much like homeowners talk about their systems with friends, bar owners do so with fellow bar owners. "It seems like one guy from one bar heard about me from a guy at another bar who knows somebody who worked with me," Plummer says.

As a result, the referral projects are mounting and Plummer has lined up several sports bar projects. He says he now has a new tool in his arsenal that will allow him to retrofit video distribution quickly while keeping prices relatively low.

How ZeeVee Changes the Game

Binga's was the first project in which Plummer used ZeeVee for video distribution. "It absolutely revolutionized how I do a sports bar," he says. "I couldn't have asked for it to be any easier."

Plummer describes a previous sports bar project in which he installed a 16x16 matrix switcher for video distribution. "I ran Cat 5 to everything, terminating everything. That seemed to be three times as much work," he says, comparing it to ZeeVee, which runs over existing coax.

The ZeeVee ZvPro 250s Plummer uses at Binga's carry an MSRP of $2,500 and he installed nine of them. "If I used a matrix switcher here video distribution would have cost them about $40,000, but with ZeeVee it's about $20,000."

Each of the nine ZvPro 250s at Binga's is connected to a satellite dish. For football games on Sundays, for instance, the bartender tunes the satellites to nine different games. The ZeeVee boxes distribute the games throughout the sprawling two-story bar. Plummer installed 19-inch LCD TVs at some of the booths and diners can flip through those nine ZeeVee channels until they find the game their table wants to watch.


A Savant Rosie automation system controls nine ZeeVee HD distribution units, nearly 40 flat panel TVs, five projectors and audio through SpeakerCraft speakers.

Plummer adds that ZeeVee installations allow for easy add-ons. If Binga's wants to add more ZeeVee channels, Plummer can install more ZvPro 250s and corresponding satellite dishes. "With the 16x16 switcher I did at the other bar, unless he wants to piggyback TVs, we have to pull out that $10,000 switcher and get the next version. So he has invested $10,000 that he can't recoup. Cost-benefit-wise in the long run plus labor savings, ZeeVee is huge."

Binga's co-owner J.D. Way agrees about the cost-benefit aspect. He also likes the functionality. "Even our bartenders know how to use it," he jokes. Way adds that in addition to using ZeeVee to distribute TV programming he also likes to dedicate a channel or two to surveillance cameras. Patrons upstairs can keep an eye on the game room downstairs to see if a pool table is available and watch the downstairs dance area to see if it's worth giving up their bar stools and heading down.

Tackling Video Quality

The ZeeVee solution isn't without its flaws, according to Plummer. For one, the video quality - ZvPro 250 is said to enable 1080i and 1080p encoding; ZvBox 170 and ZvBox 150 has 720p encoding - has holes in it, he says.

"I can see some artifacts and impurities," Plummer says of the ZvPro 250 distribution in Binga's. "But if I ask any patron who's here they wouldn't be able to point it out until I show it to them. I think there is room for improvement, but supposedly they are working on it. So I look forward to that."

ZeeVee marketing director Chris Bauer says a solution is in the works. "By the time this article is published, we will have released a free upgrade to all of our products that improves the video quality and addresses the small issues Cory is referencing. For all practical purposes, the encoded picture will be virtually identical to the source."

Bauer stands by ZvPro 250's current video quality. "Video artifacts of some sort are in most every HDTV picture if you look closely enough," he says. "Often people think we added some video artifacts when, in fact, they were in the original picture to begin with. The encoder does this extremely difficult task of taking HD video in real time and packaging it so it can be broadcast. For most scenes, any resulting video quality degradation is virtually undetectable."

The way Plummer explains it: ZeeVee's video quality is good enough that it's not a critical factor in commercial applications. "I'm sure that a matrix switcher would give better video quality because there is no compression in the distribution, but there are pros and cons. I think ZeeVee worked out fabulous here [Binga's]. Like I said, there are some impurities in the video, but nobody here has ever complained about it."

The cost and the ease of installation shouldn't be discounted, Bauer adds. The ZeeVee installation at Binga's, he points out, "was also the key factor in a job Cory just won in another sports bar."

Home Sweet Home installation

While Home A/V Solutions' sports bar business is thriving, that's the extent of Plummer's commercial ambitions. "I love doing sports bars, but I don't want to grow my commercial business," he says.

For Plummer, commercial is too impersonal - with sports bars being an exception. One reason he became a one-man shop, leaving his previous integration company five years ago, was that he wanted to choose his customers. He chooses residential customers 80 percent of the time because it gives him more satisfaction.

He likes the expression on a husband's face while he tells his wife they can use their iPhone to operate their new Savant home automation system.

It's also probably why he embraces ZeeVee for commercial installations; he likes the feeling of not "gouging" bar owners by offering them a labor-saving, cost-saving solution that saves their business money - and generates referrals.

Everything about custom integration is I shouldn't, but I take a lot of this personally. Most of the time clients don't care what brand I'm selling them; it's me they're buying. They are saying, ‘We trust you.' So when you are a small company you tend to feel a little more at risk with each job. Unlike most companies out there, I'm not selling equipment, systems or visions; I'm selling me."

That self-professed anxiety about managing the customer experience has prevented Plummer from hiring employees, but it has also secured a strong 2010. He says referrals are through the roof.

During downtime in 2009 Plummer focused on reconnecting with some builders and interior designers, and it has paid dividends. Home AV Solutions has benefited by picking up clients after some Portland-area integration companies went out of business over the past year - including Plummer's former company.

"I had a good relationship with them and I never went after their clients [before they went under]," Plummer says. "But then I made a few phone calls and picked up some opportunities. With everybody being down it was a chance for me to grow."

A modest guy, Plummer is clearly uncomfortable uttering that sentence. He's far more comfortable being self-deprecating. Asked what other CE pros can learn from him, he is incredulous. "I'm still trying to figure out if I'm doing things right. And I'm pretty sure I'm not."

To Expand or Not to Expand

Plummer constantly wrestles with the question of whether he should hire employees.

"I always tell myself I need to either get 10 percent busier so I can higher somebody or 10 percent slower so I can handle it myself. I'm struggling immensely with it at the moment," Plummer says, while sitting under a 120-inch screen he somehow installed himself.

Plummer, who only uses subcontractors for satellite installations, realizes that it's somewhat illogical for him to be pulling all the wires, making the terminations and installing all the equipment. He realizes that - almost to a fault - he feels the need to take complete ownership of every project until the customer is completely satisfied.

As a one-man shop, though, his reputation is his brand and it's hard for him to entrust it to anybody else. "I would like to grow, but not to the point where I'm not involved in everything. [But] I definitely need another pair of hands."

Then there's the business side of it, which Plummer doesn't love. "I'm sure a lot of integrators struggle with that. I didn't get into this because I enjoy the business side. But I struggle with what I'm willing to give up and trust somebody else to do."