HomeTech.fm - Episode 236 - Projects Project with James Ratcliffe of Homeplay

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

On this episode of HomeTech: We are joined by James Ratcliffe, owner of Homeplay, for a special edition of our “Projects Project”. A custom integration company based in the UK, Homeplay just wrapped up construction on a stunning new showroom. James join us to discuss their beautiful new facility which features the latest in high-end home technology solutions. Tune in to hear about this unique and challenging project!

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by listeners like you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, November 30th, 2018. I'm Seth Johnson. And this week, I was sick. So this week, I can hear my voice coming back, but I couldn't sit down and record the show as we normally do. So Jason stepped up and was able to get on the phone with a friend of the show, a good friend of the show, James Radcliffe over there in the UK, and talked to him about a showroom project

that he has been working on for quite some time. If you've listened to the show for a while, you probably remember us hilariously picking a rendering version of his project and thinking that it was something real. Like, look, check out this really awesome showroom. Well, it turns out that was a render, but when he finished, the showroom looks just as good as the rendering. I mean, it definitely looks better than the rendering. So lots of cool things he's done in the showroom. So

let's go ahead and jump in to that interview. But one quick thing before we do jump in. There were some weird audio issues that we had with Jason's mic this week. I've never heard this audio issue before, and I know Jason's never heard it before. But it was very strange, and it ended up on the recording. So sorry about that. We'll try and dig down and figure out what was going on with that for the show next week. So without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into the interview with James Radcliffe of Homeplay. Hey, James, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm all good. Thanks very much. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Appreciate you joining us here. I know it's a little bit late where you are over

there in the UK, but we're excited to have you on for an installment of our projects project. And I would say this is a pretty special installment. We've been watching your development of this new showroom that you guys have over there in the UK, and it has come together very, very nicely from what I can tell by the pictures in the videos. So congrats on finishing that project. And we're going to talk all about it and jump into some of your trials and tribulations and the different technology that you have running that showroom there. But for the benefit of our listeners, before we jump into that, why don't you give us just a quick personal introduction?

Yeah, sure. So I've been in the home tech industry since I was 14. I'm 38 now. So that's half my life. Is it? No, it's more than that. My maths is really bad. No, it's a lot more than that. My maths is so bad, but it's a lot. It's a long time. It's a long time. Let me edit this out. So I got a job in my local hi-fi shop when I was 14 because I was really into music. And I thought the best way of me getting a really good hi-fi system was to be able to buy a trade price in the hi-fi shop and earn

the money while I was working there, learning about speakers and stuff. And I stayed there at the same hi-fi shop until I was 24. So 10 years. So to be working somewhere for 10 years at the age of 24, I imagine is quite rare. And so, but I learned loads and I,

I loved it. It was a, it was an old fashioned high five shop, like sack them high, sell them cheap. So we were all about, we were dirty discounters. But it was,

it was a fun time with a really good bunch of people. And, and, and I learned a lot there and about 18 years old we started doing installations and at the time it was when people were starting to come into the shop with printouts from Google saying can you match this price so like the end of box shifting basically and um um so i started doing some installations and before long my little bit of the company uh doing the installs was was earning more than the three shops that we had which wasn't hard because they were all losing

money um so it wasn't a high bar i had to to meet. Um, and the boss of the company just said, Hey, look, like retail is kind of dead. Um, installations are obviously the way to go. And, uh, he, he plowed a load of money into building what the time was an amazing showroom. Um, and I was running it, um, at the tender age of about 21, 22. So I had a few people working under me, some of which were a lot older than me. And frankly, I wasn't really ready for it. So it didn't, I'll be honest, it wasn't a stellar success. But I certainly learned a lot.

And about that time, I joined the board of Cedia. I was 24 years old. I think at the time, I was the youngest board member in the world. I think I still may be even now. You may still hold that title? Possibly. Don't hold me to that. But yeah, it may well be the case. And then while I was on the board, I met another guy who I got on super well with. And I went to work for him for six months, but it didn't really pan out. And then I started home play. And I had about 700 quid pounds that is for in the bank and and i thought someone rang me up um on my mobile saying they wanted a home cinema system and and i just thought well geez i could either give this to my boss or i could just do it myself and go and buy all the stuff um and i did

my first install and uh at the back of of my Ford Focus with the back seats down. Very good. Um, and it sort of went from there really. And then I, you know, sold some more stuff, took on some people and, uh, yeah. And then that was 13 years ago. So, okay, cool. That was going to be my next question. So you've, you've had home play as your business now for 13 years.

And as I alluded to, obviously you're here on the show to talk about this beautiful new showroom that you have put in place. But actually, where I think we should start, James, is before that and immediately before, what was the iteration of your physical space? Were you in this same building? Did you remodel? Did you end up getting a new space? Where was HomePlay at before this same building? Did you remodel? Did you end up getting a new space? Where was home play at before this remodel? And what was sort of going through your mind as you decided to

embark down this extensive journey of building the showroom out? So we've been in this building for six years now. We've just signed a new 10-year lease. I did have the opportunity to buy it a couple of years ago. And for some bizarre reason, I didn't. I really wish I had done. But anyway, so the reason we're in this building was because about six years ago, I sold half of the business to two of my best customers um the plan was that we we had a lot of big plans um they had tons of money these guys um but what i really needed was time and help not really money um so i i ended up giving them back the money they gave me for the business and took the shares back so i still have 100 of the company now,

or 100% of the debt actually now. And now, but the upshot of that was that we ended up with quite a big office space, about 2000 square feet that really we didn't need because we had all these grand plans that didn't really come off. So we've had a big space, but we did get a good deal on it. So it's been quite serviceable financially for six years.

And about a year ago, I sort of thought, well, it'd be nice to have a home cinema demo room to be able to show people what we can do. And then I sort of thought, well, it would also be nice to have you know have a couple of media room setups and lighting's a pretty big part of what we do too so maybe we could do some of that and it and it sort of sprawled from being a corner of the office into well now it's like most of the office so we're all crammed into a little space at the end of the office now we're doing

all our work and rack build and stock and all that sort of stuff in there um so we're used to being in 2 000 square feet now our office is well about a third of that now um but the plan is to turn that into a um a design only office and then get a separate unit on the industrial estate we're on for rack build and stock and stuff. Got it. Yeah, it is, you know, it looks like it was obviously a very big project and the results are amazing. We'll share out some links to videos and pictures that you have up on your website, homeplay.tv slash experience. Looks like the URL for that. And people can take a look at the end.

Again, before we jump into the tech, I want to circle back and just talk about the mentality to make that decision. You know, Seth and I are both former integrators. We've got a lot of integrators who listen to the show and everybody familiar with the industry, I think, is aware of this sort of debate that's going on about, do you really invest big in a showroom or do you keep that minimal and spend that money elsewhere? And I've heard both sides of that argument. And clearly, you've made a big bet here on the value of having a showroom and having a place that clients can come and experience that technology firsthand. What's your rationale behind that? I mean, why do firsthand. What's your rationale behind that? I mean, why do you think it's worth making that investment?

Yeah. Um, I mean, I, to me, it's, it doesn't really feel like a gamble. It's like face smackingly obvious to me that now you can buy all this stuff, um, in Best Buy and you can buy Nest cameras and Sonos speakers and all that kind of stuff. None of it is, I don't think, particularly impressive. It's really hard to impress people. I remember five years ago when we were selling Sonos with Napster and I would type any song, you know, I would give the controller to a client and say, type in any song you like

and it'll play. They were like, wow, that's amazing. But now you do that and they're like, yeah, whatever, show me something else. People are used to being able to control their lights with their phone and whatever. Peter Aylip from Archimedia summed it up really well. He said that the analog is, is where the money is. I don't think he phrased it exactly like that,

but that's how I see it. Digital stuff, stuff that just switches on and off, you know, hue lights and, and all that kind of stuff is, is, is, is so it's just everywhere now.

Um, whereas it's very difficult to actually show someone amazing sound and amazing picture and, and beautiful lighting. I don't think that, you know, Philips Hue is kind of nice in where it sits in the market, but it certainly wouldn't work in a luxury home. And so that's why we decided to spend the money, really, because we wanted to create a really wow experience, which I think is what we've done here. Yeah, I would agree. I think that there's a lot of commodity technology out there now, and it's really important to be able to educate consumers about what is different and what is better about working with a professional, because there certainly are differences in performance and

installation and service and all of that that go with it. And sometimes having a physical space to go experience that is really critical to driving that point home. So that makes a lot of sense. Let's jump in now and talk about some of the stuff you have going on in this space. And like I said, we'll include a link in our show notes to some pictures and video that you can go check out. Pictures obviously being worth a thousand words, but we want to hear some of the backstory about this and design decisions and particular challenges that you may have run into with putting this space together. And where I want to start, maybe on the technology spectrum in terms of complication,

maybe on the lower end, but beautiful showpiece right there in the video thumbnail when you go to the website, you've got this HomePlay logo embedded in this, it looks like landscaping basically on the wall, a really cool piece. and it looks like you've got some landscape audio integrated into that and just talk about that walk our listeners through what the thought process was there it's a really amazing looking piece as as presumably as you walk into the showroom yeah well we wanted we work with an interior designer um who's local to us but is really well regarded um in london uh called hill house um and we work with some projects on them and uh they they suggested that living wall as the sort of centerpiece as you walk in um and so i can't take credit for that as much as i'd like to but

it was all their idea and i'm really pleased with the way it's worked out and and when they they showed me a picture of it and their kind of mood boards and I was like oh that'd be cool we could put some speakers in there because it's uh it looks gardeny and then we sort of turned the entrance area into a yeah into a sort of a bit of a garden theme so we've got um yeah some triad uh landscape speakers and an in-ground subwoofer and a tree and some up lights and stuff just to but it's uh just because it it softens the place a bit a bit of greenery um yeah sure it's uh no i'm super pleased with it and everyone comments on it when they come in oh yeah i have to imagine i mean it's a striking piece. And I think to use that to sort of advertise or make people aware of what's possible with landscape audio these days is cool. I know that's a growing category and integrators love it because there's good margin on it and it installs easily and it adds a ton of value and enjoyment to the space.

And so it's a great category to sell. And I know that end users and consumers really like it because it's something sort of new that they haven't seen before. And the ability to put these landscape audio systems out in bigger living areas and really have that audio seamlessly integrated into an outdoor living space is really, really cool. And I know every client that I ever did that for really loved it. So I think it's cool that you guys have decided to showcase it in that way. Yeah. And also, it's always what we were thinking when we were doing the whole place is it's always women that we're trying to sell to. Guys come in here and they're you know they're itching for big tvs and speakers and stuff um so we really wanted to make the space really uh just

really stunning and beautiful to make it look like uh you know a luxury home um not just in terms of the tech but in terms of the finishes um and the furniture that's in here so yeah we worked with um uh we partnered with a furniture company that we work with on lots of projects um and they're using it as their showroom as well so they put in tons of amazing furniture that frankly i would never have been able to afford um but because they're using it as their showroom as well they were prepared to make an investment so we've got i don't know couple of hundred thousand pounds worth of furniture in here that, that, um, that just looks, it really makes the play. Yeah. That's great. No, that's, that's great that you could find that synergy. And,

and I think it's a, it's a, a testament to the quality of, of the, of the place that you'd put together, uh, that you've put together here, that they would put that sort of investment into the space. And I agree, it represents, it really does look like a living space. Like it doesn't look like a space that's meant to put technology first. It looks like a space that's meant to put living first and show how technology can sort of integrate into that in a relatively seamless way, if that makes sense. So, you know, moving on from

the specifics of the landscape audio piece, talk about what you did for audio throughout the rest of the space. I'm assuming maybe a fairly standard distributed audio system in there. Did you do anything else like invisible speakers or anything along those lines? Yeah, we've got a lot of plastering stuff in here um so we've got um hidden subwoofers plastering amina speakers um there's uh there's 50 i think it's 57 speakers in the whole space but you you really have to look pretty hard to see any of them um so uh yeah we've got subwoofers hidden in the wall yeah plastering speakers we've got speakers in the wall and the ceiling all the grills have been painted to match the wall coverings as well so they really blend in nicely one of my favorite bits is we worked with the furniture company to

make a you may have seen on the video it a sliding panel mechanism. So it's a future automation mechanism that's pretty off the shelf, where a wooden panel slides back and then up to reveal a TV. But we took it a step further by integrating speakers into the wood veneer of the wood veneer of the cabinet so we've got a full 5.1 surround sound system hidden within a piece of furniture so you've got left speaker to the left of the screen the center speaker is the the new sony acoustic surface i think they call it tv actually has a center channel input on it so it's got a tv with binding posts on it which is kind of nuts um but it works as a center channel in a surround sound system so you've got a left speaker to the left of the tv built into the wooden piece of furniture um the center speaker and then the right speaker um so it's totally invisible when it's not being used as a TV,

but it sounds really amazing. We've paired that up with a triad sub that's also hidden in the ceiling. And that's probably the one that gets the best reactions whenever anyone comes here. That's the one that they tend to be blown away by most. Yeah. I do remember seeing that on the video and walk the listeners through a little bit of, in layman's terms, how that works. If people aren't perhaps familiar with what's possible, using motorized lifts to move things around and unveil TVs.

This is a really, really cool example. I have to imagine a whole lot of project management went into getting this to come together the way it did. And it turned out beautiful, but talk our listeners through a little more specifically how that, how that experience works when you walk up and you hit the button. What happens? Well, we're a control for business. Basically our whole business is really based around control for, and we're a control for business basically we our whole business is really based around control for and

we're a control for certified showroom so it's uh it's super easy you just use the control for remote to turn it on you hit watch you select what you want to watch and it comes on but that is obviously there's a there's a ton of stuff going on in the background but really all we do to make the the future automation mechanism do its thing is just flick a relay or send an RS-232 code. I can't remember the exact details. Sure, but more generally, talk about how the – physically in the space, what do you see? Like the panels moving off and the TV, I notice, sort of pops out, I think, a little bit from behind the paneling. It's a really, really cool install.

Yeah, so there's one wooden panel that moves backwards and then up and then hides within the cabinet, and then the TV sort of slides forward and then fills in the space that is left by the panel that was there before. It's kind of hard to explain. Really, it's the sort of thing you need to see that's really why we built the place because uh this was always my issue i'd i'd go out to someone's house and i'd tell them about all the amazing stuff we could do i'd be waving my arms around like crazy and then they'd be looking back at me kind of blankly saying i don't get it james and and that was that that was why we built the place because everything we do, as I say, it's so experiential.

And frankly, because this is so unique, we can charge a lot of money for it. It's not something that you can just go to Best Buy and buy. And you can't say, hey, other dealer, can you price match me one of these cabinets? Because there's a lot of time and effort and research and planning that goes into making a cabinet like that. And not everyone can do it. And that's really what enables us to charge more money than our competitors. Yeah. And I would echo that. I mean, I think you're even putting it lightly, having project managed for many, many years in the high end space, I, I look at a lift like that. And like you said, James listeners should go check out the video

to see this lift. But I just, every time I see something like that, the first thing that jumps to my mind is that must have been a big, big project management task to make that come together the way it did. So I would encourage people to go check that out. It's really, really cool. Staying on the audio video theme here. I know you've got a, it looks like a dedicated theater in the space. Talk, talk about what you did in that room. Yeah, that's right. So we've got a pretty small room by kind of cinema standards, but we specifically didn't want to make it massive because we wanted to show people that you don't need a huge room to have a really amazing experience and the room is i'm gonna have to do it in um in in in metric is it's about three and a half meters wide by five and a half meters long um uh forgive me so our listeners will be able to do some math. Yeah. So it's not a big space. It's probably the size of a decent sized spare bedroom or a garage or something like that, a small garage.

But the whole end of one wall is a screen. We've got quite a low ceiling in there. And this is how, you know know it's very rare you get a perfect room to build a cinema there are always constraints that you have to work within in in here we because of the the way the building's made up we've got a lot of beams that go across concrete beams that made the whole ceiling had to be quite low um so that presented some challenges with how to get a projector in there so we ended up using a special mirror lift so the the projector actually lives up in the ceiling um which is great because it keeps the noise of the projector out of the room so that's another distraction out of the way because no one wants to sit right next to a

noisy fan of a projector you know quite seen in a in a film it can be really distracting and it raises the noise floor of the room which means that you need more power and all that kind of thing so um we have um so the projector lives up in the ceiling fires onto a set of two mirrors um that motorize down out of the ceiling and then back onto the screen so the projector is actually facing away from the screen in the ceiling um and oh interesting we had to install uh an air conditioning system just specifically for the projector um to keep it cool because obviously projectors get pretty hot. And having it up in the ceiling void, it wouldn't have lasted very long without any cooling.

So that was fun, sorting that out. And then when we did fire it all up, we realized that our air conditioning system was actually really loud. It sounded like a jet engine. So then we had to work out how to get these great big one and a half meter long silencers installed to keep the noise down. So, I mean, that's just custom installed. You know, projects like that are always complicated and you're always coming up against things that the actual mirror lift itself is practically a prototype, actually. So we went through a bit of pain getting that in. things that uh the actual mirror lift itself is practically a prototype actually so um we uh we

went through a bit of pain getting that in um there's there's just but it's fun you know it's what it's what makes coming into work every day fun and um and as i say it's what enables us to to charge more money than if we were just installing a you know a sonos play base with a samsung telly stuck on top of it. Right, right. Because that's very easy to do, and there's a limit to what you can charge for doing that. And really, that's the whole ethos of the business, really,

is we do complicated, difficult stuff, but we charge a lot of money to do it. Yeah, yeah, as you should. I'll go back to what i said about the tv lift you know any anytime you've got custom work and you've got audio visual components it's literally lifting in and out of the structure of the building and all the cooling require requirements and everything that comes with that it is no small feat to make a space like that come together. So, so kudos to you for seeing it through. I know that that's a, again, the project manager is listening to all of this and, and just, uh,

you know, totally empathizing, right? Yeah, no, it was, it was, there were moments where I just thought, Oh man, what have I done? Cause I'm um i remember sending an email out to all my customers saying hey everyone um we're building a new experience center this was in january so we're building a new experience center you got to come down and see it should be ready about march um but of course yeah we didn't actually end up finishing it until uh late october there you go it was but it was for many reasons because I just sort of started, I made it more and more complicated. Every night after work, I would come in here and stand and look around and sort of think, how can we change this? And how can we make that better?

And it was that iterative process that made it as good as it is. If we had just finished it in March, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as cool as this because it takes time to sort of, you know, just to mull things over and look at things in different ways and think how the space could work. And that's a problem that we come across a lot on projects where someone will buy a house or an apartment and they'll want it turned around really, really quickly because they want to be in for Christmas or, you know, a birthday or whatever it is, some event.

So they're pushing everyone on the project to get everything finished really quickly. And you don't have a sort of the proper lead in time to be able to design the project properly. And they end up, you know, with a higher bill than they would have done and a project that isn't as good as it could have been if the design team had had the time to work on it properly. So I was really glad to be able to take my time. We were lucky that we were able to do that. And I'm pleased that we did because it's way better

than I'd originally set out to make it. Yeah, well, it looks great. And speaking of the look of the overall space, I want to shift gears here and make sure we protect some time to talk about lighting, because as I look through the pictures of the space, one of the things that jumps out at me in almost every picture is the number of loads of lighting and the different styles of fixtures that you have in there. And I see backlighting on this paneling, and I see lighting on the shelving and all of that strip lighting, different fixtures. And it's clear that a lot of

thought went into the lighting design of the space. And I think that's one of the things that people really underestimate is how much work goes into designing the lighting fixture specification. And then of course, most specifically to where the technology aspect or the control aspect, I should say, comes in is figuring out all the different load types and how to integrate that and what's your control mechanism. So just talk about the overall lighting that you have going on in the space. What are you out all the different load types and how to integrate that and what's your control mechanism so just talk about the overall lighting that you have going on in the space what are you guys using uh to drive all of that and what was the kind of overall thought process behind what you wanted to do with lighting yeah so um well the lighting is on some projects it's getting towards being 50

of our business now between that's lighting controls that's keypads, dimmers, control gear, and shading, so blinds, curtains, that sort of thing, and the actual fixtures and fittings themselves. the whole lighting system end to end um not just because we make more money but because it means that we we get to control the whole thing so we can we can guarantee that the quality of the light and and the quality of the dimming um and the the way that the whole the whole overall thing looks so we really wanted to go to town with the lighting on here and really make it stand out um also because it's the thing that will it comes from another budget in a project um av you know might not get the same budget as uh as lighting does so it enables us just to sort of raise our ticket price on a job. Right. Because we're, we're getting, you know, we're getting a piece from another,

another pie on the project as it were. Yeah. Yeah. So you got, you mentioned there, do you guys actually do the, the fixtures? I know a lot of integrators will do the control, but yeah, not, not as many more are starting to get into it, but it sounds like you guys are, have jumped into doing fixtures. How is that part of the business working out? No, absolutely. It's a key part. And one of the things that we're able to demonstrate here is one of my favorite bits, actually, is over in our kind of lighting design corner where we've got various different types of lighting effects um we've got some cool track lighting and different types of down lights just

showing different beam angles and color temperatures and some beautiful plaster in floor washers just to kind of get people sort of you know just just to show them some ideas and uh and and show them some of the cool stuff we can do i mean all over the showroom there are lots of cool examples of lighting but focus in this particular corner we we've got two vases of flowers, each with a downlight above them. One of them is a, it's a probably, it's the best downlight that you can get in screw fix here.

Screw fix is, I guess like, I don't know, target maybe I'm not too up on my american ah okay yeah um yeah but it's um so it's a it's like a 30 pound downlight what's that uh sort of 40 downlight something like that so it's not a cheap downlight but um but it's the one that if you ask your builder for a nice downlight it's probably the one that you're going to get it's probably even better than the one that you'd end up getting um so we've got that next to one of our downlights um and and it's a it's an amazing demonstration mainly because of

not just the the brightness and the luminance that comes out of our downlight compared to the the sort of the builder downlight but the the color rendering. So the color rendering of the builder down light, although it's known, it says on its spec that it's high CRI, it's actually about 85 out of 100. So the color rendering index goes from zero to 100. 100 is sunlight. Sunlight's like the gold standard for humans in light. So, you know, if you want to see what something looks like you like a fabric looks like you take it outside and see what it looks

like in the sunlight so 85 out of 100 is pretty good and it's better than a lot of led lights that are out there but our light next to it is 98 out of 100 and and the difference between 85 and 98 is really stunning um it's an amazing demonstration it's one of the the best things in here so you've got these these two vases one looks kind of dead and lifeless um and the other one looks like it's in sunlight basically yeah very cool yeah and of course all our clients houses are full of beautiful artwork and beautiful fabrics and wall finishes and furniture and people of course there's people in there as well and they look better lit up by nicer lights um so being able to show people the difference between a 30 40 pound down light and a 100 pound down light is really critical.

Because if I just turn up at someone's house and say, hey, we've got these great down lights, they're three times the price of the down light that you're going to buy. Otherwise, they look at you like you're a mentalist. So if we can actually show them the difference,'s, who's in the market for that kind of product, we'll just buy it. There's no, you just wouldn't want the lesser, the lesser quality like, um, so that's really effective. Um, yeah, I can imagine. And the difference is pardon the pun is probably night and day, uh, when you can see it in person. It is a stunning difference.

It even comes out in a photo, actually. It really is. It's one of the things. I wasn't sure how well it was going to work as a demonstration, but when we first fired it up, I was like, oh, yes, that is awesome. We're going to sell a lot of downlights. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what do you guys, if you don't mind me asking,

what fixture types are you guys selling is it is it lutron stuff um no no um they're expensive they're not that expensive um no it's uh got it no they're a british brand um called okay or luna um and and you know you tend to find them in um you know nice hotels and high-end residential, basically, but they're only really specified through specialist lighting designers, and they're a great company. They do a ton of different variants. You can get beautiful frameless plaster in ones.

You can get them in bronze or gold or whatever you like. They're all custom built um but the other key thing is that they they work they use um an amazing brand of driver called eldo led who make the best drivers um for control uh with dali which is um the light system that we use in conjunction with lutron so dali for those who haven't come across it, is the digital addressable lighting interface. So rather than using conventional dimming, the intelligence, if you like, is built into the driver

that lives next to the light in the ceiling. So it means that you've got a lot less equipment at your head end, so you don't have to have big racks of dimmers um you have uh much less cabling it's much easier to wire um you get way better quality dimming as well much smoother dimming um and a lot more flexibility as well because each light is individually addressed you can change how lights are grouped together within a room and it's very easy to add in extra lights as well. So if we decide we want to put in a, you know, an extra strip of linear lighting somewhere or whatever, we can just tap off, um, the circuit that's in there, which you just couldn't do with conventional,

um, sort of resistive dimming. So. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big, big difference. The independently addressable light lighting control is for those who may not be familiar, is really a game changer, I would say, in terms of the flexibility, especially in addition to the other reasons you cited. But, you know, when it comes to, quote unquote, more traditional lighting control methods, you really had to have everything very tightly planned out early in the project, relatively early in the project in terms of, okay, what lights are going to be grouped together on what load, right? And with digitally addressable lighting, I understand you get a lot more flexibility in terms of figuring out, okay, when I push this button, what do I want to happen? And that's a big deal. That's a very big deal, especially on these luxury projects where people get into the home and they've spent a lot of money not just on the technology but on the home as a whole. And they want to have that flexibility and the ability to get sort of creative, I guess, about how things are controlled and grouped together. And my understanding is Dolly and other technologies like that are really making that a lot easier. Yeah, yeah.

No, it's a great way of doing it. And that's by far our preferred way of dimming. I think we've only got three circuits of sort of conventional dimming in the whole place. And that's just a couple of chandeliers that we've got and pendants that that require it so no it's um it's great and and also just the the the way that you can dim right down to one percent just to a tiny tiny just less than a candle light um which um which is very difficult to do with a with a conventional dimmer and also just dimming linear led as well linear led or led strips is it's very difficult to get a really nice smooth um smooth dimming and other just we we just pay so much attention to

all of the uh the say the linear strip that we use um has super tiny led dots or actual led chips within it and they're really tightly packed um it's about 20 watts a meter so it's really bright it's really nice warm color temperature um and it's high cri as well but because we're everywhere it's all in a in a proper diffuser um so you don't get none nowhere in here can you see any of that horrible kind of hot spotting that you tend to see with LED tape. And also there's no shadows either. Quite often with linear LED, you end up with horrible wavy shadows where it hasn't quite been installed right or designed right. So in a ceiling coffer, you up with a a very uneven looking light we've got none of that in here because it because it was all designed and thought through right right from the

beginning right and and just being able to show people that and um it is really powerful because everyone has seen you know horrible led strip with with all the dots and everything you know people have these days that led strips so evasive it's just everywhere and everyone has seen that and we can show people that uh with a bit of planning and using the right equipment and the right people we can make sure that doesn't happen in their house yeah yep and i think that's a great uh a fantastic example lighting in general but that in particular is a great example. And what you talked about with the flowers that you have set up and seeing the different color rendering. Great example of where experience really matters, right? And that's where having a showroom is irreplaceable because you can try to explain this stuff all day and do like what you jokingly said and sort of wave your arms around and try to explain things. But

it's totally different when people can come in and experience it. So definitely, again, we're running up against our time, but would encourage people to go take a look at the pictures in the video, and we'll have those up in our show notes. James, I want to start to wind down the conversation by asking you, like, what would you say going into the project, or I should say, looking back at the project, rather, what would you say was was the biggest challenge or sort of unexpected obstacle that you had to that you had to overcome? Paying for it. That's simple, right? Call it a wrap. yeah yeah well because we i originally set out a budget at the beginning and we ended up spending three times what i'd set out so oh wow yeah so well

we had some cash in the business and um and uh but yeah i ended up uh having to go uh and borrow some money if we didn't have a decent credit rating, it could have put us under, to be quite honest. Wow. But I really do feel it's so well worth it. We're absolutely inundated with leads at the moment and we've got great interior designers that are starting to sort of flock here

because they know that if they come here they can i think we're taking home technology from being a necessary evil to for interior designers um to being absolutely necessary um no interior designer is a fan of tvs like they're just you know the av guys always a pain in the ass. But I think, you know, they're starting to get it and they're like, Oh wow. You know, these guys really know what they're doing and we want, and we want them involved in our project. So it's no, it's brilliant. I'm super glad we did it. I think I, yeah,

I'm absolutely, I've done a few business things in my life that I've sort of in the back of my mind, I thought, Hmm, is that really going to work? But with this, I just feel like absolutely. I just know it's going to work. Well, it already is. It's, it's, I'm super pleased. Yeah. Well, that's great.

I agree. And I think the space came together even more beautifully than the renderings, which by the way, I can't wind down this interview without hearkening back to a little bit of a laugh that we've had on the show, because as listeners to the show might know, we do our pick of the week every week. And gosh, this must've been months and months ago. I don't even know how long, but you had put up some, some, some 3d renderings of the space and Seth had found them. And the 3d renderings were so good that we literally thought they were pictures of the, of the finished space. And so we talked about it on our, on our pics of the week and you were like,

yeah, that was actually not the finished product, but, but thanks for the shout out. So anyways, the, you know, the good news is those looked great. The finished product looks even better. So congratulations on, on getting this, this project buttoned up. And I really hope that it, that it pays dividends for you. It sounds like it already is. And if you've got designers and architects sort of flocking to the space, I mean, that's, that's really the goal in a showroom, I would say, for what you're doing. And so congratulations on getting this finished up. If any of our listeners wanted to find out more about it or connect with you to ask a couple of follow-up questions, what would be the best way for them to do that?

I'm not that good at social media, actually. You can just email me. Instagram and all that is something I've done. Or become a patron and jump into the hub, right? You're one of our most active. Yeah, you can do that. That is one thing I spend way too much time in there. But yeah, you can just email me, jamesathomeplay.tv,

and I would be delighted to talk to anyone about this because it's been a lot of fun, and I like talking about nerdy stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm sure you've got a sympathetic audience here, and James, we do appreciate you taking some time out of your day to join us and keep us posted on how the showroom treats you, and we really appreciate you coming on. Great.

No, thanks for having me on. It's been great. All right. Thanks, James. Take care. And that wraps up the interview. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found at our show notes at hometech.fm slash 236.

While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis as well as other industry news that may not have made the show, especially this week. A lot going on, but we're kind of taking a week off. You know, Lowe's kind of getting rid of virus. That's kind of a big story. So we're going to have to come back and get to that one. Don't forget, you can join us in our chat room, usually live Wednesday starting 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern.

You can find out more. Go to hometech.fm slash live. No pick of the week or mailbag this week. But if you do have feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or any other great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form. And lastly, we want to give a big thank you to everyone who does support the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page.

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in the showroom. That is a beautiful piece, and I'm kind of bummed out I was too sick to even stay awake through the interview to be there for it. Really bummed out. I was too sick to even stay awake through the interview to be there for it. So really bummed out about that. But hopefully we'll get back on the show next week. I'm not sure that's going to happen. I'm out of town. Jason's out of town. But if we do manage to get a show to you next week, it'll be there in the feed over at hometech.fm. Thanks very much for listening tonight, and we'll talk to you later.