Smarter products for high-tech homes
The concept of Smart Home technology is nothing new. It can be traced back to the turn of the 20th Century with the introduction of remote controls and the first home appliances. But the Smart Home of today is something much more complex and transformative. It’s a place where systems can communicate with each other and be controlled with a smart device either inside the home or out, making life easier and more convenient.
People really started taking notice of modern Smart Home technology about a decade ago with products like speakers, light switches and robotic vacuum cleaners, but it’s only in the last five years we’ve seen mass adoption in appliances, lighting, HVAC, audio/visual, computers, home security and other categories. According to industry statistics, the Smart Home market went from $55 billion in 2016 to nearly $80 billion last year, and a recent report from Fortune Business Insights said this number should reach $622 billion by 2026.
According to Grant Farnsworth, president of the Farnsworth Group and a respected analyst of the building/construction and home improvement industries, the market is growing more rapidly because the latest generation of products is easier to use, more intuitive and less intimidating to homeowners. At the same time, contractors are becoming more comfortable with Smart Home technology due to fewer callbacks, simplicity of the products, ease of installation and connectivity of platforms.
“All these devices are starting to talk to each other through Amazon, Google or Apple Home. It’s starting to work pretty seamlessly, and it doesn’t take a PhD in physics to use them,” Farnsworth said. “Customers want to make life better, easier and more efficient, and a lot of Smart Home products are enabling that. If the oven is on and shouldn’t be, it shuts automatically. If a garage door has been open for three hours straight, it automatically closes. There are doors that lock themselves at 10 p.m. and thermostats that act according to your habits. A homeowner can now install his own alarm system – something unthinkable 10 years ago.”
A growing list of smart products
The Smart Home market has seen an explosion of new products in the last few years, from Nest Protect, a smoke and carbon monoxide detector that alerts you of potential danger, to the Wyze Cam v2 Wi-Fi-enabled camera, which lets you see everything going on at home without paying a monthly fee, There's Garagesmart, which includes tools that simplify tasks like storing large items, parking a car safely in your garage and lifting the top off a truck. And we are also seeing a proliferation of whole-house air-purification systems and smart light bulbs that adjust to your mood as part of a more recent trend emphasizing the connection between a Smart Home and a healthy home.
Wayne, a leading maker of water management solutions, recently introduced the Basement Guardian HALO, the first Alexa-compatible device to give homeowners real-time control of and information about the operation of their basement sump pump. According to Adam Justice, CEO of Grid Connect, which worked with Wayne to develop the HALO, Smart Home technology has come a long way – even since the 2018 launch of Gemini, the first-generation Basement Guardian product.
“It started with products that that would make people say, ‘Ooh, that’s neat. I can turn a light on or off.’ Now, it’s about devices that can solve specific problems,” Justice said. “The Gemini sump pump was a nice monitor type experience, but the new product has much deeper integration and was designed with ‘smart’ in mind from the beginning. The setup is easier, the app is better, and Wayne HALO will alert you well before the system is going to fail.”
Wasserstein, a leading smart-home accessory manufacturer and Made for Google product partner, features nine accessories made exclusively for the new Google Nest Cam and Google Nest Doorbell. In terms of innovation, Christopher Maiwald, founder and managing director of Wasserstein, points to the introduction of the sleep monitoring function of the Home Hub 2nd gen by Google Nest, which enables the device to monitor your sleep habits without the use of a smartwatch.
“In addition, the new Google Nest Cam (battery) and Nest Doorbell are best-in-class, utilizing hardware and software with a notable commitment to privacy and security,” he said. “This is another trend amongst smart home technology: a greater focus on home security. At Wasserstein, we are proud to support this line with premium accessories that keep your smart devices safe and functioning at their highest level to provide the ultimate home protection.”
How “Smart” are home improvement retailers?
When it comes to selling Smart Home products, home improvement retailers are still trying to figure out whether to cluster them in one section or market them within their specific category. A recent visit to a Lowe’s and a Home Depot in Hackettstown, New Jersey, showed Lowe’s doing the former in a locked display at the front of the store, and Home Depot the latter, with Google Nest products in the electrical department and Nest, ecobee and Emerson Sensi smart thermostats in their own display closer to the registers.
“It’s still about customers first and what they want from any particular category, and being a smart product may be third or fourth on someone’s list of what they want in a light switch,” Farnsworth said. “That’s where they’re running into trouble: there are a lot of disparate categories, and they’re trying to put it all together for the consumer to put across the message: it does everything you want and it’s a smart device.”
Do it Best continues to see growth in connected home SKUs, but it's been slow growth, said Electric Merchandise Manager Greg Fields. The co-op’s most popular category continues to be light bulbs, followed by connected thermostats and door locks.
“We provide our member stores with a connected home planogram so they can feature the products merchandised together in one single location,” he said. “However, in electrical, we also feature the connected light bulbs in our light bulb planograms as a way to provide store owners with an opportunity to up-sell the consumer in the light bulb aisle.”
Maiwald says that when his company first started talking to retailers about in-store programs in 2017, even Best Buy, one of the most progressive retailers when it comes to emerging technology trends, took a conservative approach in buying and only offered to test products online. “Fast forward to 2021, and they have now significantly extended the number of Smart Home brands they carry far beyond the obvious choices of Google Nest, Ring, Amazon and Arlo,” he said, adding that Best Buy will carry five Wasserstein products in-store and now offers the entire product portfolio online. “As the appetite for smart home technology grew, so did retailers’ interest in Smart Home accessories.”