As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t stress enough how much I think custom integrators can benefit from attending Total Tech Summit, which gathers some of the industry’s most innovative minds. Last November’s event in Las Vegas was again proof positive. The roughly 90 attendees in the CE Summit track 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 in the CE Summit track 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 as well as their caregivers, whether at home or in assisted living facilities.

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“I’ve been talking about FutureCare with 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 and the marriage of Global Wave and FutureCare 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 about #TotalTech24, taking place Nov. 4-6 in San Antonio. Start by filling out our CE Pro 100 qualification form, on cepro.com. Hope to see you at CE Summit in Texas!

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