Salamander Designs, the Bloomfield, Conn.-based maker of AV furniture, has launched Salamander Select, a web-based design tool that lets integrators and their customers configure a subset of the company’s Pro Cabinet line. Users get list pricing and downloadable drawings without having to work through the full product catalog.
According to Salamander, the tool limits choices to what Salamander describes as its most popular Pro Cabinet models and mounting systems. Users choose from curated sizes, configurations and finishes, see the design rendered in real-time 3D, and can download a PDF specification sheet or CAD drawing. Designs can be saved, and the company says no AV experience is needed to use the tool.
Select does not complete a sale by itself. Customers finalize the quote either with a Salamander Specialist or through their local integrator. Salamander says Select orders qualify for its Fast-Track shipping, and the company’s background materials put typical Fast-Track delivery at two to four weeks.
“Some customers want to sit down with us and design something from scratch. Others just want to pick a great cabinet and go. Select is for them,” says Scott Srolis, president of Salamander Designs. “Choose a size and a finish, see it in 3D, and you have a price and a drawing in minutes. It’s the same cabinet we’ve always built, now with a faster way to get there.”
Three Design Paths
With Select, Salamander now offers three ways to specify a Pro Cabinet:
- Salamander Select: The new curated tool, covering the most popular Pro Cabinet models and mounting systems and aimed at a general audience.
- Pro Cabinet Designer: The company’s full-options configurator for the complete Pro Cabinet line, intended for integrators, reps and technically savvy specifiers. It launched in 2022 as the Next Generation Commercial Cabinet Designer and, according to Salamander, connects directly to its factory and manufacturing systems.
- Salamander Studio: A concierge service for fully custom cabinets, from first consultation to finished product. It includes customer-specific part numbers for repeat orders.
The company says all three paths produce the same handcrafted cabinets built at its Connecticut factory.
What It Means for Integrators
Salamander frames Select partly as a way to educate prospects before they ever talk to a salesperson. According to the company, the tool gives first-time visitors to its website a working knowledge of the Pro Cabinet line, so they arrive at a conversation with Salamander or a local integrator already informed.
Because the tool is open to the public and shows list pricing, end users may come to an integrator with a configuration, a reference price and a CAD drawing already in hand. Salamander presents this as reducing friction between a first request and a finished space. The integrator still remains one of two routes to a final quote.
A Long Line of Configurators
Select is the latest in a series of online design tools from Salamander. The company says it became the first in the consumer and custom electronics industry to put furniture design online when it launched its Archetype Configurator in 2000.
Subsequent tools include a Synergy configurator (2001), a Custom Cabinet Configurator for multi-bay Synergy cabinets with live pricing (2006), a series of seating configurators released between 2009 and 2021, the Pro Cabinet Designer (2022) and the Arc Table Online Designer for custom commercial tables (2023).
