Savant Taps Ex-Barnes & Noble CEO to Lead Foray Into Mass-Market Retail
Former Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch joined Savant Systems as CEO, the company said Tuesday. Savant founder Robert Madonna, who held the CEO position since 2005, was named chairman of the privately held company.
Lynch is joining Savant as the home automation company is expanding from the high-end niche it occupied since its beginning as an iOS-based control company to its emerging phase as a supplier of smart home technology to a mainstream customer base. Savant plans to launch a mass-market smart home system this spring, and Lynch, who was behind Barnes & Noble’s entry into the digital world with Nook e-readers, will lead that expansion through Savant’s existing dealer base at the outset. “At Savant, I will be able to leverage my consumer technology, brand and marketing skills to take a proven and established home automation technology company to the mass market,” Lynch told us in an email. “I am familiar with how to democratize technology."
Lynch’s role will be “to take the innovative Savant Smart Home platform” and offer it to a mass consumer audience for the first time, he said. The business has been concentrated in the high-end luxury housing market, Lynch said, but this spring Savant will deliver home automation “built upon the rigorous engineering principles that Bob established … to a far broader audience.” Madonna, meanwhile, told us he will use in his new role a “unique understanding of how technology can be applied to home automation” and to partner with Lynch to “continue to drive innovation” at Savant.
Savant’s move to bring home automation down market comes as a wave of service providers and retailers are targeting the fledgling mainstream smart home market, which MarketsandMarkets projects will reach $48 billion by 2018. Comcast, AT&T, Lowe’s, Staples and ADT are major brands trying to gain a foothold in the emerging industry, and now Savant wants its share.
On whether Lynch, who comes most recently from publicly held Barnes & Noble, sees Savant going public, he said, “We're not discussing any of our financial plans but can tell you that we have ample financial support to expand our offering and market share as we broaden into the mass market.” Savant is “committed to maintaining its position within the luxury market and will continue to deliver best-in-class smart home solutions,” Lynch said, while bringing its technology to mass market “via more cost-effective solutions."
Savant’s mission from the start was to “take the complexity out of the smart home,” while offering high-quality products with proven technology, said Madonna. “Savant Systems is ready for the mass consumer market,” he said. Lynch’s history with “breakthrough product innovation, and his proven ability to connect consumers with sophisticated, yet easy-to-use technology in a meaningful way make him ideally suited to lead Savant Systems through this period” of opportunity and growth, he said. Before Barnes & Noble, Lynch held executive posts with HSNi, IAC and Palm Computing.