Home Depot to Begin Selling Wink-Enabled Connected Home Products July 7

The mainstream home control market continued to heat up Tuesday as Home Depot and Quirky demoed Quirky’s Wink app-enabled smart home platform at a loft in New York’s SoHo district. Some 18 Wink-enabled products from 15 vendors will be displayed on end caps in all Home Depot stores beginning this month, Jeff Epstein, merchandising vice president, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Many of the connected products are available now at the Home Depot website and will be integrated with the Wink app on July 7, the companies said.

The Home Depot announcement came a day after Staples said it would expand its connected home initiative to 500 stores on July 15. Lutron executives stayed overnight in New York Monday as the lighting company was involved in both announcements, the only company with a high-profile role in each launch. Other lighting companies participating in Home Depot and Wink New York launch were GE, Leviton, TCP Lighting and Philips.

Platform and device companies have played down the competitive overlap in an effort to jumpstart the mainstream smart home market. For now, companies have taken a “more the merrier” attitude as they await Apple and Google’s moves. At Home Depot, people are shopping for products “not a protocol” and being able to bring many connected products together under one application is Wink’s strategy for the retailer, said Wink Vice President-Strategic Partners Brett Worthington. “It’s a blend of great consumer brands that are competing to some extent,” he said.

Aggressive pricing is part of both Home Depot and Staples strategies to build adoption of smart control products, with both offering hubs starting at $49. GE began shipping Monday an aggressively priced $15 smart bulb that works with the Wink app. In its news release (http://bit.ly/1qKRy6x) announcing the bulb, GE said its Link smart bulb “eliminates the need for expensive add-ons typically associated with connected devices.”

Worthington said his company’s strategy selling at Home Depot is to set the pricing bar low and eliminate that barrier to wireless home control. Wink will launch at a hub price of $49.99. Consumers who buy one connected device with a Wink hub will get it for $24.99 and those who buy two will get the Wink hub for 99 cents, he said. On Staples’ announcement that it will sell a $50 home control hub, too, Worthington said, “Good for them. I think it’s great for the space” as more consumers learn about the technology.

Notably absent from the sponsored event was Cree, which sells its LED bulbs exclusively through Home Depot. Worthington said Cree just began talking about its connected strategy when it was announced as a premier lighting partner for Apple’s HomeKit. “They are a great vendor of Home Depot, and they will be connected,” Worthington said. On whether the HomeKit partnership would preclude relationships with other home control platforms, a Cree spokeswoman told us Cree isn’t prepared to talk about its connected plans but the company “would not limit their ability to support as many customers as possible with technology to the market that provides real value for as many customers as possible.”

Wink’s focus is on design and interaction and integrating with the industrial design of a connected product “all the way through to the application,” Worthington said. A Philips Hue light bulb with a color wheel is represented in the app, for instance, he said. “You don’t have to learn it at the device and then re-learn it in the application,” said Epstein. He showed how touching the power button on a Quirky Aros air conditioner app was similar to touching the button on the product itself.

Wink operates both by Wi-Fi and by a wireless hub that connects devices on local connections within the home including Z-Wave, ZigBee and Lutron’s Clear Connect. A Wi-Fi product is Wink-ready but those that are not have to be used with a hub. A TCP light bulb can connect out of the box, but a Philips Hue requires a Wink hub to work. Schlage and Kwikset locks require a hub because they operate over Z-Wave, Worthington said. Worthington couldn’t forecast how long a hub will be required, saying mesh networks have been necessary because of battery consumption. “You don’t want to give a consumer a device that’s only going to last 30 or 60 days,” he said. Since ZigBee and Z-Wave are low-power protocols, “you can get two-three years out of a lock’s life,” he said.

Amid a growing field of mainstream control platform providers, Wink is pushing the message points of “free” and “easy,” Worthington said. There’s no charge for the service and the software guides users through setup after users enter a user name and password that they select. The app prompts users that they need a hub if a product won’t work on Wi-Fi and if they have a an older connected product not recognized by the software -- such as an older electronic lock -- the software prompts them to remove the lock from the network and then add it again, he said.

For Home Depot, “we try to think about products being functionally simple,” said Home Depot Senior Vice President-Merchandising Giles Bowman. He cited the collection of smart products now on the market but said, “Nobody has been able to get them so they can actually talk to each other.” Worthington said initially Wink’s efforts focused on trying to solve the problem of “20 apps in a consumer’s home that don’t work together.” Wink wants to serve as the consumer-facing brand for decades-old companies, including Honeywell and GE, “that know they need to be connected” so they can “tell a different story."

As in the Staples Connect announcement Monday, Home Depot pushed the brand awareness of high-profile products compatible with the control platform. Staples pushed Lutron, Honeywell and Jawbone, while the Home Depot starting lineup includes the lighting companies plus blinds maker Bali, garage door company Chamberlain, lock companies Kwikset and Schlage, IP camera company Dropcam, smoke alarm maker Kidde and irrigation controller Rachio. Other products demoed at the event included Quirky’s Aros Wi-Fi air conditioner and a Rheem water heater. Home Depot’s connected products are from “brands that everyone knows and loves and are experts in their industry,” added Epstein.

Worthington began the New York tour in a simulated home by logging into the Wink app and unlocking the electronic door lock. At the same time the bolt released, a desk lamp came on, Bali motorized blinds opened and Tivoli Radio began playing. What other companies call a scene or a macro -- based on if-then logic -- Wink calls a “robot” to create a “fun experience with the consumer,” Worthington said.

On how Wink differentiates from other wireless protocols, Worthington cited the app’s simplicity and functionality and accessibility of the Wink brand that’s available in more than one retail chain. Wink has made its open API (application programming interface) available to Staples Connect and other platform providers. If consumers connect a Quirky product to a Staples Connect platform, “we all win as the consumer wins,” he said.

Dropcam, bought by Nest, which was bought by Google, is one of the early followers of the Wink protocol -- more evidence of overlapping technology in the space. Wink is “absolutely” talking to Nest, Worthington said. He praised Nest for opening its API and Wink will integrate with Nest products, he said. Wink wants to integrate with “disrupters” like Nest and 100-year-old companies that need an escort into the smart home age, he said.

While utilities were part of the home control conversation several years ago, Worthington downplayed their role in home control platforms, citing consumers’ desire to control their own energy usage. He cited data indicating that “pre-cooling” a home via a connected thermostat saves more money than a demand-response program from a utility. “The experience is so much better” for the consumer, he said. “Nobody wants a utility thermostat. They want to pick their own,” he said.

Wink has been in the works for a year, as a way for invention company Quirky to have control over the connected space, Worthington said. More than 4,000 invention ideas are submitted to Quirky every week, he said, and a significant percentage of those were connected concepts. People wanted to connect crockpots and blenders so Quirky had to determine “who we would trust to connect these things,” he said. Quirky built Wink for itself first and then approached Home Depot with the plan. Quirky had to divest Wink so Wink could work with competing products, Worthington said.

Home Depot has more than 600 smart products on its website and in stores, and the company is working with those manufacturers to make products compatible with Wink, Bowman said. Epstein of Home Depot said it will continue to offer consumers “whatever they're demanding.” The partnership with Wink isn’t exclusive and Home Depot will “continue to test and try new items,” he said. The launch with Wink is Home Depot’s “big step forward” in a combined platform but there are folks that will gravitate to a more closed system, “and we're not going to alienate that consumer,” he said.