With more than 30 years in business, Naturally Wired’s owner Todd Sandler has seen plenty in terms of home consumer trends and technology changes. While he says the Kansas City-based shop tends to “fly under the radar, serving 80% of the business” — cutting out both the bottom and top 10% of the market — it keeps a steady stream of business from builders and a client base that has grown through years of word-of-mouth recommendations.
So, when he saw Nice’s new Premium Toolless Speakers at CEDIA Expo last year — and the aggressive dealer pricing plan that came along with them — he saw an opportunity for his business and his clients.
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“For whole home audio, we use Nice Premium Toolless exclusively now,” says Sandler. “We were using its ELAN- and Speakercraft-branded speakers, but we have completely moved away from all that now. We did that for a couple of reasons. One, we were using the older gear for a while now, and it was time for a change. We wanted to give the Nice speakers a shot after we heard them at CEDIA. The second, and probably the initial motivating factor, was the end-of-year promotional pricing Nice was offering. We bought into it pretty heavily — $30,000 worth of speakers.”
Some of those speakers, about 20%, were marked for jobs already commissioned, while others were housed in the warehouse for future projects. Sandler knew they would all be put to use soon.
“Our average installation is around six to eight zones, and we use two to six speakers per zone,” he says. “So, if we were to average that, we’re using roughly 20 to 30 speakers per system.”
In addition to an increase in sound quality, the Premium Toolless also offers other benefits. “They’re super simple to install,” Sandler explains. “I’ve had some of the guys comment about how easy it is to get them out if they need to do something to them. They love how easy they are to install and it’s definitely been a timesaver. We have seen our installations become more efficient because of it. And we have definitely noticed an improvement in sound quality over the previous generations of speakers.”
Getting Buy-In
While Sandler says that the majority of his clients have an understanding of whole home audio, they typically come into a project thinking they will only want speakers in a couple of rooms, but that changes throughout the education process.
“We will ask them qualifying questions like, ‘How do you envision using music?’ ‘How do you use what you currently have?’ ‘Do you want this to be just basic background sound and fill the space with noise to not have silence when you’re entertaining?’ ‘Do you crank it up so that everybody has to yell to talk to each other during a party?’ Based on those kinds of questions and responses, we gauge what it is they’re looking for. The louder they say that they’re going to use it, we steer them toward the better-quality products because, even somebody who can’t tell what is good sound, it’s possible that their friends will, and we don’t want them to be embarrassed — or for us to be embarrassed!
“Except for the occasional bathroom, we rarely do a single speaker — every job has at least a pair of speakers in each room. Most of the time it’s going to be at least four, depending on the size of the space. We do push for them to spread that sound out more so that they don’t have to turn it up as loud. For the people who are less interested in audio and more interested in background sound, we push for more speakers so that there aren’t any hotspots and nobody is standing underneath a super-loud speaker at any time.”
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Except, of course, when they want to be beneath a super-loud speaker. “We have a client who has used us in several homes and he likes to crank the music when he’s working out in his dedicated home gym. Really loud. It’s a 400-square-foot space, and we put in 10 ceiling speakers and two subs. He does the same thing in every house — he’s got a dedicated gym space that he just loads up with speakers.”
Other Audio Areas
Naturally Wired also has a healthy home theater business, along with some 2-channel listening rooms, where they typically use Paradigm speakers for. Outdoor audio is also common on most projects, although client education is important there, as well.
“Most clients think that the only full-yard coverage comes from rock speakers, so the variable subs and landscape speakers are new to them,” Sandler says. “We get a lot of people that do bite off on those because it’s a better look and a better sound that they didn’t even know existed.
“We’ve got a fair share of clients with pools and good-sized yards, but our big selling point is facing the sound back to the house to not disturb the neighbors. In most of our neighborhoods, the houses are on top of each other, and most of our clients are very cognizant of not disturbing their neighbors. So, getting landscape speakers out into the yard facing back toward the house rather than blasting out to all the neighbors steers that ship a lot.”
Naturally Wired outdoor audio systems are also handled mostly by Nice, along with some Paradigm.
Client Pleaser
The greatest importance to Sandler is keeping his builder and homeowner clients happy because that is what nets him more business. “We are primarily a builder business, but we also get a lot of repeat business from people who are building their second, third, or fourth home and they’ve used us in the previous ones,” he says. “We’ve been introduced to a lot of different builders over the years because a client will have changed builders in their second or third house, but they still want us to do the work. So, we get to meet a new builder because the client brings us back into the project, which opens up even more opportunities for us.”
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Finally, while Sandler believes most of the well-known audio manufacturers produce a good-sounding product, for him and Naturally Wired, it comes down to which ones make the best partner.
“I think the vast majority of the quality brands within our industry all sound good,” he concludes. “Obviously I stay away from the ‘no-names,’ but all the named brands are pretty trustworthy. So, the biggest deciding factor for me is their dealer program, and Nice has an excellent dealer program.”
For more information, visit www.naturallywiredkc.com.
