Rob Stott: All right, we are back on the Connected Design Podcast and excited to be now post-CEDIA madness. I am sure it was like that for you. I know my schedule was busy, but Mr. Jason Turner, VP and co-founder there at PowerShades, I appreciate you jumping in and doing this with us.
Has it calmed down since CEDIA Expo for you?
Jason Turner: It has. Building up to CEDIA every year is always a marathon for us, getting the booth ready and getting all the product ready. Half our office travels to it, so everybody is back in the saddle and digging in post-CEDIA, making all of the phone calls and all that stuff.
Rob Stott: All those follow-ups, me included. I know we had a good opportunity to run through your booth and see what was new. You had a lot of new stuff, and we will get into that, but naturally starting at CEDIA Expo, how was it? I know there were a lot of conversations coming out of the show, but how was it for you guys to be there?
Jason Turner: Man, it was actually really good for us. We had a lot of traffic through there. We had a brand-new booth design this year. As you know, we were acquired by Springs Window Fashions last year, and I have to tell you, this is the first year since we started PowerShades that we had a crew come in and set the booth up for us. Man, what a luxury. That was great.
We had a lot of traffic through there. The PR group that we use always drums up a lot of interest, and we always have a lot of interviews and that kind of stuff. But we had some new stuff in the booth, and a lot of dealers wanted to come by and see the new PowerShades, if you will. We really had a good show. I heard a lot of people say that maybe attendance was down a little bit, but through our booth we had traffic nonstop. We were very pleased.
Rob Stott: It seemed that way. One thing too, you mentioned it, and it is related but not to the attendance conversation: I know this year we are talking about Forge, which is the Questex and Emerald sort of conglomerate coming together. I think that was announced like three weeks prior to the show. The merger, the Apollo acquisition, was a month and a half or two months prior, but then Forge was announced the week of or the week prior, so not much time to do things differently for this show.
But we saw it post-show, right? They announced an actual attendance figure, which was the first time. Emerald traditionally had given us a registration number, which, if you look at that compared to what the attendance number was, is down from the reported registration numbers. But that is expected at a show, right? Not 100 percent of your registrants, especially when you are talking about so many ways to get free registration, actually show up.
Jason Turner: For sure. There are always more people who register than actually show up. We even saw that. This was the first year that we did the on-site trainings in one of those off-site, or they were on-premise but in a different location, training rooms. We had really good numbers of people signing up for that and somewhat less attendance at each one of those, but overall really good.
Rob Stott: That is awesome to hear. You mentioned it too, and there are two ways we can obviously go: the product and the new ownership. It is funny, we mentioned the Forge thing being about a week prior. For you guys last year, coming into CEDIA, it was like a week prior. We are sitting here recording literally 13 months to the day that the acquisition was announced.
You talk about the benefits to you guys. Obviously building a booth and having support is huge. But what other areas have you seen or realized the benefits of having this new ownership group?
Jason Turner: So many ways, I guess, to answer your question right off the bat. Primarily, myself and my partner, co-founder Ryan Chacon, had built the company to the point that, to grow to the next step and really compete with the big guys in the industry, we needed deeper pockets. We needed more infrastructure, more buying power, and more volume behind us.
That is one of the things Springs really brought to the table. They have a fabrics laboratory with textile engineers and designers in there who actually go through and choose the new fabrics, what is trending this season, and things like that. We just did not have the manpower to really dedicate a team of people to that kind of thing.
Then you talk about supply chain, all the extrusions, and all of the raw materials that it takes to run the factory out here. We buy from multiple different vendors. As we start getting into this Springs world, they buy directly from the mills. They buy containers. All of a sudden it started making a lot more sense.
There is expertise in certain areas, in manufacturing, and in areas where we have always kind of played Iron Man. We all wear a lot of hats. We have always joked that we are the chief bottle washers, taking the trash out and everything. Some of these things, they actually have real teams of people dedicated to. There have definitely been big improvements in supply chain and all sorts of areas of the company.
Rob Stott: Operationally, I can imagine too. To back it up a little bit, because we dove right into the conversation, for those who are listening, PowerShades is likely a name they recognize, but give a little bit of that background so people can understand the origin of it and how you got to where you are.
Jason Turner: Sure. PowerShades, the name kind of says it all. We make, manufacture, and sell motorized window treatments all across the U.S. and into Canada. We started the company back in 2017. It is a little bit humorous. Our goal was not originally to start a window shade company.
Myself and Ryan were both electrical engineers, and what we had done was design and patent a new motor technology, a new power over Ethernet motor that up until then did not exist in the industry. We got asked, through some other stuff that we were already involved in, some energy management and stuff in hotels, if we could help close the window shades.
Everybody does it. You check into your hotel, you turn the lights on, you open the windows, you turn the TV on, you crank the AC down, and then you go to the bar. You leave the room just churning energy. These hotels were trying to figure out ways to reduce energy consumption when the room is not occupied.
Among other things we were helping with, they had asked us to help integrate the window shades and the draperies into lowering the room’s energy consumption. This was back in 2015, 2016, and to be quite honest, we got surprised at the state of technology at that point. We could not believe that there was not a true Ethernet-based motor, a power over Ethernet motor. Turns out, it is kind of hard to do.
But we did it. Our intent originally was to be a contract manufacturing or contract engineering company for other companies that needed that kind of control. We realized pretty quickly that we had happened into a niche market that needed our technology, and PowerShades consumed all of our bandwidth.
Ryan and I had both had the luxury of working with some very smart, talented people in our past, and we had always kind of made a little bit of a joke that if we ever started a company, here are the guys that we want to take with us. So we did. We got lucky enough to convince some of these guys and gals to come with us, and PowerShades started.
We made the decision pretty early that we were not going to sell to the public. We were not necessarily going to be an e-commerce company. We wanted to sell through the CEDIA world, through the dealers, the integrators, and these guys we already knew and loved. Man, it has been a rocket ride.
We did not realize all the things we did not know. We did not realize how hard it would be to make a roller shade. We really joke about that, early on saying, “How hard could it be?” Turns out, it is hard.
Rob Stott: Right. It is a crazy statement, but I get it, because shades have been around for who knows how long. There is obviously the power side of it that, as you have been mentioning, is a little bit different, and certainly where the struggles and innovation have been in this space.
You kind of touched on it. You do not expect it to be something that could consume all of your time as you are getting your start in the business. But what has been the coolest thing? We are almost 10 years in, so that is another unique milestone, almost nine years of you guys being in business.
The evolution of this space, and we are talking about AV dealers at heart, this industry that is built on AV, finding the niche or carving out the space within this channel for shading, has it been difficult? Did you ever think this was a path? There are so many questions about that.
Jason Turner: Great questions. To back way up, it is kind of funny and kind of full circle: my mom was an interior designer, and against my will, kicking and screaming, I had to work for Mom through high school and college a little bit, installing window treatments and wallpaper and all these things that, at the time, I did not realize she was training me. It was like Mr. Miyagi.
Then I went off and got an electrical engineering degree and did different things with my career. When we ended up opening this automated window coverings company, for the first time in my career, Mom understood what I did. It was cool to be able to share that with her and have patents and actually be building a name for ourselves in this industry.
But we started in just two little offices. It was just Ryan and I. We kind of joke about almost getting in a fistfight trying to print checks out of QuickBooks and that kind of stuff, all the way to a 40,000-square-foot manufacturing facility out here.
Early on, we were having the stuff contract manufactured for us, first in Texas and then in South Florida. It became pretty obvious fairly early on that, for the quality control we needed for the type of specialized automation that we were getting involved in, we really needed to start our own factory. So we did.
The first shades that we produced out of our new factory here in Joplin, Missouri, our first factory, not this one, were in February 2020. Right after that, the world changed.
Rob Stott: Good timing.
Jason Turner: Add that to another list of, what did we do? What did we get ourselves into? Ironically, so many other industries had so many struggles, and we had different struggles because all of a sudden everybody was staying at home. Everybody decided to finish their home offices and their houses, and our business never tanked.
Our biggest problem was supply chain. It is kind of funny, but with the toilet paper shortage and the paper shortage, it turns out those same trees are what they make cardboard out of. It was hard for us to get cardboard to ship our products. The semiconductors, the parts that we put on our circuit boards, all of a sudden the industry was drying up and it was hard to find components.
Our biggest struggle was being able to get enough raw materials. We were having to go out on the open market and buy chips that we could normally buy for 50 cents, and all of a sudden we were paying dollars for these things.
That is not unique to us. I know so many other industries had these same problems. It was price increase after price increase and weeks at a time where we could not ship product because we could not get boxes, packing material, and things like that. So just all sorts of challenges, but it definitely made us stronger.
It did force us to do some redesign on some of our product. Early on, we had the luxury of just using parts we wanted to use. All of a sudden we had to redesign circuit boards to use parts that we could get. In doing some of that, it definitely made some of our designs more robust. That design-for-manufacturing thing that we all struggle with forced us to get a little more lean and a little smarter in how we design things.
Rob Stott: It forces you to be innovative and really push your limits, right? You got to see early on what you guys are capable of in a space where, again, I feel like the conversations in this channel, it has been cool to witness over the years how much easier they are becoming when you lump the lighting and shading discussion into the rest of home automation.
But they do get that lumping. It is always lighting and shading. I know you guys are clearly on the shading side, but is that a challenge for you, or this channel, to talk about them together? Or do you think it helps paint a better picture?
Jason Turner: They absolutely go hand in hand, and for good reason. Lighting, of course, is the manipulation of artificial light, and shading is the manipulation of natural light. So they absolutely go hand in hand.
Even the way that we do our automation, the way that we consider when a shade is fully open, we consider that 100 percent, just like you would think of a light bulb at 100 percent. There are a lot of similarities in the way that we do the programming and the automation of those specifically so that they can go hand in hand.
You start getting into things like daylight harvesting and some of these different trends, and I will not even call it a trend because they have been around so long. We know the human physiology, what type of temperature, amount of light, color of light, and all these things make a human the most productive.
Whenever we start combining lighting and shading so that we can do all the things we need to do to allow the natural light, so that we can reduce the amount of energy we have to use on artificial light, when you really tie those things together, you can start making an impact on your energy bill and the comfort of the occupants.
Then you get into the cool part of seeing the shades automatically go up and down on schedules and good morning, good night kind of stuff. But they really go hand in hand. To be honest, the lighting part of that is something that we have danced around for quite a while, and some of our real, worthy competitors in the market are doing shading and lighting. That always comes up in discussions, and at some point we may see that we also offer lighting.
Rob Stott: That sounds like a nice little tease. I am glad I asked it in that way. More to come there. What that tells me is obviously a story that needs to continue to be followed in terms of what you guys are doing and the evolution of the company.
To get back to the acquisition and the partnership with Springs Window Fashions, you talked about how it has benefited you as a business. How about for the dealers? What should they know about how you guys being part of this larger group now impacts their business, or how they can leverage working with you? Do they get access to other things? What does that mean in terms of Springs Window Fashions?
Jason Turner: That is a great question. That is one of the additional cool things about Springs. They do have multiple other divisions. So to answer your question, yes, our dealers will begin to start having access to some of the other brands that Springs does.
With PowerShades being a relatively young company in this industry, we have really focused all of our efforts on automated roller shades. That is something Springs brings to the table: they offer other things than roller shades. All of the Roman shades, the draperies, the commercial stuff, the great big buildings, all that stuff. Our dealers will begin to start having the ability to sign up for multiple brands underneath Springs and really just have access to more product.
But the other benefits that you talk about there, I kind of mentioned it earlier, where now all of a sudden we have a fabric laboratory. New fabrics, better fabrics, textile engineers in there doing things that people would not necessarily consider. Out here on the factory floor, we have these massive automated cutting tables that cut the fabric. A little bit of that is trial and error as far as how fast you cut the material, how you cut the material, how the material lays, and whether it does funky stuff as it is hanging in a window.
A lot of that we have had to learn the hard way. Now you bring a group in like Springs that has people really focused on that, and a lot of that work gets done for us. Whenever we launch a new fabric book for our dealers, they can know that there is really science behind why the fabrics are in that new book.
Obviously, they have to be pretty. They have to look good. The homeowner has to want them. Having real designers in there along with the engineers makes a massive difference.
It is also just a stronger company overall. Our accounting department all of a sudden is much bigger. Things like terms, we just have more horsepower and people now to really help the dealers and really scale this thing and grow it to what we have always known it could be.
Then again, manufacturing expertise. We have made outdoor shades almost since we opened the company, but now with the acquisition, we have a partner company that is the largest outdoor manufacturer in the U.S., and awnings. That is a new thing we have just launched. With this partnership, we have access to more of their product. We are really looking forward to the launch of that. We launched that officially at CEDIA this year. We had it on display there, and there has already been a huge amount of interest in that.
Rob Stott: I am glad you brought it up because that was the first example of the opportunities that are going to exist. I truthfully have not dove too much into the other brands that are under the Springs umbrella, which feels like a pun, but I do not mean it to be. It is certainly something I should do because, for those interested in this market and this segment, it could give a little path into the future for what you guys could be doing and help people ideate on what is possible.
Having seen it, it was really cool. The product itself had attached or integrated lighting and things like that.
Jason Turner: Yeah, lighting in there. You can open that up and have it over your patio and the table on the patio, and all of a sudden you have lighting in the thing. That particular product, not to make this a plug at all, but it is kind of interesting. That thing is heavy. At first glance it looks like it would be difficult to install, but it is kind of interesting. That is one of the easiest things that we have to install.
You bolt these cleats to the side of the house, and two guys just hang it and you are kind of done. You plug it in. And then, of course, the automation part of it, that is really what we will be bringing to all of the products that come out of PowerShades. That is really our expertise and our first love. We will always have that type of automation in there.
Rob Stott: That is awesome. One thing I want to ask too, for the dealers that maybe have dabbled in this space, or others that have not thought about it and want to be traditional in what they do, I am sure you have some great examples of those that have done it well.
One of the fears, I guess, or one of the things I can think of is an AV guy that is used to dealing with speakers and screens who gets this fabric book and is like, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? Now I am selling window treatments. That is natural, maybe a natural feeling for them too.
Jason Turner: We deal with that a lot. You have these guys who are incredible programmers, incredible installers, they understand acoustics, and they can put in home theater, lighting, and all these things. Then all of a sudden they have a decorative fabric book that they do not know what the hell to do with.
What we have really found is the guys who have the best success in this somehow partner with a designer. What we do find very, very often, of course in the CEDIA market, is that we have the benefit of typically working on really nice homes, high-net-worth clients, and that kind of thing. Very often they already have a designer who is helping with whatever they are doing in the house.
Where we have found the best success is these guys do not pretend to understand all the fabrics and the design side of it. They bring that book in and they work with the designer who is already there working in the home. They let that designer and the homeowners decide which fabrics look best with the wall colors and the furniture that they are putting in the house. Then that integrator gets to do what they really do well, and that is install and program.
That is really the magic there. At its fundamental level, you do good morning, good night. Once you have had that, it is kind of like keyless entry on your car. When is the last time you walked up to your car, put a key in the door, unlocked it, got in, and started your car?
Once you have motorized window coverings in your house that open at a certain time in the morning and close at a certain time in the evening or afternoon for the sun, whatever the case may be, you start getting used to that. Then when you have to walk around and pull cords and stuff, all of a sudden you realize how handy it is to have those automated.
Then our integrators have things like watching a movie in your theater, where you can just hit one button and, of course, the projector comes on or the TV comes on, the sound system comes on, and the blackout shades automatically go down. It really becomes cool, and there is a wow factor there.
Rob Stott: It also becomes that additional piece to the system that they are building. It makes it make sense, as opposed to thinking, now I have to talk fabrics and this and that. There certainly are those who are doing end to end, measuring the windows and the whole kit and caboodle of this business. But at the end of the day, what I am hearing you describe is that overall experience and how this is just one more category that layers into your entertainment experience in the home.
Jason Turner: That is exactly right. It becomes another layer, something that a lot of our integrators just were not doing. They were kind of leaving it on the table. They would do all of the things they do well, and then the designer or the local window covering store would come in and get that sale.
Then all of a sudden the integrator is holding the bag, and the homeowner is saying, “Hey, we bought these shades from somebody else. Do you think maybe you can program them into the system we already have?” Very often that becomes less than ideal. By the integrator doing it from the beginning, that helps.
You mentioned the measuring. That, we do find, is one of those areas where our dealers and integrators can get scared. They have had bad experiences in the past where they mismeasured and had to eat a shade or something like that. But we have been working on a lot of training, and we have a bunch of videos online and stuff to really help people through that and understand how to measure.
Reading a tape measure is not necessarily hard, but there are just things to keep in mind about how to measure properly. We have been doing a lot of training on that kind of stuff to make them more comfortable.
Rob Stott: That is awesome. I know too, we talk about the discussions you can have with the client in terms of this being that next layer to the system. You mentioned it a couple of minutes ago, and it feels like a cliche conversation to have at this point, but getting involved earlier in the project and the collaborative nature of being able to work with designers are so important.
This presents the integrator in an entirely new light for designers in terms of how you can work with them.
Jason Turner: Absolutely. The earlier they can get involved, just fundamentally with the prewire, it is so much easier and cheaper to just drop a wire, the correct kind of cable, up into the corner of the window jamb while the house is in frame. You are talking a few dollars to do that. Then whether you put a shade in that window or not, you just go ahead and get that wire in there while you are building the house.
Versus down the road having somebody try to snake wires through the walls. We do offer battery-powered shades for those situations, but then you have to be cognizant of charging those things from time to time. If you can just get the wire in the wall early on, it opens up the window to so much down the road.
Rob Stott: It is awesome. Like we said, there is an area we have not even talked about. I know you talked about the broad portfolio and what Springs offers you guys, but the idea of custom, there are just so many ways to think about this and the opportunities that it presents specifically for you guys.
It is still a category that has been around for a number of years now, at least as old as you guys are, and you think about the opportunities and the ways we are still seeing innovation in this space as it continues to move forward. There is certainly a lot of excitement.
At the very least, what I was hoping, and I think we hit on it, is that what people take out of this is just the opportunity for integrators who may have been hesitant or not sure about it. There is still so much that you guys are learning that integrators can learn and bring into their businesses. It is a lot of fun, for what it is worth. Your mom was right.
Jason Turner: Mom was right. You are right. There is absolutely a lot of additional innovation that is in the works. There is follow-the-sun tracking, and that has been one of the fun things with our systems. Of course, we know the ZIP codes where everything is installed, so all of a sudden daylight saving time, different sunrise and sunset, all of those things become super easy to deal with.
Rob Stott: It is a cool channel and a cool product category, and there is so much to learn. It is awesome to be able to dive into it with you guys. Again, I know we talk about the acquisition, but it is only a year old. To see some of the benefits that you have realized already gets me excited to watch it continue to grow as you guys get even further integrated into what is going on there at Springs.
Jason, this was a lot of fun, man. It was great to bump into you at the show and see the product. You were right. It was really cool to see it in person, the awning and how it was working, alongside the fabric book and everything else. I appreciate the opportunity to follow up with you after the show and dive into it with you. This was a lot of fun.
Jason Turner: Likewise. I appreciate you thinking that we are interesting enough to even have us on the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Rob Stott: Hey, see that? Shades can be interesting. It is a great category. Just pay attention to it. We look forward to catching up down the line.
