Rebecca Day

SAN ANTONIO - Several decades into the market for home control systems, industry players are still struggling with how to reach consumers and make money at it, said panelists at Parks Associates’ Smart Energy Summit. Educating consumers about benefits of home control, monetizing the service and simplifying the technology for a mainstream consumer all remain barriers to success of the category, they said.

SAN ANTONIO -- Following an initial rollout in 500 stores of its Iris connected home platform last year, Lowe’s will expand the concept to nearly all of its 1,700 stores nationwide by end of summer, Kevin Meagher, vice president and general manager of smart home products, said at Parks Associates’ Smart Energy Summit. The retailer also is expanding its distribution into 118 Verizon Wireless stores, following a trial run with stores in Georgia and New York that was announced last fall, Meagher said.

SAN ANTONIO -- Lowering a utility bill isn’t likely to be the near-term driver that engages consumers in adoption of home energy management services, said panelists at Parks Associates’ Smart Energy Summit. “Consumer interest in saving energy appears to have waned some over the past couple of years,” said John Barrett, director of consumer analytics at Parks.

With his purchase, announced Monday, of “sleeper” wireless audio company Soundcast, SpeakerCraft founder and former CEO Jeremy Burkhardt has bought into the future of residential audio, Burkhardt told Consumer Electronics Daily.

The competitive world of CE retailing was on display Friday, we found, as Woot.com’s deal of the day on an Onkyo HT-S6500 home-theater-in-a-box system came in at $499. The price was $300 under the list price and $200 less than the $699 selling price posted at Amazon, Vann’s, J&R Music World and Onkyo’s website, we found. Just one person had purchased the deal as of 3 p.m. Eastern Friday afternoon, while 20 shared it on Facebook, five on Twitter, six on Pinterest, eight on Reddit and 29 visitors emailed the deal to friends, according to Woot.

The Klipsch G-17 Air Wireless Sound System with AirPlay was Amazon’s Gold Box Deal of the Day Thursday, discounted by 60 percent to $219.99. The deal was a “special guest deal” from cheeky Woot.com, known for time-sensitive deals, irreverent marketing and a less-than-consumer-coddling customer service approach. The e-tailer said Klipsch’s rectangular sound system resembled a “spacecraft” or a “robot” and added: “It’s not real rock-n-roll until somebody tells you to turn it down.” On its FAQs page, Woot says customer service is “not quite” what people are used to, saying consumers with buyers’ remorse should sell the product at a garage sale or on Craigslist because “it’s probably your fault.” Woot encourages consumers unhappy with a purchase to query the Woot community or to call the manufacturer for assistance. Replacements aren’t likely, but Woot will issue a refund-only option “if that’s all we can do,” with return freight at the buyer’s expense, it said. We contacted Amazon customer support by email to determine whether product returns would be handled by Amazon, Woot or Klipsch and received a quick response pointing us to generic links on the Amazon website. “You can return most new, unopened items sold and fulfilled by Amazon.com within 30 days of delivery for a full refund,” a customer service rep told us. He cited Amazon’s policy of paying return shipping costs on clothing, shoes, “some jewelry and watches, or baby items.” Amazon pays return shipping on other products “if the return is a result of our error,” it said. Meanwhile, the Klipsch G-17 system was selling Thursday at Vanns, J&R, Crutchfield, Abt Electronics and One Call TV & Home Electronics Thursday for $499. Klipsch didn’t comment on sales through Woot by our deadline.

Encroachment from retailers Walmart, Costco, Target, Best Buy, Amazon and others pushed Office Depot and OfficeMax toward a merger that’s expected to be finalized by the end of the year, executives for the companies said on a conference call Wednesday. OfficeMax stockholders will net 2.69 Office Depot shares of common stock for each share of OfficeMax common stock in the $1.2 billion deal, the companies said. Both companies reported declining revenue in reports released Wednesday, with Office Depot posting a loss of $17 million on sales that fell 12 percent to $2.6 billion in Q4 from the year-ago quarter. OfficeMax reported a loss of $33.9 million for Q4 on revenue that fell 7.4 percent year over year to $1.7 billion, the company said.

A 2 percent dip in revenue for the year at Garmin came in below expectations, as the company reported declines in three of its four segments, the company said on an earnings call Wednesday. Compared with Q4 2011, Garmin’s automotive/mobile segment dropped 25 percent to $437 million, outdoor sales slipped 2 percent to $119 million, aviation declined 2 percent to $70 million and marine revenue fell 9 percent to $39 million, the company said. Garmin had 10 percent growth in its fitness segment, to $104 million, it said.

"Everything is on the table,” Bob Brown, interim chief operating officer for Thiel Audio, told Consumer Electronics Daily Tuesday about the company’s ongoing transformation following last fall’s departure of Kathy Gornik, co-founder and president. Product, personnel and distribution will all be under scrutiny as the new company tries to mesh Thiel’s audiophile legacy with 21st century lifestyles and realities, Brown said. “Too often the high-end audio business has been resistant to change,” Brown said. “I don’t think the business has to be this dead. The world has changed,” he said. “It’s adapt or die."

Redbox Instant by Verizon told beta testers Friday by email that it has begun charging credit cards $7.99 plus tax for monthly subscriptions following a one-month free trial. The email read: “You are a movie-watching machine!” although we had only streamed one movie. “From over here at Redbox Instant by Verizon,” it said, “it looks like you had the best free trial ever.” But having been hard-pressed to find a movie on the streaming list we really wanted to see during the month-long trial (CED Jan 16 p1), we disagreed.