Design-Centric Technology is the Prevailing Philosophy for Origin Acoustics

Rob Stott: We are back on the Connected Design podcast and ⁓ let's just talk about it. I'm higher than you guys. You are way higher. And we're in Las Vegas, so it's not that kind of high either. It's not. You are like a good two or three inches above where we are. Well, I wasn't the one that found the furniture, so she's off camera right now, but we can blame Jill. Is that okay? That is totally fine by me. We blame her for a lot of things, so might as well throw that in there too. ⁓ that's awesome. Well, Mr. Mark Fisher. ⁓ president of sales here at Origin and Todd Anderson. ⁓ we just did this director of product experience. So appreciate you both a inviting me in ⁓ to your your home, ⁓ your recently redesigned home, which I'm excited to talk about. ⁓ you know, ⁓ ahead of Infocom here to a a great, exciting, eventful week. ⁓ so thank you. My pleasure. Yeah. Welcome. We have We've been ⁓ working many, many years to get to where we are and we still have many, many more years to go, but ⁓ it is a fun process. We have a a great team of people here in in Vegas that work every single day to come in and ⁓ redesign, re outfit, move things, ⁓ you know, make this place what it is, which is our home. Yeah, and we see them actively doing it, ⁓ which is awesome. I know Todd, we you you took me through a a little bit of a demo here out in the space. ⁓ one that I know you're still fine-tuning because you're like the finishing touches are going on. So talk about ⁓ you've been in this space since you said twenty fifteen, is that right? Roughly we're twelve years in. So yeah, like but a lot going on now to to upgrade it and redesign. So talk us through the the space and what's happening here. Yeah, so we're actually doing quite a big construction project. We're trying to show a lot of the categories that we have. ⁓ we have the architectural, we have the landscape, we have the performance theater products, and we're really trying to give these dedicated spaces. their true space in our showroom. So we've been updating the showroom. It's really nice. We're actually layering control in there now as well. Crestron's been helping us out. ⁓ really excited about that. So full automation, lighting control, shade soon. ⁓ But really what we want to do here is be able to have all of our products at the touch of our fingertips. So if you want to hear one sub with one set of speakers, we can click and pick and do that for our customers coming in. So again, a lot of backbone that needs to go in. Cresttron's helping us out to to do the control layer. ⁓ but yeah, really trying to just show all these categories and and really give the the right view. And when you say t touch like different buttons on a screen, I got I watched you do it, like walk me through the demo of you know, you had pictures of the room that we were in and literally just with the couple taps on your screen of the the speakers in their specific locations w you were able to customize the demo. Talk about the The difference that's not what it used to be, right? So up until recently, talk about what it was like. What it was used to be. Yeah, right. I mean we would be sitting in the theater and ⁓ we would just yell, Yo Todd, and Todd would come running out of the room with like an iPad and his phone in his hand and and we'd flip light switches and tr and try to make things work and and you know, it almost felt like ⁓ a consumer's home where, you know, there's just a lot of remotes and a lot of buttons and a lot of things to to make work and and our industry is about you know, making that simpler for people. We we call it automation, we call it customization, there's ⁓ we call it control, and it's just simplifying the li the life of the technology in people's homes. And we're a piece of that, all right? We're the end result. We're delivering an incredible experience to our customers, and we want to make it as simple as possible. So working with the right partners, like Restaurant in our building, has helped made a huge difference for our our demos. So much so that now ⁓ we ⁓ encourage more dealers to come to our building and we encourage them to bring their customers and see we're in Las Vegas for a reason. It's a lot of fun here. So ⁓ yeah, we we want people to come out and experience what this guy has been working on. Yeah, and it's it's impressive. So talk about that. I know, you know, in in terms of bringing people here, you have a great event planned this week while we're here ⁓ you know with the Crescent team bringing ⁓ some of their dealers in and showcasing this experience that you know they've helped create here. ⁓ you know what's kind of the you talk about a little bit there, but ⁓ the goal of having a space like this, what what's possible for the dealer that comes in? Well you know you look at a lot of the dealers today and some have beautiful showrooms and ⁓ great experiences, but most do not. And we want to help give interior designers, architects, ⁓ builders And dealers themselves a place to bring their customers to experience technology sometimes heard, sometimes seen, sometimes not seen, but allow them to an experience what they can do in their homes. It's nice too when we bring customers into our showroom, it brings them out of the sales situation. If you're in a dealer's showroom, you're in their place. But when they're coming here, they're getting a tour. They're seeing what we do, they're seeing our culture, they're not seeing the product. They're getting an experience of the product in the long run, but that experience is through the tour and the demos. And it's a little bit different. So we find when we get customers coming here, they're ⁓ I didn't think about that product over here. And even if they're not looking for a certain category, they see that category and they think about, ⁓ that might work in my house here or why didn't I think about that? And the projects just grow and it just secures what the dealer already spoke to the customer about. Well and to those experiences, ⁓ Yeah, I I'll I'll walk through, we'll make sure there's video rolling over top of this to kinda showcase what it is. walk us through the different rooms that are in here and kind of the the layouts and and what you guys are trying to to showcase. Yeah, so we have our our main experience center. In our experience center we don't really want to show the products. That's where we have our commercial products that are kinda hidden, ⁓ where you're not really seeing them. We have the pendants and you have a really good coverage of audio, but you don't see exactly where it is. Then we have our architectural audio, that we have our game cave, that's where we have our our games and our pool table, but that's where we have our whole architectural audio line where you can click and pick. Here are the five inch line, the 10 inch line, and then we can go to our in wall architectural line, show the in wall subs. So that's kind of our game cave, if you will. Then you could really change and jump into the theater and see our huge theater products where we have over 40 speakers, 20 peace ⁓ 20 person seat theater, 21 now, ⁓ where you can actually hear and feel like you're in the movies. And then you step into our design center technology room. In that room the products are designed to be heard but not seen. They're supposed to be felt but not visually ⁓ in the way of the home. ⁓ and we work with a lot of architects, builders, designers to to deliver those great products. And from there, where do we go from here? Then we bring ⁓ into the cork room, we call that, but that's where we have a bunch of room treatments. ⁓ room treatments is really nice to show because people think of room treatments as the theater. But a lot of times we have these houses that have glass and all these open areas. So we like to show room treatments in more living room style areas. So we have the cork room with a bunch of different finishes, but that's where we're showing our sound bar solutions. It's always nice to talk about anchored audio. We always talk about the distributed coming from over here, but when you're watching that video, you do want to have the audio coming from the video. So we have a whole line of sound bars that we show ⁓ with two different technologies. ⁓ One with our our origin silk dome and then one with our ambisonic ribbon, ⁓ both for different purposes. and then we bring them back to design services. And design services is where we can actually show the customers home. We take their home, we put the products throughout their home, we can show the dispersion of the products, we can show placement, we do the full design and hand that back over to the dealer so that they can discuss that with the customer back in their own place. And then of course When you jump into the back, which is our warehouse and our design or our actually ⁓ our manufacturing where we d actually build and design a lot of products right here in the USA. Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. And then we kinda wrap it up back in the experience center and we sit down with the customer and go through the design that we did and talk about what they liked and what they want to hear and and go from there. So it's really supposed to be a full experience for the customer. Yeah. I And thankfully I you I joke about the height of the chair that she brought me, but Jill did a phenomenal job walking me through do doing the tour of the space and showing all I got to experience all of that already from the, you know, you mentioned the theater room to the the indoor, outdoor kind of the commercial space that's that's over there. ⁓ I'm glad you keep bringing up ⁓ Mark the ⁓ the design the architects, builders and designers, right? 'Cause it's apparent in a lot of kind of what you've done here in the space. I know online too, ⁓ just browsing your website, you've got a great slogan. ⁓ right when you land on the website about design centric technology. something that's been a b you know obviously a topic of importance to connected design. It's kind of in our name. ⁓ but, you know, the the channel as well, right? About being more connected with the that A B D community. Yep. ⁓ to talk about how that's sort of influenced a lot of what's gone on here lately with Origin. I mean I guess you could say it's a good thing and it's a bad thing. in a way. You know, we're we are audio gurus at heart. And you know what we want are big speakers that move a lot of air. ⁓ we want them to be proud, we want them to be loud, we want them to be visual because audio is supposed to be fun and exciting. but that's not always the case. And it's really based upon the houses that are being designed today. You don't always have the ability to do that. So the goal is to take the technology that we've been working on and building from our founders back in the sixties and seventies. all the way till now is taking that technology and allowing it to work with the environment in the home. And that's taken a lot of work to do, but we've really kind of nailed it down. Yeah. One of my ⁓ favorite examples of this is ⁓ we have our new marquee sub. It's a really powerful sub, two tennis drivers. I mean it really rocks. But we take and we smush that design down and we make the driver fit into a standard two by four stud bait. So you're getting that power, that performance, but you don't have it taken up the whole room. So whether it's something that we're making that's really small just to be background audio or something that's performance, we're taking design no matter what. ⁓ design for installation, design for how it looks when it's done, and designed for how it sounds. Those are all important. Yeah. And I I even think back to walking through the warehouse and seeing ⁓ you know, you you mentioned the manufacturing that goes on here, the the paint colors and ⁓ kinda how custom they can get. Like it it's really wild for me. It's great. It's really a lot of fun. Listen to a creator that we made. I get it, I get it. But like to the grills too, like being able to print screw like things onto the grill like it's wild. Well also too from you guys internally to be able to do all of that. as well has to be like a just a major benefit. It's it's been a challenge. ⁓ it's it's hard. ⁓ doing custom work is hard. ⁓ and you know matching to the ceiling tile or or matching to ⁓ a backsplash or whatever the case may be, it takes a lot of work. ⁓ and what makes all of this click for us is the people. We have you know over fifty people that work here at Origin just in our headquarters here and ⁓ We have a great team. We have a family that work together to try to create ⁓ solutions and great experience for our customers. Yeah, I was gonna say one thing that I really like too about our team is we always like to take it to that next level and make it perfect. ⁓ Bob, our printer, he's been working with us for quite some time, he brought us to us up a grill that, hey, if we just shape the grill a little bit different, I could print all the way to the edges. So we actually went and retooled all of our grills to do that. To make him happy, but also to make it perfect. And it's not something that anybody probably would have noticed, but maybe a designer would. And if we do things right with that passion, it just really follows through into the project. What's sort of been key in in your mind to in order to be more successful or to have, you ⁓ know the designers and and architects out there hear what you're like your message that you're trying to deliver and just work more closely with them. Yeah, it's getting them here. Yeah. We have to get them here. They have to they you have to experience. I mean, let me show you how this sounds is very hard to do. Let me write it down and tell you how it sounds is very hard to do. out of everything in the home that is put in, we're the only thing that can create an emotional experience. We're something that people here and it changes the way you feel. It's very hard to do that on paper. It's hard to do that on a webinar. The only time you can really do it is in a real listening experience. So we are selling fun. I mean that's that's what we do. We manufacture products that deliver fun to people's homes. So to all the interior designers, the dealers, the architects, the builders, everybody that's in this business that wants to truly ⁓ engage and have it a part of their home, you have to go experience it in the location. Yeah. And I know too, ⁓ part of that is you guys getting out there as well, right? NKBA was a new ⁓ the the Builders Week. So what was that experience like? ⁓ well I wasn't there. Were you there? ⁓ I wasn't there. Well what have you heard? What have you heard about that experience? And let's face it, we're a very, very small part of what goes into the home. When you look at it a total home build, we're a small percentage. But what's interesting is we're the percentage that is fun and is creative. Has the most impact on it. Has the most impact. So trying to change that that mentality of a builder's mind or a designer's mind, you know, they want to sell houses. And they want comfortable sofas and they want every and beautiful artwork and ⁓ you know great designs. We're we're a tiny little piece of that. You know, Todd talked earlier about acoustics. Can I tell you how many times we've been in a room and it's a high vaulted ceiling with glass and and they go, All right, this room's gonna be the theater. And you're like, ⁓ how are we gonna make this work, right? Because they don't they don't really think about that. And and everybody listening to this would even know what it's like to walk into a restaurant. And try to have a conversation with your better half and you can't hear them because it's too loud, right? you know, the the noise in a home and how how it makes you feel, you know, it's the same as the the lighting is so important when you're in the home, how the light makes you feel at night. Yeah. Sound is the same way. Is is the room loud when you walk through it? Do people hear you? Do you want to feel ⁓ Soft and easy or do you want it to be hard and crisp, right? Those are things that that we can help control. Yeah. Speechless. Speechless you covered it. Cool. Well I again, I d I know, you know, I am sort of like standing between you and some food, so I don't wanna keep you guys too long. ⁓ but you know what's ⁓ What's next? You know, what what kind of things are are you guys y you know, I know we're sitting here ahead of Infocom, ⁓ but what what's coming down the line that you can talk about that people should be excited about? I can't talk about it, yeah. But I can tell you that you absolutely need to come to CDA. Yeah. ⁓ I can tell you that we are going to be ⁓ showing and releasing some new ⁓ products and or categories ⁓ that ⁓ will blow your mind away. ⁓ it's gonna light up your world. So I strongly suggest that you make your way out to CD this year. It's in Denver. One last time. One last time. One last time. we invest strongly into our dealers. And by investing strongly into dealers, you have to invest into the trade organizations that help make those those show make the our or our industry better. And so we invest heavily into the show. And ⁓ if you don't have a a CDIA coupon to get in, let us know. ⁓ we'll get you one. But definitely make your way out. Awesome. Cool. Well Mark, Todd, this was a awesome. I look forward to seeing you both in Denver. ⁓ you can look down at us. Yeah, right. I'm gonna Jill, bring make sure this this stool comes with you guys so we can do this. No, this was awesome. So I appreciate appreciate the time at your facility and checking this place out. It was a lot of fun. ⁓ and like yeah, look forward to catching up down the line. Absolutely. Go birds. Hey, go birds.