URC

The control manufacturer was showing, among other things, how its Total Control as a solution for easy-to-control, easy-to-install light commercial like sports bars. URC was handing out its Unsurpassed Awards to residential dealers with a reception at the Expo, and it turned out this year’s entrants and winners made the company see how popular its solution has become as a commercial application.

“We had best U.S. commercial and best international commercial install [along with the residential awards] and were very shocked to find that a lot of our dealers submitted for the commercial installations,” says Petro Shimonishi, recently added director of marketing, URC. “I’m still relatively new to the brand and I’m asking questions [of the dealers during the awards]. A lot of dealers are doing commercial installs with our products, and I never really thought of URC in that way.”

In polling URC’s dealers, Shimonishi found them to favor URC’s ease of programming and user interface navigation/controls via one touchscreen for markets like bars & restaurants. In its booth, URC put together a sports bar vignette that showed simple multidisplay source selection and A/V adjustments from a Total Control touchpanel. “One sports bar [installation into the URC awards] had 71 screens and it was all controlled by one of these touchscreens behind the bar,” Shimonishi says, “and the end user was basically quoted as saying this was the easiest system they’ve ever used and they’ve been a bartender for 20 years.”