Transcript

Colin Uthe:

Welcome to Connected, a podcast about the operations and the people that make up Chamberlain Group. I'm Colin Uthe, and this month we're catching up with some of our one team members that had the privilege to visit this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

For nearly 10 years, Chamberlain Group has been establishing our presence and leveraging the greater consumer electronics industry to shape the future of our business. Most recently, we won an award for best of innovation at CES in 2021 for debuting our myQ Pet Portal. If you're unfamiliar, the Pet Portal is an all-in-one smart pet door that is completely decked out with features from our myQ catalog.

I first interviewed Adam and Melissa from the sales department who were there to represent a wide array of our connected products.

Adam Soliman:

I'm Adam Soliman. I'm the Vice President of Sales here at the Chamberlain Group.

Melissa Foley:

This is Melissa Foley. I lead our business development team focused on commercial architect spec and builder.

Colin Uthe:

How many times have you visited CES?

Adam Soliman:

I think over the course of my career, probably seven or eight times.

Colin Uthe:

Seven or eight times. All in a row or a little bit staggered?

Adam Soliman:

There was a few years where we did not attend-

Colin Uthe:

Okay.

Adam Soliman:

But I think collectively, seven or eight times I've been.

Colin Uthe:

So, you visited there when you were with a different company then? Is that it?

Adam Soliman:

That's correct.

Colin Uthe:

Okay, awesome. Melissa, how often have you visited CES?

Melissa Foley:

Oh, I've been going on and off the last 10, 12 years.

Colin Uthe:

Oh wow, okay.

Melissa Foley:

Yeah, and I'm like Adam. I mean, I think this is my third company to go to CES with, and each one of them did them differently. My first company, that was really the start of home automation and being that affordable product that can go into everyone's home. Then my previous company, we didn't have a booth, but we would go there to network and have meetings and such.

Colin Uthe:

Along with the sales team, I also interviewed Jim and Laura from the Automotive Unit who were there to showcase a more tailored experience with existing and potential vehicle partners.

Jim Trainor:

My name's Jim Trainor, and I'm the senior vice president and general manager of the automotive group.

Laura Crawford:

My name is Laura Crawford. I'm the senior manager of product marketing for the automotive team here at Chamberlain Group.

Colin Uthe:

How many times have either of you been to CES in the past?

Laura Crawford:

So, I've been at CES five times and first time was sort of as a guest of Jim Trainor's. He was bringing me into the automotive team. I was previously in a different group within Chamberlain Group, so this past week was my fifth venture.

Colin Uthe:

And Jim, what about you?

Jim Trainor:

I don't know, I bet it's 15 or 20 times.

Colin Uthe:

Ballpark estimate?

Jim Trainor:

Yeah, and last year it was the first year I wasn't there because I had COVID.

Colin Uthe:

Oh, well, that's a stupid year [inaudible 00:03:14].

Jim Trainor:

That's a good excuse, I guess-

Colin Uthe:

Yeah, that was a good excuse.

Jim Trainor:

To break my streak.

Colin Uthe:

What is CES just at a really high level?

Laura Crawford:

CES is the largest consumer electronic event that there is, it's one of a kind. It is just open to industry professionals that are aligned with the consumer products. So Colin, you couldn't just go off the street and hop into CES, you actually have to be part of the industry. CES really caters to those cutting edge technologies that are being presented to those thought leaders within the consumer electronic space.

Colin Uthe:

So, when did automotive start really having a presence there?

Jim Trainor:

I'd say probably in the last decade.

Colin Uthe:

Okay.

Jim Trainor:

To kind of give an idea of the impact that it had for years, decades, the Detroit International Auto Show, which was the biggest auto show in the US, was held first week in January every year. There was always just a little bit of overlap between CES and the Detroit show.

At that time, I was working for Johnson Controls on the automotive side and we were big exhibitors there. What we saw was from an electronic standpoint, fewer and fewer decision-makers were showing up at the Detroit show and they were all going to CES.

In later years, actual OEMs were deciding not to exhibit at the Detroit Auto Show and they were exhibiting at CES, and then ultimately Detroit decided to change their date to, I think it's in the fall now.

Colin Uthe:

Oh, Detroit moved its marker?

Jim Trainor:

Detroit moved its annual show.

Colin Uthe:

Wow.

Jim Trainor:

Again, it was kind of an iconic show to fall, just because they couldn't compete with CES.

Colin Uthe:

What value does CES bring to the tech industry as a whole?

Adam Soliman:

I think it forces companies to be bold, to maybe bring products or ideas, services to showcase there that they normally would keep in their back pocket or be a little fearful of, but they often bring it there for feedback, for insights and input.

Not everything that shows up at CES makes it to market. In fact, most of what shows up at CES may never even see the light of day from a consumer standpoint, but it's great to generate ideas and iterate and evolve off of what you bring there.

Melissa Foley:

I 100% agree. I mean, it forces the collaboration, and as much as you think about what it does for our own company, I mean, we're always pushing the barriers to say, okay, what do we get to present there? What's going to be new? And is it going to be that spark that gets everybody talking?

That's what you want to bring to this show and that's what everybody's looking for. If you're on the cusp of something, then you're going to get with the right people at the show to say, hey, how can we make this bigger or better?

Colin Uthe:

Why is it important for Chamberlain Group specifically to have a presence at CES?

Laura Crawford:

Oh, I think that's an easy one. We know where our customers are, we know they're used to seeing us every year at CES, and we provide that environment that allows them to come in and have these candid conversations, as well as help us with showing the next gen of our product roadmap.

Colin Uthe:

Is there a competitive atmosphere when you're there?

Adam Soliman:

There definitely can be, thus the reason why some choose to display and have their meetings behind private doors so that there is some confidentiality and protection of those ideas.

Colin Uthe:

This was surprising to me when I first heard it, because I've been to a fair amount of trade shows myself and I had never heard of an exhibitor renting out a private hotel room. It turns out this is quite common with CES, and we happen to be one of those companies that do it.

Jim Trainor:

We exhibit in The Venetian, so we're not in the main convention center, so it's really not easy to get there. The customers who do show up, it's done on a reservation type basis. So they say, "I'd like to come next Tuesday at 2:00." When they get there, they're there with some intent, because it's not like they're casually walking by our booth on the show floor, they're hopping in a cab going across town and then going up 30 floors in The Venetian.

Adam Soliman:

We clear out all the furniture and kind of strip out all the hotel room feel, if you will, and we bring in our own showcase and displays, we bring in our interactive demonstrations. Our marketing team, our trade show team does a great job. We plan for several months leading up to this point, and we roll in with a large setup crew and we transform this hotel suite into our myQ suite.

Colin Uthe:

So I mean, it's got that exhibit kind of feel, it just happens to be in a private setting.

Adam Soliman:

Yeah, exactly. So, we have live interactive demonstrations where our customers can be hands-on with our products. They can play with myQ on some iPad demonstrations that we have set up, they can receive notifications themselves. They're fully engaged in our experience with our products.

Colin Uthe:

Why do we do that as opposed to having a public display on the show floor?

Adam Soliman:

We could have that part publicly displayed and we could get that same type of interaction, but the real difference comes from a few points, I believe. One, we then have nice boardroom tables set up with nice chairs and refreshments, and the ability to let the customers, the partners sit down and relax and have a nice conversation with us.

So while they could get the hands-on portion on the show floor, what they can't get on the show floor that we can offer them in the suite is quiet, a time to sit down, a place to grab a bite to eat and just have true meaningful conversation with us without all the distractions and the hustle and bustle that goes on on the show floor.

Jim Trainor:

Most of our properties are advanced technologies, so it's not set for public consumption. In most cases, all the people who attend our exhibit, we've got NDAs with them, and frankly the ones we don't have NDAs with we limit what they're exposed to when they're in our suite. So, they're highly confidential discussions that are going on with OEMs related to future vehicles.

So for instance, someone from Toyota's probably not going to be comfortable sitting in our booth in a public space surrounded by what could be a bunch of their competitors talking about roadmap technologies with us. So it's highly confidential, but what it does is it allows for really open dialogue.

Colin Uthe:

So, what kind of technology did we show off at the conference this year? Well, it turns out that question is more sensitive than I expected. Like Jim had stated, one advantage of exhibiting in a private room is the ability to show off products and services that only certain customers are allowed to see.

Adam and Melissa gave me a bit of information about our soon to be released video keypad, while Jim and Laura weren't able to go into details on their next gen technology at all, apart from our recently launched integration with Tesla vehicles. I learned that it was less about any one piece of technology and more about how it interacts with our larger myQ environment.

Melissa Foley:

It's really the experience. I mean, what I love about myQ, and people always ask the difference of, hey, what's myQ versus LiftMaster or Chamberlain? myQ is the experience. It's what you get to do with the hardware, it makes it even more magical. So when you walk into this suite and you see all the hardware, but then you say, "Hey, here's what myQ does for you." Whether you're talking about myQ Community, you're talking about myQ Residential, those are all things that you can do with it.

You're now able to see who's standing at the front of your garage through the video keypad, you're able to see who's at the gate with the myQ Community and the new CAPXS. I mean, those are all the things that customers are now able to do with our products that wasn't there in the past. It might have been, "Hey, could I give this to a guest? Could I give this to the plumber that's going to come in?" Those were all things that they like to do, now they have the ability to do it.

Colin Uthe:

I love that word that you used when you were describing the experience, you said it was magical. That's great, because we're a hot new tech company now, we've got cool new stuff that we want to see and it's not just hardware anymore.

Laura Crawford:

I think it's about taking the manual tech out of it and making it this flawless seamless experience, where as a driver, my vehicle's anticipating my next move. So if I am driving into my long driveway, that gate triggers, the garage door triggers, and I haven't taken my hands off my steering wheel.

Jim Trainor:

The timing was super good in that all these programs we have launching, and Tesla launching first of the three, everybody that was looking at that experience, they're kind of going, "Whoa, we need to schedule an update really quick after we launch, because this is a really, really great experience."

Colin Uthe:

I imagine you probably can't get into specifics, but what kind of customers are we meeting in this setting?

Melissa Foley:

This year was a little different. We had a mix of integrators, distributors, we also had a access control platform that we're looking to integrate with, we had single family builders and developers as well.

Adam Soliman:

Yeah, historically it has been a retail suite, we labeled it the retail suite. However, with the advancements we've had in our partners and our new channels that we've been developing, we saw a great opportunity to open up the space to more end users and more partners. In doing so, we're able to serve a much wider audience.

Colin Uthe:

What sort of input or feedback are we looking for from customers when we're showcasing these things?

Adam Soliman:

We are looking to better understand their willingness to partner with us, whether it's to sell hardware through their outlets, whether it's to integrate and provide a better service experience. So depending on the partner or the customer, there's different set of objectives for every meeting.

Laura Crawford:

So when we were showcasing our next gen, our product roadmap, we were truly looking for validation of what we've been hearing, because year to year it continues to get better and better, and we're building it out, but it really is all about getting that validation that this is truly a product that they can see putting inside their vehicle.

Jim Trainor:

What we do is kind of progressive, so when we come up with a new concept, it's very much in the ideation phase the first time our customers see it at CES. It's a rough prototype, it's a lot of smoke and mirrors, but here's what we think the feature should be. They kind of validate, well, yeah, that's good, you should continue down that path, or that's not really something we're interested in.

Year two, it's a little bit more production representative, and this year, we had a couple products that were really ready to be commercialized. The customers came back and in one case in particular said, "You guys have just really done a phenomenal job on this." His comment was, "I wish I would've thought of this."

Colin Uthe:

That's really high praise.

Jim Trainor:

It's great validation, but it's also kind of positive reinforcement to take us into the next development phase, which often has a lot of funding associated with it.

Colin Uthe:

What are we looking for when it comes to other leading tech companies? Are we trying to pick up any information from them while we're there in friendly competition?

Melissa Foley:

Definitely. I mean, so for part of CES, the Sands Convention Center at The Venetian is where all the home automation products are. So when you walk through that space, you're definitely looking to see what's coming from other countries, what our I would say direct competition is doing, but other leaders in that space and you're looking to say, "How are they doing it? How are they connecting? I ran into other customers at that booth." So, you take all that information and say, how does that parlay into what we're trying to do? How do we need recapture that, or how do we need to maybe go somewhere different?

Colin Uthe:

That aligns nicely with what you said earlier, just about how above all you're looking for inspiration too.

Melissa Foley:

Correct. I even look at it, one of the booths that we went to go visit, they didn't have our competitor product in there, but they had a lot of other things, and it makes you think like, "Hey, how do I have multiple partners on the show floor? How can I be present? If I'm going to have my own booth or I'm going to have my own suite, how can I also be present in multiple other booths?" Because that's the impact.

But people see you multiple times, then they say, "Hey, that's a really good thing, I need to be looking more into that." That was kind of the part and piece that I was picking up on was where did I see different companies and multiple facets and say, "Hey, they're a company we need to work with, or, hey, we need to look out for them."

Adam Soliman:

That's a great indication for areas that we should consider getting into further, could lead to other partnership conversations that would be valuable to us. It's interesting to see how that web is put together.

Colin Uthe:

Has our presence evolved in our time that we've spent at CES and showcasing there?

Laura Crawford:

Oh, yeah. I think about the presentation that we put together, we had a ... well, it was a really good overview of what Chamberlain Group was. Now, we're going in and we're showing recent research that we do around consumer behavior in the vehicle. We're showing metrics and we're showing data tabs of really what the performance looks like, so it's so much more geared to each individual customer that comes through and has that meeting set up with us.

Jim Trainor:

I think Chamberlain's first forays were a little bit, let's go check this out and we'll get a suite at the top of the Hilton, but I'd say since about 2016 it's been very purposeful and very focused.

Colin Uthe:

Purposeful, I like that.

Jim Trainor:

Yeah.

Colin Uthe:

Exploratory versus purposeful kind of thing?

Jim Trainor:

Yeah. Yeah, you went in with a plan, you knew what you wanted to accomplish. It wasn't as much, hey, let's check this out and see how we could find value in it.

Laura Crawford:

Yeah, true. When I joined Jim's team, they had a solid game plan down. When I joined I was able to basically pick up that playbook and continue on, and we've had a lot of new people join our team that bring different specialties to the group, and we all know what that playbook looks like.

Jim Trainor:

To your question about how we've changed, when we first started showing up there, we were a new supplier in the industry and there was kind of a, "What are you guys doing here?" We had to kind of justify why we should have a seat at the table. As our credibility's increased over the years and as we've achieved commercial success, it's been a very quick transition, because the automotive industry moves really slow, development cycles are really, really long. To think that this group came together in the middle of 2015 and in December of 2022 we launched a major program with Tesla, that's pretty unheard of.

Colin Uthe:

That's a big shift-

Jim Trainor:

It's a big shift.

Colin Uthe:

And it's good to hear it in context. It sounds like first it was approving ground and now you got people lining out the door.

Jim Trainor:

Yeah-

Colin Uthe:

They want that product.

Jim Trainor:

I mean, we run out of meeting slots.

Laura Crawford:

Yeah, we did. We did run out of time this year, so we'll have to add more days next year.

Colin Uthe:

You need to wear a badge for that. That's awesome, that's really good news.

Jim Trainor:

The first year we'd meet with just about anybody.

Laura Crawford:

Right, right, yep.

Colin Uthe:

That's a really cool feeling.

How have you been feeling our large scale transformation when it comes to showcasing at CES? 'Cause I can tell you've already started to feel it just by the way you're advertising it.

Adam Soliman:

Yeah, it has changed rapidly over the last couple of years where we used to be a retail suite that actually was called Chamberlain, or branded as Chamberlain, now over the last couple of years, two years, you walk in, and this is a myQ suite. The ability to have this be the myQ suite doesn't limit us to a LiftMaster or a Chamberlain piece of hardware.

As myQ cuts across all of these platforms, all of this hardware we can serve to all those audiences. So you'll walk in there and you'll see Chamberlain branded product, you'll see LiftMaster branded product, but the common thread of myQ tying everything together, it's a myQ experience when you come into our suite.

Colin Uthe:

Hopefully it eliminates maybe a bit of confusion too, because I know that that's one of our biggest efforts this coming year is to simplify and get people on the right track, like this is all Chamberlain Group, this is all us.

Adam Soliman:

It helps, they get it. Four or five years ago, we were spending our time in the suite telling our partners and our customers what myQ was or what myQ was going to be. Now they walk in, they know myQ. They're showing us on their phone, they're telling us their use cases, they're telling us how it's impacted their lives personally. So the conversations now have advanced quickly from not what myQ is, but this is what we can do with myQ together and how we can partner to make it even better.

Colin Uthe:

That's very cool, that's very cool.

Adam Soliman:

It's magical, Colin.

Colin Uthe:

It is magical.

Even before asking my guests about our company's transformation to access solutions, I could feel it rippling through these departments like there was an imprint on all of the responses.

The nature of technology, at least in our lifetimes, has been a rapid exponential growth of applications and possibilities. At best, we're all just trying to keep up. I loved hearing that these responses from two groups that were showcasing totally different products still had a rock solid alignment with what Chamberlain Group is setting out to accomplish in the big picture.

While our one team continues to amaze me by carrying out such a strong singular purpose, I was met with four wonderfully diverse answers when I asked each guest what their personal favorite part about CES was.

Jim Trainor:

For me, I've really appreciated seeing the transition of the intent of the show being kind of a cool place where you went and saw gigantic big screen TVs and high-end audio equipment and neat little electronic gadgets, to what's really been in North America, I would say, their premier automotive event from an electronics and technology standpoint.

Laura Crawford:

So my favorite part of CES, what I like about it is the work leading up to it. So what our business unit does is we have a product roadmap and we spend a lot of time refining it, and we have the best opportunity to be able to get our proof of concept in front of our OEM customers, and really be able to have that conversation with them to understand what we're thinking and what we've heard from you, is this really playing out? Is this something that's going to be beneficial to you as you move forward in the coming years?

So I think that's one component, but I mean, I have to tell you, the best part about it is being able to see face-to-face and shake hands, and even some cases hug some of our customers that we've been working with throughout the year. It's a great experience to be able to see upwards most of our customers as well as folks that we hope to be working with in the very near future.

Melissa Foley:

Yeah, from the personal aspect, I go there for just what's new. It's always crazy to walk the whole trade show and kind of see what's happening in the auto side, because they're very forward-thinking compared to what I say is the building industry can be very lagging 10 years or so behind.

So, you can kind of take what's over there and say, "Hey, how is this going to transplant over onto our side?" So, that's really where I do kind of get a lot of great ideas that say, "Hey, what about this? What about that?" And how it translates into the business.

Adam Soliman:

My favorite part about CES is the energy to start the year. I mean, it's a shot in the arm, it's invigorating, and I think it sets a great tone for Chamberlain Group as well as our partners for the rest of the year. Coming off of Christmas holiday and New Years, to then walk into that environment with 100,000+ people, dozens of customer meetings within two or three days, partners all around the world, that's exciting and it's a great way to start the year.

Colin Uthe:

I loved hearing those answers, and personally I can't wait to see what kind of ideas start cooking from the inspiration and relationships created at this year's visit to CES.

Thank you for listening. Tune in next month to hear more stories of how all of us at Chamberlain Group are connected. This episode was written, recorded, and edited by me, Colin Uthe. Our producer is Thomas Missoula. Our music is from Pixabay and soundstrip.com. Special thanks to Cindy Sabin and the Chamberlain Group Corporate Communications team.