Rob Stott: All right, we are back on the Connected Design podcast and diving into the world of outdoor screens today and getting to do so with someone that’s not a podcaster, rookie, I should say. You’ve done a few of these. So appreciate you taking the time and jumping into it with us, Mr. Kim Parker, the business part of business development and a partner at Keder Screens. So appreciate you taking the time to join us and dive into this.
Kim Parker: Yes, that’s right.
Rob Stott: Pretty cool. The level of innovation, outdoor screens. You think about my patio. I got a patio. I got some outdoor screens on it. Not motorized. Nothing as fancy as what Keder’s doing and some, you know, what we see in this space it shows. But the level of innovation, you guys are kind of showing that there is lots to do here in this space.
Kim Parker: Yeah, absolutely.
Kim Parker: Yes. Yeah, and I think there’s still more to go as well as we look at, you know, the future of what outdoor living looks like and the solutions that people are needing. you know, we’re seeing homes that are being built with bigger patios and now we need bigger shades and bigger screens. And, you know, the entertainment level that’s going on in the outside spaces has just elevated so much since COVID really.
Rob Stott: Yeah. Well, before we, know so many ways we can go with it and I look forward to doing that. But before we do all that, I want to give you a chance for those that don’t know you to tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and kind of your path throughout your career and what led you to Keder.
Kim Parker: Yeah. Well, I’ve been in the industry for well over 30 years. I stopped counting at about 30. And if you would have asked me five years ago, if I was going to be heavily involved in the shade business, I probably would have said, no, I was heavily involved in the control space, spent 13 plus years at, control for snap one. And it truly enjoyed that as well as was a dealer for many years as well. So I’ve done it all. I’ve answered phones as a secretary all the way up to being a CEO in this industry. And it was time for me to become a partner owner in a company. And as I was looking through what was next for me, what made sense was this industry that’s just exploding, this outdoor venue, you know, outdoor environments that’s just exploding. And so when I ran into Keder Screens a few years ago, that technology just really appealed to me because I’m like, yeah, I could use it on my own home. so and that’s kind of where I went from there.
Rob Stott: Hey, well, the cool thing, you talking about your background is that, I know I, I might be stealing a line from, from Katie here, but, Katie Bennett for, for those, I, everyone knows Katie. I don’t even have to make an introduction or explanation there, but, you’ve seen a thing or two, which is kind of cool about like your, your background. So knowing all that, knowing you’ve been on the dealer side, been in manufacturer side, the now partner side, you kind of can lean on that experience and you you talk about the kind of career history you’ve had, informed, guess, really kind of hearing you talk about it too, right? Inform that decision of what you wanted to do next and you kind of have been following the trends of the space and what’s going on. So in your head, this outdoor category is just, it feels like the next thing.
Kim Parker: It does for me for sure and I think for a lot of dealers as we looked at the landscape of the CI industry it looks like it’s the next thing as well for the CI industry.
Rob Stott: No, that’s awesome. what specifically, I know you talked about a little bit, but Peter, in having conversations with them, you know, what was it that attracted you to them and, you know, made the decision or made the decision easier for you, to call it home.
Kim Parker: Yeah. Yeah. Young company, right? And, similar to some of my background story that I related to was, you know, there, there needs to be solutions in our industry. And he, the founder of our company, Justin Collins was running into challenges and issues in the field because he came from the traditional, you know, awning and outdoor shade world. And it was like, Hey man, I’m running into so many issues. And as I scale my business, I’ve got these products that are heavily—they need service and that weighs heavily on my business in order to be profitable or not. So he said there’s got to be a better way. And so that’s when he invented this product called the V-Track Retention System or the V-Screen Retention System. And it is basically an outdoor shade that’s super robust and needs very little maintenance, if any. Once they go in, they go in and you’re good. You might have to blow out a track here and there. Maybe put a little bit of grease on the sliding mechanisms. But otherwise, he really created a product that’s super robust. It’s high wind tolerant. It keeps the bugs out, keeps the dust off, keeps your patio furniture on your patio when there’s a wind event.
And the biggest difference between us and everyone else is that when a wind event happens, our screens are meant to be down versus up. And as an installer, you don’t want to have to worry about your customer doing the right thing to make sure they’re rolled up in a wind event so that you then have to go out and service that product because the weight bar came out of the track or the fabric came out of the track or a zipper tore or all of the other issues that you might deal with in those other products.
Rob Stott: Right. Well, and I’m thinking too, I feel like I saw on your—did I see someone like jump into a screen in a video on the website? Am I making, am I making that up or did I see that?
Kim Parker: Yes. Yeah, we pound on our shades really hard, especially when we bring dealers into training. We let them run into it. We let them to really see how strong and robust these things are. And it gives them a sense of confidence once they actually touch, feel, and actually manipulate the screen. These things are practically indestructible.
Rob Stott: Touch feel, try to, you know, the Kool-Aid man, the screen, whatever, whatever they have to do, right? No, that’s awesome. Um, I know too, the, we talked previously, um, not only like you, those are kind of the things you’re saying are, you know, for lack of a better, the thing, the things you hear in this space, right? Like they’re high wind rated and this and that you actually shared some, uh, and I, feel like I’m putting you on the spot. So apologies if I am, and you don’t have a memorized by heart, but you had some solid data around actually how…
Kim Parker: No worries.
Rob Stott: …you you talk about like resilient your screens are. So can you talk about that a little bit? Cause I think that dealers hear it, but to hear those numbers would be awesome.
Kim Parker: Yes, so. Yeah, yeah, I’ll just show a little bit of the the of the fabric here and kind of what makes it unique and strong and then give some statistics on it. But but there’s this, you know, our fabric has some unique characteristics to it and how we weld the key to and how we sew the corners and how we attach the corners to the weight bar. And this is just just the fabric itself. But this right here, a lot of people don’t know what this is, but that’s called Keder, right? That that little spline and a lot of other companies use a zipper product. Keder Screens decided to, hence the name Keder, decided to go with the Keder because it’s the most robust. It’s the toughest. And when you think about the pull strength that’s necessary between what’s welded right here versus the Keder that sits in the track versus the fabric that it adheres to and the mechanisms and machines that we use to make this weld, that gives you on a standard fabric about 400 pounds of tensile strength per inch. And so, it’s super strong. I mean, in order to get this to tear, to pull apart, takes a serious amount of force to do so. So that’s one of the first things that you really, you know, you really need to make sure that you focus on in terms of a robust product. The other part is when you have a weight bar that attaches or doesn’t attach to a side channel, and that wind can blow that side channel or that that weight bar out of that side channel, it starts to do what they call hammering. And as it hammers, what it’s going to do is it’s going to put pressure on that zipper and start to pull it out of the track. And it’s just going to, you know, get become a bigger and bigger problem as, it’s not paid attention to, especially if the screen is down. So those two main issues have been solved by Keder Screens.
And those are the things that make it simple just to operate, just to maintain all those other issues that you’ve had in the past. If you’ve done it in the past as a dealer and they’re like, I’m never doing outdoor shades again, cause what a pain. You know, those things have been solved. going back to some of the statistics as well, only about 10 % of dealers in the CI space actually do outdoor shades. And there’s a massive opportunity here for dealers. Cause what’s happening is there’s a third party company that’s doing an installation of a shade.
And whether that product is amazing or not, or inferior or not, if it has an issue, because the dealer integrated it to the home, they’re the ones getting the phone call. Because when the button’s pushed, it doesn’t work, or the button’s pushed and it’s doing crazy things, the dealer’s getting the call for that. And so a lot of dealers that I’ve spoken to over the last few months since I’ve been working at Keder Screens, they’re like, yeah, we might as well get into it, just because we take ownership anyways. And as I explain it to dealers is, if you can install the complexity of a home theater or a multi-room audio system or anything that has to do with the complexities of programming and you’re mechanically inclined at all, this product is right within your wheelhouse. You already have the tools, you already have the capacity with your people, and it’s allowing you to own more of that project.
Rob Stott: Yeah. Would, you know, with such a low sort of, I guess adoption might be the right term there, right. Of, know, doing these types of products or installations in a home. What do you, why do you think that is? Is it challenges they’ve run into or what would have been the hurdles for integrators in terms of getting into this space?
Kim Parker: Yeah, I really think it boils down to training, know, and experience and they’ve been once bitten twice shy as the song says, I think. and, know, once you have a bad experience and these things are expensive, right? They’re not, they, you know, kind of start at $3,000 and they go up to 10,000 and maybe even higher depending on the size. But if you went and had a bad experience and you lost $10,000, it’s you’re not going to touch that category again, because it was painful and you’re gonna stick with what you know you’re good at, right? But you’re eventually gonna come across a project where the builder’s gonna be like, hey, I need help and blah, blah, blah. And then you’re gonna be like, man, do I know of a product then? Do I know of a company more importantly that also supports me and stands behind me? And that’s what Keder Screen is. Not only do we have an amazing product, but our warranty, our service levels, making sure that you can get everything that you need from us in order to back you up to make sure that you have a project that goes flawlessly is really necessary. And I’ll just share a little story here. So we have a dealer up in Tennessee, not in the CI channel, but they have multiple installers across Tennessee and Alabama. they were probably one of our number one dealers. They do a lot of shades with us. And there was one installer who was having some challenges with our product.
And we were just kind of like, wow, we don’t understand why he’s having these challenges. And so we had to really dive in and determine what steps he wasn’t following accurately and properly. And so the owner of our company actually drove out to their project and he actually took about 15 shades with him because that’s their order size that they had. So they drove a trailer out, they delivered all these shades and he spent three days with him and two other team members and the owner of the company to go through these 15 shade installs to make sure they understood the exact process to do this every time. And we actually learned something as well. First thing that we learned was, if dealers aren’t trained properly, they’re gonna have a bad experience. If dealers are trained properly, they’re gonna have a great experience and they’re gonna love it and the projects are gonna be profitable. And then you’re also gonna run into these guys that are highly technical that they invent things in the field that you just never even thought of yourself. And so we had an installation that this guy, this one installer who’s really experienced really wowed us with his level of fit and finish. It was just really impressive what he did with our shades. So both sides win when you really engage with the dealer. Sure. yeah, what’s the expectation? Yeah, what should I expect as a dealer in order to get proficient at doing this type of project? So first thing is, learn the product well enough to know how to measure and do quotes. And that’s stage one, right?
Once you get a project, make sure you get your guys into training so that they understand the nuances of how to install in the process, the step-by-step process, because we have a very, there’s a couple ways to do it, but for most shades that we have installed, there’s a very, very deliberate step-by-step process in order to get the best fit, the best finish on these, so they don’t have to go back and fix mistakes. So, we teach you the pitfalls, we teach you the things that are best practices, and those things are invaluable. And you wanna do that training fairly close to your install date so that you have retention and memory of what it is that you’re doing. then I say the expectation is look, on your first job you might break even, because it’s gonna take you a little bit of time to learn it, a little bit of time in field, hands on experience, but we can help you overcome some of those things. And as soon as you have an issue, jump on the phone with us. Let us do a FaceTime with you. I can troubleshoot a shade within 30 seconds if you tell me the behavior.
I can tell you exactly what’s going on with it just because we’ve become, I’ve become, I should say, an expert and very familiar with this product. And I think that’s the value that we provide as well as that everybody in our company understands our product top to bottom and we can help a dealer be super successful.
Rob Stott: That’s awesome. Now with the pitfalls you mentioned, is it similar to what you might see indoor versus outdoor as far as like having to be exceptionally precise with measurements and things like that? Are those the types of things that you would typically find?
Kim Parker: Yes. Yes. The toughest part is making sure everything’s measured correctly. If it’s not measured correctly and you get product on a site, you’re going to have troubles. And then the other thing is, that you want to measure again when you’re out in the field before you start putting things up, open things up, measure it, make sure things are going to fit. And that way you’re not, you know, know, wasting time figuring out how to make things if you make a mistake on measuring, but measure twice, cut once kind of kind of as the old adage.
And so that’s really important. But the next best, the next part is like indoor shade. have kind of that one horizontal that you’re dealing with to make sure things are level. So things don’t roll up unevenly or what they call telescoping in the industry. Ours, you have really four sides that you need to make sure that things are done right. So you’ve got the top, you’ve got the bottom, because we have slopes that we deal with on patios. And then you’ve got the sides and everybody. And I think I’ve gone maybe to one job where everything was perfectly plumb. And it was because it was an outdoor pergola and it was installed perfectly. And I was like, wow, that’s, that’s going to make my job so much easier. And the dealer’s job so much easier to, measure and install. So that was great. But every other project I’ve been on to measure, nothing’s ever plum, especially when you’re thinking about inside mount or even recessed mount, you have to make sure that everything fits within the dimensions that you have. And if that box—if anything you’ve done is bigger than that box, that’s the minimum dimensions of that opening, you’re going to have a challenge. So that’s the biggest pitfall.
Rob Stott: Yeah. And I have to think too. I mean, if you’re talking about wanting things to be, especially in the case of a wind event, like having things fit perfectly and not wanting any gaps with air and air gets sliding through or things like that. if a w does it make it, is it a challenge you can overcome if a window isn’t perfectly square that you can install something that still works?
Kim Parker: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there are some tolerances that you can do some cut downs in the field to make things work, but they’re not a lot. It’s not like you have six inches of mistake factor. You have maybe a half inch of mistake factor. So, and then that’s typically what we’ve seen. Maybe someone transposed a number or something or, know, while they were making a recording of the measurements, just made a mistake in writing it down. And so, but we’re also there to stand behind you to make sure that that process of fixing the issue goes as quick and as fast as possible so that we can rush out whatever part that you need. Hopefully it’s something simple like I mismeasured and I need a weight bar, for example, or I cut a track too short and I need to get a new track. So things like that, we can take care of. But quite honestly, the most common issue that we have is the moving parts like motor, the motor failure, lightning strikes and surges, things like that can take out a motor.
Motors do have a pretty strong warranty as well. So five year for Somfy, seven year for ALFA, 10 year for our Keder motor that we’re just releasing here. We just released it. We’re just releasing a new Keder motor with a 10-year warranty. Breaking news. So that’s the other part of Keder Screens. We’re trying to make the best warranty in the industry as well so that dealers can stand behind the product and know that it’s gonna operate and function for many years to come.
Rob Stott: That’s awesome. Now, you know, with such a strong screen, my head goes to like, obviously this is something that would make sense and say, you know, the East coast from Carolina’s, Florida, where you see a lot of high wind events, things like that. Is it, know, is it something that you could install nationwide? Like obviously you want to install it nationwide, but is there like, does it have to, is it too strong in some way? know, is it a type of question, right? Like it doesn’t make sense all over.
Kim Parker: Yeah, that’s great question, hurricane protection, it’s also some security as well.
Rob Stott: It’d be fun to take like Aaron Judge and just have him hit a home run right into it or like Shohei or whoever, you know, like do a, what do they do right off the bat? They do the, the exit velocity right off the bat. See if they could do that right into the screen. You know, right. Let’s make that happen. Let’s go.
Kim Parker: Yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, if you if you know those people and they want to they want to market for us, let’s make it happen. We’re happy to prove it. We will not have a Tesla moment where the window breaks. We will not have that moment.
Rob Stott: That sounds awesome. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That’s incredible. man. That’s awesome. So I have to ask, is there anything, you’re only what? A couple months into the category, right? Is that right with your time at Keder or is it a little bit longer? Yeah.
Kim Parker: So I’ve been with the company three months. I invested in the company about a year ago. And that was to help a partnership get off the ground as we were licensing technology to a partner in the CI industry. That partnership didn’t work out. And so we decided to bring that product direct to market ourselves. And the company’s been in existence for four plus years now.
But the invention and the mind around that invention has been around for about eight years. and Justin goes back all the way to 2001, installing and creating outdoor environments with awnings and outdoor shades. so, even though the company’s young, the experience that we have in the company isn’t young.
Rob Stott: Lots of it. Yeah. Well, for you being like newer to this channel or this this category, is there anything surprising about it that you’ve learned or seen in your short time, you know, in it so far?
Kim Parker: I think what surprises me most is well first the robustness of the product is really what surprised me You know, was like, wow, this is really incredible and I wouldn’t I couldn’t think of doing anything else on my own home Other than this like I had a chance to put in zipper screens Before and I just thought you know what with all the issues that I see with it with the zipper Category itself. It just is I’m not gonna do it I don’t want the service nightmare and I travel quite a bit for work and I don’t need a phone call from my wife saying, hey, the patio shades won’t go down because we keep them down. And part of the reason we keep them down is because we have some dogs and some animals and they like to go and hang out on the patio. And so if we have them down, they stay on the patio and they enjoy the outdoor breeze just as much as we do when we’re out there. So but that’s one surprise. But I think on the opposite side of that is the fear that the dealer base has of getting into this and fears simply overcome by exposure.
And I think that the more that you’re exposing yourself to this product, and if you can talk to dealers who are experienced, the dealers who are being successful with the Outdoor Shades and integration of these Outdoor Shades and ask them, it worth it? They’re all gonna say, absolutely, it’s worth it. There’s some learning curve to overcome, but I can teach a dealer to install these things and do it really well and confidently in about six hours.
So and teach them all the tips and tricks and all the nuances to this product category.
Rob Stott: That’s awesome to hear. I think too, you know, kind of going full circle here back to the beginning of the conversation, having someone in the category now that has the, you know, the, experience across the rest of the channel that you do. think that even that, you know, I don’t know if you want to pat yourself on the back so much, but I’ll do it for you. Right? Like that is comforting. have to imagine for a lot of the dealers to see someone that they know and trust from other parts of the industry to now be supporting this category.
Kim Parker: Yeah. Well, that’s a great point, Rob. I think that, you know, I’ve been in the dealer facing part of our business for quite some time on the manufacturing side, but helping dealers be successful with very complicated product categories like control. And I think when I make that phone call to dealers and say, hey, this is what I’m doing now. It’s about a 12 second conversation to say, great, I’m on board because they trust me, right?
And they know my background, they know that I’m gonna stand behind them, they know that I’m gonna make sure that they’re successful at it because we have been in the trenches together and we’ve done things that we’ve had to overcome major, major challenges. If you can think back 10, 15 years ago, networking was the biggest hurdle to success in our industry and there weren’t a lot of great products out there actually that were supporting the dealers. Now we have fantastic products, have fantastic models to service remotely and all these wonderful things that have happened over the last 10 years. But in this shade category right now, since it’s kind of this new thing into the CI space, we’re in that of that same phase of dealers need help and they need experts to stand behind them and help them. And our biggest challenge right now as a company is can we handle the scale of business that’s available to us?
And so we’re growing. We’re growing really nicely right now and we’re getting a lot of interest and we’ve put on three rep firms in key markets, but I didn’t put on the whole entire country and that was on purpose so that we could grow with the size of business. So we hired the best rep firm in our backyard, Bell & McCoy here in the Tola market. We hired in the Florida market, which is a huge market for us, AMI sales. And we hired Momentum Group up in the Rocky Mountains. And those are three really big markets for us. And you would, and actually, when I looked at the kind of where shades are going in, outdoor shades are going in, these markets are the strongest markets for outdoor shades. You would think Southern California, but no, no, no, that’s not yet. It’s, it’s the nice weather out there. They’re like, why do I? And there’s, you know, very rarely, maybe one month out of the year, you get some Santa Ana winds, but otherwise you just get beautiful weather. So that makes sense. Right. And
Rob Stott: No, not yet. Do people like their open air? They don’t want their screens down? that blocking the view? that, you know, right? All right. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure.
Kim Parker: And they don’t have as many bugs either. So actually one of the primary reasons that people put in these screens is for bug protection. Texas, man, number one bug. You know, this is what’s interesting. If you look up the number of companies that spray for bugs in your backyard, then you’re definitely in the right market for bug screens. So.
Rob Stott: Interesting. That’s a—I love that. That’s a unique perspective. And I, gotta imagine I, anyone that’s been to the Jersey shore, there’s some, you get those greenheads down the shore. That’s gotta be a pretty up there as far as where that ranks.
Kim Parker: Yes. Yeah, yeah. And anywhere that there’s four seasons, really, you’re going to have those kind of bugs.
Rob Stott: Well, this was cool. I appreciate you taking the time and diving into the category and again, your background and the company background. A lot of cool things to follow and see that you guys are doing. And like we said at the top too, a category that when you think about it, innovation may not be top of mind, having come out of this, people that have listened to hope they can understand.
Kim Parker: Right. Yeah, one last thing that I’ll give you as a preview of a product launch that’s coming is we have invented a way to overcome what has been plaguing the industry for decades, which is tube deflection. And this tube deflection issue means you can’t go very wide with shades. And so we have a patent pending on a technology that we call RAD, which is Roller Tube Anti-Deflection Technology. And it uses magnets to levitate that tube so that it takes all the deflection out of it. And so ,we can literally, I mean, go infinitely wide if we have a motor that will turn it. But today we have a 54-foot wide by 10-foot shade at our facility. That was our second largest, it was the second shade that we made, and it was that big. And so, we know we can go wider.
But we’re changing the game. We’re going to completely change the game. One other last thing is that one of the challenges that dealers have is when they go to order that product. Sometimes the dealer portals aren’t very clear on how to order that product. And that’s where mistakes are made as well. And our dealer portal is it’s the best in the game. And so, you got to sign up to be a dealer to see that dealer portal. But or do you got to contact me and I’ll walk you through it. But we really are going to be the number one shade manufacturer, screen manufacturer for outdoor shades, especially for the CI channel, because that’s where we’re focusing a lot of attention.
Rob Stott: Love it, love it. It’s a great story to hear and I’m looking forward to continuing to follow it. So Kim, this was awesome. I appreciate it. Like I said, great conversation and certainly not our last either. I look forward to following up with you and having more of these. So. That’s awesome. We appreciate it. Look forward to doing it again soon.
Kim Parker: Yeah. Well, I hope I got you excited about outdoor shades because I wouldn’t have been five years ago and now I’m super excited about it. Yep. All right, Thanks. Take care.
