Staples Adds Wireless Protocols, Wearables, D-Link Hub to Staples Connect

Staples announced the expansion of its Staples Connect home control platform from a 32-store trial that began in November (CED Sept 25 p1) to a 500-store rollout, effective July 15. At a news conference in New York Monday, Staples Vice President-Business Development Brian Coupland said Staples is committed to Connect, which targets both small-business owners and consumers, and has expanded the platform to include more wireless protocols, a Windows 8 app and wearable devices.

D-Link joined the Staples roster of connected companies and the company’s $79 hub adds support for ZigBee and Bluetooth LE (low energy) to the menu of wireless protocols offered by the first Connect hub from Linksys, including Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Z-Wave and Lutron Clear Connect. Staples dropped the price of the original Linksys hub from $99 to $49.

Integration with Connect is another way to give Jawbone customers “something to do with the data” gathered by its wearable devices, said Andrew Rosenthal, the wearables maker’s group manager-wellness & platform. “Not only can we track data 24/7, we can put it in context,” Rosenthal told us, citing a shift in trends where wearables customers “expect something back.” Because an activity tracker tells consumers how well they slept, “they want to do something about it,” he said.

In adding Jawbone’s UP 24 activity monitor, Staples said it’s the first retailer to announce the integration of wearable technology. The device’s sleep monitor can detect when a user wakes up, triggering integrated activities such as turning on lights, raising shades and starting a coffee maker, Rosenthal said.

The tipping point for Staples to move from trial to market launch was the “engagement of the app” among users and the number of devices purchased, Coupland told Consumer Electronics Daily. He wouldn’t disclose the number sold, citing company policy, but said it was enough to ensure that the retailer wanted to expand the program.

According to Michael Harris, CEO of Zonoff, which developed the Connect platform, trial customers interacted with their systems eight times a day on average. The most popular applications have been IP cameras and lighting, he said. Trial customers tended to start with two or three products and then add on in batches according to a room or use case, he said.

Coupland said use case drove activities more than whether customers were in the small-business owners or consumers category, and that many customers fell into both camps. An IP camera will trigger an event, a user will get a notification of the trigger and will then be able to see what’s happening. A trigger could be someone approaching a company’s safe or the front door of a home. “Mom wants to know when a child comes home and actually sees him in the house,” he said, where a small-business owner at lunch could get a notification of a delivery man at the door, open an electronic lock to let him drop off the package -- while in the camera’s view -- and then lock the door again electronically. There’s a good chance that business owners would like to have the same convenience at home, he said, saying the “lines are starting to blur” between consumers and small-business owners.

Coupland downplayed the competitive landscape of the nascent mainstream control market, saying as long as the various players play a role in creating awareness, “then everyone wins.” But it’s getting crowded. Staples’ announcement comes in a week when Microsoft stores started carrying products from the Insteon platform, and Tuesday Home Depot will launch control products using Quirky’s Wink platform. More people will continue “coming into the space,” Coupland said. “We're early in the space and early adoption is happening,” he said. “Our roles are to create awareness and to learn from each other.”

With awareness key to the success of Staples Connect, we asked Coupland how the company plans to reach customers who wouldn’t think of going to an office products store for cutting-edge technology. He cited company training for in-store employees and an online microsite for Staples Connect with information on use cases and functionality. Staples has expanded its community forum and is “leveraging all of the marketing assets” of the company including social media and traditional marketing. “Those same customers that we have coming into Staples for 25 years for all their business needs go back to their house at the end of the day, and that same technology can benefit their business as well as their home,” Coupland said.

The partner companies all stress the importance of reliable products that perform the way consumers expect them to. The first step for Staples is having “trusted brands that work every time that are reliable out of the box,” Coupland said. Staples has set up a call center for tech support. If further help is needed, Staples bumps “level two” calls to Zonoff to speak “directly to the engineers,” he said.

Security is increasingly on consumers’ minds when it comes to connected technology, and Zonoff’s Harris said even if a customer has chosen not to secure a Wi-Fi network running Connect, the hub itself is communicating to the applications through a secure connection. “There’s a layer of encryption that sits on top in spite of what may happen within that Wi-Fi network,” he said. The hub also establishes a secure connection to the cloud, he said. “They can’t access the hub without establishing a secure communication channel,” he said.

Harris said as other players “rush solutions to the space, it seems that some companies are pushing the intelligence” of systems to the cloud. Zonoff’s hybrid approach puts intelligence in the cloud for accessibility from outside the home, for data storage and recommendations. “But when it comes down to the high-speed, reliability and the latency” required so that a light switch responds immediately when touched -- because consumers expect the light “to come on right now every time” -- the Connect hub-based system will still work whether the Internet is up or down. That’s crucial because Internet connections in the mass market are inconsistent, he said. “They may not go out a lot, but when I get home and open my garage door, I expect the lights to go on,” he said. “If they don’t, I think something’s broken.”