AVNation TV

Tag: virtual showroom

  • Cogent360 Launches Industry-First White Label Virtual Showroom: SmartShowroom360

    Cogent360 Launches Industry-First White Label Virtual Showroom: SmartShowroom360

    Cogent360 has launched SmartShowroom360, an innovative virtual showroom designed for custom integrators in the smart home industry. This interactive 3D tool allows potential clients to explore various residential spaces, from home theaters to outdoor living areas, and discover a range of smart home solutions like lighting control, motorized shades, and climate control. SmartShowroom360 is fully customizable with the integrator’s branding and available via a SaaS subscription model, making it affordable for small business owners.

    The platform is web-based, offering integrators a portable and cost-effective way to demonstrate their products in home consultations, meetings, trade shows, or retail floors. It’s designed to help users visualize the impact of smart technologies and educate them about their benefits, increasing engagement and sales conversion. With multiple pricing tiers, it caters to different business needs and helps integrators stay up-to-date with industry trends.

    Interactive digital media firm Cogent360 has launched a groundbreaking new sales tool designed specifically for the custom integration industry: SmartShowroom360. This immersive 3D experience is custom-branded for individual integrators. Designed to bridge the imagination gap, SmartShowroom360 enables prospective clients to better visualize possibilities as they explore ultra-realistic residential spaces and learn about numerous smart home solutions.

    SmartShowroom360 features several complete virtual homes, encompassing over 25 unique 360° residential spaces with varying designs and architecture, including custom home theaters and expansive outdoor living spaces. Users can interact within the various spaces to simulate control options and programmable lighting scenes as they explore.

    Custom Virtual Showroom at an Accessible Price

    SmartShowroom360 is built using Cogent360’s Vizualize™ technology, an exclusive 3D visualization platform that produces hyper-realistic interactive experiences that showcases home technology solutions in an immersive manner while educating the user about numerous options and benefits. This is the same technology Cogent360 uses to create custom sales and training tools for global brands like LG and Resideo, made accessible to small business owners via a SaaS subscription model.

    SmartShowroom360 subscribers can customize the experience with their own logo, brand colors, fonts, choice of product categories, and more. Subscribers will have access to multiple home styles, including suburban traditional, multifamily, and elite luxury residences. In each environment, customers can explore a wide range of product categories, Including:

    • Programmable lighting control
    • Motorized shades
    • Home theater
    • Whole home control
    • Outdoor living
    • Security
    • Networking
    • Climate control
    • Wellness technologies

    SmartShowroom360 currently has two subscription tiers: Basic and Premium. Basic subscribers can choose up to five rooms/spaces and seven product categories; Premium subscribers have unlimited access to all living spaces and product categories – including whole home walkthroughs – plus an array of detailed analytics for all visitors to their individual showroom.

    Premium subscribers also gain exclusive access to the “Lighting Gallery,” where viewers can explore advanced lighting options including circadian and RGB lighting, enabling integrators to better illustrate the benefits and appeal of custom lighting solutions.

    Subscribers can select the environment(s) and applications that align with their clientele and service offerings, disabling interaction with systems outside their current scope.

    Portable, Future-Proof “Wow Factor”

    SmartShowroom360 showcases the best of what the CI industry has to offer, allowing clients to visualize how their homes and lives will be improved by integrated technology.

    “Many applications need to be seen in order for customers to truly appreciate their impact, including smart lighting and automated shading,” says Dave Chace, Founder and President of Cogent360.  “Meanwhile, over half of custom integrators don’t operate a physical showroom, and the rest must undertake constant costly updates to keep pace with emerging technologies. SmartShowroom360 is a powerful alternative—or complement—to traditional showrooms: It’s flexible, portable, customizable, and always up-to-date with the latest design and technology trends.”

    SmartShowroom360 is web-based and accessible through any Internet browser. Integrators can easily send a link to their branded virtual showroom to prospective clients or business partners. They can also access their personalized showroom on a laptop or tablet to demonstrate their solutions anywhere sales and design conversations take place, including:

    • In-home consultations
    • Architect/interior designer/builder meetings
    • Trade shows and expositions
    • Retail sales floors

    Integrators can also embed SmartShowroom360 on their website, increasing engagement and dwell time on the page.

    Science-Backed Sales Enhancement

    The design of SmartShowroom360 is heavily influenced by Cogent360’s decades of experience in sales enablement and industry training.

    “Selling is educating,” says Chace. “The more customers engage in learning about your solutions, the more invested they become in purchasing them. We’ve infused SmartShowroom360 with scientifically-proven instructional design elements, encouraging users to explore and interact within the virtual spaces—ultimately leading to a greater likelihood of the customer taking the next steps to invest in these solutions.”

    SmartShowroom360 also features a series of explainer videos and informational vignettes, allowing customers to better understand each area of the smart home that captures their imaginations. The combination of immersive visuals and interactive self-guided learning has proven to result in better information retention and higher engagement. SmartShowroom360 is purpose-built to ignite home integration clients’ curiosity, driving them to learn more and explore possibilities they had never before considered.

    SmartShowroom360 is Now Available to All Integrators

    After a successful private beta trial, SmartShowroom360 was officially introduced at the Azione spring conference in Indianapolis. “The response at our debut was extremely gratifying,” says Chace. “We had over a dozen on-the-spot enrollments, and initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”

  • LG DigiTour Virtually Opens Their New Showroom – DigiTour

    LG DigiTour Virtually Opens Their New Showroom – DigiTour

    “The new normal” has caused companies to reevaluate how they get their messages and information to people. There are the virtual events as well as various online meetings, but one of the things that has been missing is the ability to “browse” and see what else is available. For me at least that portion is what I miss the most about tradeshows. Yes, there is value in seeing things I already know about just to verify that the performance in real life is as expected. The ability though to wander a show floor and find something new that is what I have been missing.

    I had an opportunity to “tour” the LG DigiTour Immersive 3D Showroom before it launched and found that they had found solutions to some of these issues. I was able to simply walk through their virtual space, booth, experience center and find things. Find things I hadn’t known about. There is also Tim that is the host of the event and helping people find their way. No, Tim is not AVNation’s Tim. It was the experience that many people have been talking about missing at shows, the ability to wander. It also surprised me as to how many LG products I was not aware of.

    I spoke with Damaris Toma, Experiential Marketing Lead at LG Business Solutions USA, about the process and concept behind the platform. Yes, it is a platform not just a website. The platform is built to be as immersive as practical using Unreal Engine. If this sounds familiar, Unreal Engine is the power behind Disney’s Mandalorian’s visual effects. From talking with Damaris it became clear that she and her team were very focused on not what can we do, but what will help our customers.

    One of the things that Damaris highlighted was the importance of being browser based and able to be used on multiple platforms. I tried the website on my various devices and with various browsers. Yes, it worked well as she said it would. It also opened possibilities, now I had a tool I could easily access that provided me information. I could easily see myself working with a client and walking them through a space to show them ideas. In the distanced world, this solution worked well over web meetings.

    The accuracy of the product representations was better than I had expected. Damaris pointed out, “All of the renderings are based on the actual CAD files for the products, this includes details such as bezels at the right size.” This approach continued through to video walls that accurately include the “seams” which is very refreshing as it better conveys the experience.

    Damaris made it clear that DigiTour was prompted by the pandemic, but it is very likely it will become a permanent staple in how LG interacts with customers. “We’ve built a means to reach audiences remotely – even audiences that may not have been at a physical tradeshow,” she said. “It’s a future-proof way to ensure that we can serve our customers remotely, now and in the years to come.”

    The LG DigiTour website is designed to be a B2B solution and they are aware of the challenges that can occur with customers “walking” in. Their chat function will address the issue by providing contacts to resellers, not circumventing the sales channel. LG has also indicated that the second tier of the Chat, tool after the Chatbot, will be actual product experts not people reading and replying through a script.

    You can see a walk-through video on YouTube at https://youtu.be/DnA04QDyM6g but that does not really give the full experience, I would recommend going and looking at LGDigiTour.com. A little easter egg for you for reading this far, be on the lookout for a Peerless mount.