Savant plans to grow its dealer base in a...

Savant plans to grow its dealer base in a “calculated fashion” but not related to its new lower cost Smart Series that will begin installation March 17, Tim McInerney, Savant director-product management, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The mid-market Smart offering, beginning at $1,000 per room, “gives our new and existing integrators a full array of solutions to address a broad range of consumers,” McInerney said. The Smart Series allows the company to bring its software-based product to a broader market, falling between Savant’s luxury-level Pro series and broader market entry-level products from other companies, McInerney said. The Smart Host is the foundation of the Smart series and along with Savant software, offers control of lighting, HVAC, entertainment and other home electronics, the company said. On how Savant dealers will position the two systems and qualify customers for one or the other, McInerney said dealers will look at the magnitude of a project including size, scale and features that a homeowner wants. A Smart series could serve a four-zone residence compared with a 20-zone home that would be best served by the more robust Pro system, he said. Customers who want to switch “a great many” HDMI video devices and have video tiling -- a Savant feature that enables customers to switch up to 24 video sources and show from one to nine video windows on a display at once -- would likely be a Pro system customer, he said. According to a news release, complete Savant Smart Series packages start at $1,599 suggested retail price, including the $799 Smart Host, remote and controller. The system will be sold through Savant’s network of 1,500 integrators in 35 countries, the company said. The Smart Series rollout announcement was roughly a month after Savant announced that former Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch had been tapped as CEO of Savant, where Lynch said he would leverage his consumer technology, brand and marketing skills to “take a proven and established home automation technology company to the mass market” (CED Jan 29 p1). Lynch said then he was “familiar with how to democratize technology.”