Rob Stott: All right, we are back on the Connected Design Podcast. I just noticed, as we are getting started here, you have a LEGO AT-AT behind you from Star Wars, right?
Jeremy Rasti: Yeah, it is the LEGO AT-AT.
Rob Stott: That is what it is. That is one of my favorite scenes in Star Wars, when the ships go around them, tie them up, and make them trip and fall.
Jeremy Rasti: Yeah, it is timeless. LEGO is a big part of my life. Honestly, it is one of the few things I can do that gets my mind off work, because you are dialed in and focused on making it through the little packs.
Rob Stott: I should have put my LEGO Love Park sign behind me. I am in Philly, so I have the Love sign. I did one of those recently. It is one of those things you do as a kid, it sticks with you, and now my kids are doing it and I get to do it with them. It is a fun time.
Jeremy Rasti: Yeah, it is great. I am pretty much a big man-child anyway. I am into sneakers, LEGO, and video games.
Rob Stott: Aren’t we all? Well, Jeremy Rasti, I appreciate you jumping on the Connected Design Podcast. You are the owner of Crescendo Automation Audio Video down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. To start, how are things?
Jeremy Rasti: Things are good. On the business side, we have had steady growth pretty much since day one, which was in June 2013. Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to amass a really good team. Everyone brings something different to the table, everyone is well rounded, everyone has skin in the game, and everyone is dialed in. That is really the key to our success: having good people and retaining good people.
Rob Stott: One of the things I like to ask up front is about that path. You mentioned 2013 as the launch. What was your career path up until then, and why get into this crazy world of custom integration? What drew you to it?
Jeremy Rasti: The story really starts when I was a kid. My dad was big into music and audio. I think around 1985 or 1986, he bought one of the first consumer-grade projection TVs. It was a 40-inch NEC rear-projection TV, and it was one of the craziest things I had ever seen. Today, you can throw an 80-inch TV in your car at Walmart and go home, but at the time it was impressive and I am sure it was insanely expensive.
He was really big into audio and music, and I grew up with music always playing, so music has always been a huge part of my life. We also had this old-school video switcher that allowed us to watch the VCR in one of the bedrooms or in the living room. Seeing that we could distribute those signals accordingly was always really cool to me. As a child, your mind is blown by the idea that the components are in one room but you can go to another bedroom and watch it there.
Career-path-wise, I graduated from LSU in 2004 with a degree in construction management and took a job in my field for about five years. While I was in college, I worked for a local electronics company called Cader’s. They had an interesting business model: consumer electronics, high-end cameras, and videography equipment. One of my college jobs was doing TV deliveries. That is how it all started, and probably how I blew my back out delivering those 36-inch Sony Trinitrons. I was setting up speakers, receivers, TVs, and things like that.
After graduation, I worked for an awesome company, Performance Contractors, here in town. I still keep in touch with a lot of those people, and we do a lot of their houses now, so it is funny how everything comes full circle. Then in 2010, Howard Cader called me back and said, ‘I want to get into custom integration. I want you to come in and spearhead the department.’ He made me an offer I could not refuse, so I took a leap of faith.
During those years, I brought on Patrick, who is now my vice president. I taught him everything I knew. He was green when he came in, but he had a background in AC systems integration, so he knew how to connect some dots. Then in 2013, Howard decided he wanted to retire and said he was probably going to shut the store down by the end of the year. This was in May. He put it on my radar that if I wanted to go out on my own, that might be the time. That is when the wheels started turning. We incorporated around June 3 or 4, 2013, and on July 1, we did our first job, hanging Lutron shades. The rest is history.
Rob Stott: So you broke off and started your own company, and took Patrick with you?
Jeremy Rasti: Exactly. We started our own company and took Patrick with me.
Rob Stott: Had business ownership ever crossed your mind before that was presented to you?
Jeremy Rasti: I had kicked the tires on it. There was an opportunity a couple of years earlier where I might have moved to Dallas, and I was thinking that maybe if we did that, I could start a company. I had kicked some ideas around, but it fizzled out. I did have somewhat of a blueprint as far as the niche I wanted to go after, but nothing really grew from it at the time.
Rob Stott: It is interesting that you got to see someone who, for better or worse, did not necessarily have a succession plan in place and was looking at shutting the store down. Does that influence how you think about your business today? Do you have anything in place based on what you learned from that experience?
Jeremy Rasti: Without getting too much into personal details, his son lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, and runs a successful landscape architecture business. At some point, he was going to come back and take over the business, but he was doing his own thing. There could have been succession talks with me, but his business was primarily consumer-electronics focused, with integration as a phase-two situation. We retained some good clients from those years, but I wanted to start fresh and build my own brand instead of carrying something over.
Rob Stott: How has that brand evolved? In reality, it has only been 12 or 13 years, which goes quickly, but it is also a meaningful period of time. How has the business expanded or morphed since launch?
Jeremy Rasti: It follows the trajectory of most integration companies. Your roots are in audio video, and from there you blossom into lighting control, shades, lighting design, networking, and everything involved in a high-end residential or commercial project. It has also evolved in terms of the brands we offer. Early on, because we were a new company, we were limited. McIntosh was not going to bring us on as a dealer right out of the gate, but that was always a goal. I wanted to get into some of the hi-fi stuff and sell premium brands, because those brands carry weight. They do not let just anyone become a McIntosh, Focal, or Bowers & Wilkins dealer. You have to earn that spot and that pedigree, and I think that is what we have done.
Initially, it was very basic and limited in terms of where we were purchasing from. But as we continued to grow, add to our team, increase annual revenue, and do bigger and more unique projects, it took on a life of its own. It was a natural evolution.
Rob Stott: It sounds simple enough to say you expanded into lighting and shades, but what is that actually like as a business? Is it just exploring a category? Thirteen years ago, you probably never thought you would be a lighting designer or sell window treatments. What has that been like?
Jeremy Rasti: It has been a mixed bag. Some of it has been kicking and screaming. I stay plugged in. I go to Oasys summits, CEDIA pretty much every year, and we are CEDIA members. You have to be blind not to see the big picture and the direction of the industry. Obviously, you can still make a lot of money putting speakers in the ceiling and installing Sonos amps, but being able to bring something new to the table that the client or builder has not thought about is important.
Sometimes we plant the seed with something small, like a couple of lamp dimmers, so the client can say, ‘That is actually pretty cool. They come on at nighttime automatically and I do not have to touch them.’ I never would have thought we would be doing as much lighting product and specification as we are now. Same thing with window treatments. At the time, we were only authorized for Lutron honeycomb shades, which are nothing compared to the latest roller shades. The new stuff is much nicer and has many more options. It has been a slow burn getting into that. Some categories I never thought I would be interested in are categories I am now very interested in, and that we are very good at.
Rob Stott: I am glad you mentioned summits and expos. It is great to talk to you as the board chair for Oasys Residential Technology Group. Buying-group membership and CEDIA membership both represent a smaller slice of the overall custom integration industry. What role have those memberships played for you, especially in learning about categories like lighting and shading and seeing how other integrators implement them?
Jeremy Rasti: I will start with CEDIA. We joined pretty much out of the gate. I know it is a paid membership and any integrator can join, but early on Patrick and I did a lot of education through CEDIA. We got what was then the CEDIA Certified EST, or Electronic Systems Technician, certification. It was something we could put in proposals that said we were members of CEDIA and on top of our technology offerings and installation practices.
On the Oasys side, Oasys pays for your CEDIA membership and essentially gives you an education pass as part of the membership dues. That is great because I have enrolled a lot of my technicians in training courses they can do online on their own time or during downtime. It lets us sharpen our skills, change with the times, offer the latest and greatest, and use the best installation practices. CEDIA membership is very valuable in my opinion.
Oasys has been great. I joined before Oasys was even a thing, when it was just the Nationwide buying group. At the time, it was the best fit for us, and they wanted us to join. I think it was around 2016, and we were on the cusp of doing $1 million a year. They saw the growth potential and came after us pretty hard, and eventually I relented.
Being part of Nationwide at first felt a little weird because it was mostly furniture, bedding, and appliances, with very little consumer electronics and integration. But I was working with Hank pretty much from day one, seeing his vision and the direction he wanted to push the group. We broke off into a subgroup, HTSN, and then that evolved into Oasys, a standalone integration buying group.
One of the benefits we talk about with potential members is having Nationwide as the parent buying group. There are a lot of resources there. For example, we rolled out a healthcare plan a couple of years ago, and I was able to use Nationwide resources to get a great plan at a great price. We also use Synchrony for financing, mostly on the hi-fi side. If someone wants to buy a new component, it can be cheaper for me to do zero percent for 12 months than to take a credit card because of the negotiated rates with Nationwide.
Then, reverting back to Oasys, we have our summit every year. Over the years, you build relationships with other integrators. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and everyone has found something that works for them. What works for me may not work for my friend Nathan in San Antonio, so it is great to talk through ideas, processes, and problems with peers. That is one of the biggest benefits of Oasys. The rebates are pretty awesome, too.
Rob Stott: Being able to rub shoulders with like-minded people is valuable in any group or association. You can present a problem and find someone who has gone through the exact same thing. You may not be able to put a direct ROI on that, but it is a real benefit.
Jeremy Rasti: Yes, and one thing Hank does very well is put together strong roundtables. At the last summit, one of the roundtables included integrators and Angie Larson from Savant. Being able to hear her perspective on problems we are dealing with, and vice versa, is impressive.
Rob Stott: Let me flip it a little bit. Partnerships outside the integration world matter too: home builders, architects, designers, and others in your market. Do CEDIA membership, certifications, and those kinds of things carry weight when you are trying to find partners or get involved in projects?
Jeremy Rasti: It is hard to say it is directly beneficial, but one thing leads to another. If we are following installation best practices on all low voltage and leaving a trail of good work behind us, people notice. We have a few interior designers and awesome custom home builders we work with. Pretty much all of those relationships started because a client brought us into a project, the builder saw how we did things, and before long, we became their guys. I would not say there is a direct correlation, but indirectly, by making sure we are trained, doing the right work, and doing it well, that speaks volumes.
Rob Stott: When it comes to finding those partners, what are you doing to find designers or builders in your market as you look to expand that work?
Jeremy Rasti: To be honest, Rob, it is something we need to do a better job of. At the beginning of the year, we had two big goals for the company. One was training: making sure our guys are Control4 certified and making sure everyone is self-sufficient enough to be in the field and handle what needs to be handled without always having to call someone else.
The second goal was friends-of-the-industry relationships: builders, architects, and interior designers. We are kicking around ideas on the leadership side about the best way to do that. Ed Willis, who was once a competitor of mine and has been on my staff for about six years, has great ideas. I have put him in charge of figuring out the best way to get us in front of custom home builders we have not worked with before, so we are not relying entirely on chance when a client brings us into a project.
Rob Stott: Without getting into trade secrets, are you able to talk about any of the things you are thinking about? Is it attending events, visiting offices, or something else?
Jeremy Rasti: Last week we were on a project and there was a new development being built behind the house. Ed drove through and ended up catching the developer out there. He gave him information and our card. Going out and pounding the pavement a little bit is good. You have to get lucky and make sure the right people are on the project at the right time.
The goal is to get away from emails and get into face-to-face conversations. That might mean going to someone’s office and dropping off a really cool brochure. I know that is a step back in terms of physical media, but if they can look through a 20-page, 8.5-by-11-inch cardstock brochure that shows real projects we have done, not stock photos, that can be powerful.
We pulled part of that idea from Ed’s old company. One of the most impressive things he had was basically a six-gang wall switch plate with six Decora-style wall switches, paired with the message, ‘Turn this into this,’ next to a single lighting keypad. Being able to paint that picture matters. Louisiana is difficult. Some builders are on board with where lighting is going, and some will still put a six-gang wall switch in a kitchen. When I see that, I think we have to do a better job of letting people know what we do and what is out there. That starts with meeting in person with builders and interior decorators, and figuring out what motivates different people.
Rob Stott: It is cool to see you doing things a little differently.
Jeremy Rasti: Do not get it messed up. We still have to do a better job of it.
Rob Stott: I do not think you are alone in feeling that way. The industry gets it. You see CEDIA doing things like design-build outreach to get these channels closer together and talking. To your point, builders who do not get it may simply not be aware of it or educated on it. Once you get in a room and talk about what you can do, especially around lighting and the experience of the home rather than just black boxes and AV gear, their ears start to perk up.
Jeremy Rasti: As far as builders go, the really good ones we work with will write everything attached to the house into their contract: lighting keypads, lighting fixtures, and all of that. They are putting their markup on it, and this stuff can get expensive. If they are able to add their percentage on top, they are not leaving money on the table. It is an easy sell if you put me, Ed, or Patrick in front of the client to paint the picture and tell the story.
Rob Stott: Speaking of storytelling, you have been doing a lot of that lately. Anyone who Googles Crescendo right now will see you in the news a little bit.
Jeremy Rasti: For the wrong reasons.
Rob Stott: For the wrong reasons, but also in a way that shows something positive about how you handled it as a business owner. You caught something on your security cameras that became its own news story. Tell us what happened.
Jeremy Rasti: From a timeline perspective, it was the day after Memorial Day this year. I was off that day, driving back from Orange Beach after seeing Dave Matthews at The Wharf. Casey, my office manager, had gone to run errands. Late in the afternoon, he came back to the shop and saw all of our FedEx packages strewn across the side of the building. He pulled up the camera footage, saw what happened, and it immediately made him mad. He did not want to bother me on my day off, but he told me the next day that I was about to get really mad.
He showed me the footage, and I was aghast. You have two FedEx delivery guys. One has a dolly, and on that dolly we had a 20-amp double-online UPS that weighs about 70 pounds, probably $15,000 to $16,000 worth of Lutron Alisse brass-finished keypads, a Control4 CA-10 that we had been waiting on, network gear, and some other things. We had been waiting on most of that Lutron and Control4 product for more than a month.
The driver took the dolly and pushed it, and the stuff went flying. The guy walking behind him had the big UPS and set it down gingerly, which I appreciated. Then, after checking that package in, he picked it up and threw it against our big bay door on the warehouse. It made a dent and scratched the door.
I reached out to FedEx. I find social media channels can be powerful when you are trying to reach big corporate companies, compared with spending 30 minutes in a call tree. I sent the videos and gave them a chance to offer a proper solution, but it was crickets. We opened a ticket, and then they closed the ticket without really reaching out. So I uploaded it to my personal Facebook page, not even the company page, and it blew up from there. Between X, Threads, Instagram, and other platforms, I think it had more than 13 or 14 million views.
Long story short, not much really came out of it. It took three or four days for the local FedEx office to respond. The ground drivers are subcontracted, so the person with the contract came out, but he did not really offer a real solution other than paying for the bay door. I told him not to worry about that. What I wanted was our old driver back. Our previous driver, Jimmy, has a great relationship with Casey and me. He is consistent and pretty much a friend. We even took him to a Saints-49ers game last year because he is a big 49ers fan. They made that happen, which was really all I wanted to begin with.
Without getting into the weeds on claims, Lutron saw the video and said they would take care of replacing the keypads and deal with FedEx instead of making me file a claim. It had a ripple effect on project delays because I was not putting that product in people’s houses. It was not going to happen.
Rob Stott: When my wife sent me the video and said, ‘This looks like something you would be interested in,’ I opened it and realized it was you. It got all the way to Philly, which is wild. It shows the power of social media.
Jeremy Rasti: The crazy part is it could have all been avoided if they had given me a proper solution. I gave them a full day to do that.
Rob Stott: It is like two sides of the same customer-service coin. They did not want to do anything about it, while your approach shows how you protect your reputation. If the boxes looked fine and you had not known this happened, you might have installed the product. But once you saw the footage, you were not going to put your customers in a position where a delivery problem could affect their experience. If something went sideways, it would come back on you, not FedEx or the delivery driver.
Jeremy Rasti: It all boils down to this: ever since I started the company, our M.O. has been to treat others with respect and treat others the way you want to be treated. It is not complicated. If I were spending X amount of dollars on that product, would I want someone to put that particular product in my house? The answer is obviously no.
The crazy part is that we are so good to our drivers. We offer them water, Gatorade, and snacks, even the drivers between Jimmy and this incident. It is a thankless job. They are out there in the Louisiana summer heat, delivering packages, and we rely on them to run our business. We want to make sure they feel taken care of so, when they come to our shop, they place things down carefully.
Rob Stott: That does not seem like much to ask. The other crazy thing is that you would not have known about this without the cameras. I do not know if you have used it as a marketing opportunity, but security is something you offer. It is a service you install in homes, and it caught this. What a testament to the product you install.
Jeremy Rasti: It is an interesting marketing opportunity. I never really thought about it that way, but the good news is the clarity was good. It was 4K.
Rob Stott: It shows that you do good work, especially since I am sure you put those cameras up around your own office. It shows the capability of the technology and what you are able to capture, good or bad. This has been great, and it was good to catch up. It sounds like a lot is going well. In the grand scheme of things, you are a young but maturing business. Crescendo just entered its teenage years.
Jeremy Rasti: Yeah, in a couple of years we will be able to drive.
Rob Stott: Exactly. You have an open invite any time you want to come back and talk about how things are going or how business is in Baton Rouge. We appreciate it.
Jeremy Rasti: Thank you, Rob. I appreciate you sitting down with me.
Rob Stott: Anytime.
