Michael Teolis, president, Colorbeam
Colorbeam closed out its first year marketing home-wide low-voltage lighting control systems and lights to residential and commercial AV integrators in North America, and president Michael Teolis is convinced that more integrators realize they need to turn to a new revenue generator to offset commoditization in the AV market.
“Dealers have to start moving away from the things they have sold for the past 20 years,” Teolis said. And they’ve begun to make the move, he claimed, pointing to the growth in his dealer base from about a dozen a year ago, when his company exhibited for the first time at a CEDIA show, to more than 150 today. The dealers are serviced by 14 rep firms, up from two reps a year ago. The Quebec-based company has also opened two showrooms, one in Los Angeles and one in New York City.
Colorbeam sells not only a system’s brains and in-wall keypads but the system’s light fixtures and light engines, or lights, to deliver all of the components of a whole-home lighting system. The company’s products also integrate with other companies’ lighting-control systems.
“If you control it [lights], why not sell it and capture the revenue?” he asked. Low-voltage lighting doesn’t require an electrician, he added. “Our advantage is that we are a single-source supplier of all things low voltage, including hardware [controlled by our system].”
Revenue from lighting can exceed AV revenue because every room needs lighting, and not all need AV, Teolis said. Low-voltage lighting also helps integrators grow their business more profitably by adding onto existing projects with a complementary technology to expand revenues rather than scurrying to complete more projects, he added.
