#C4Yourself brings dealers and customers together on one day
When Control4 announced their certified showroom project they also set aside May 31 as #C4Yourself day. This was when all 140 certified showrooms globally would host their customers, other dealers in the area, as well as anyone interested in home automation and technology.
Being in St. Louis, my local Control4 Certified Showroom was at The SOHO Shop in St. Charles, a suburb just to the west of downtown St. Louis. When I got to the showroom owner Bryan Jefferson met me at the door. Jefferson has been a Control4 dealer since starting The SOHO Shop ten years ago.
“Going with Control4 just made sense”, Jefferson told me. “They were the only ones looking at control and automation from the IT side.”
The network part of Control4, even ten years ago, was important to Bryan. He started The SOHO Shop out of a hobby. Up until that point he had been in IT and computer program development. Home automation was a business that presented itself. He says he is not a box store where someone can “come to pick up a Sonos player.”
“People come to us because we make their homes work for them”, Jefferson says. “We don’t just do lighting, we automate the experience of having cooking, having dinner, and shutting down the house for the evening.”
It took The SOHO Shop about three weeks to put together their Control4 Certified Showroom. It was an investment of not just capital with the equipment to buy but also labor hours.
“We had to pull guys off jobs, work overtime, it was a real commitment”, Jefferson admits.
But was it worth it?
“Absolutely. People can come in and really see how their system will function in their home”, Jefferson continued. “Used to be we had shades over there, locks here, and control pads everywhere. Here potential customers can experience a fully automated system.”
At least locally in St. Louis, the #C4Yourself Day was a great chance to meet with local dealers as well as see how they have implemented the Control4 Certified Showroom vision, made it uniquely their own, but also were able to connect customers to the experience.
Tim Albright is the founder of AVNation and is the driving force behind the AVNation network. He carries the InfoComm CTS, a B.S. from Greenville College and is pursuing an M.S. in Mass Communications from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. When not steering the AVNation ship, Tim has spent his career designing systems for churches both large and small, Fortune 500 companies, and education facilities.
