While the majority of luxury custom integration firms go out of their way to treat their clients as team members, it may be hard to beat Atlanta’s AHT, which did such a good job of it that two of their clients — Alex and Maria Evans — bought the company from the original owner.
“Almost three years ago, AHT’s previous owner, Scott Ross, approached me and asked if we would be interested in buying the company,” says Alex. “Maria and I were clients of AHT, but I came from the government contracting world, so this was a very steep departure from what I was used to. However, I knew the company, loved the way that they did business, and loved their work ethic and how the culture felt like one big family. So, we decided to take the leap.
“Home technology has always been a hobby of mine, but I felt a real connection with the guys who would come and work on the house, and my wife and I saw the project come to life. It always felt like there was a real partnership.”
“The transition for us to make that decision and pivot into a different realm of business was possible because we already had a passion for it,” adds Maria. “I feel like we have the advantage as the owners of the company that we were also able to experience the customer side. We had already spent so much money and time from 2019 to 2022 doing all these things to our home, working with our interior designer. At the same time, it was a natural transition for us because we were in the thick of it. We were customizing the shades and doing the schedules and all the programming, and we had the guys come over countless days tweaking. They’ve spent a lot of time here and they know this house like the back of their hand. Sometimes we have clients come look at our home, and I’ll bring them around and show them how we live with it as opposed to using the showroom.”
More Than Home Theaters
Immediately after buying the company, the Evanses got to work updating the three-story, 12,000-square-foot showroom inside AHT’s unique Tudor Revival-style facility. Up until that point, the space had been filled with home theater demos at many different price points, but Alex and Maria wanted to show clients what the home could be with the right company to guide them.
“What we came to find is we would take somebody from one theater to the next and you’d get theater fatigue because you’re spending 30 minutes in each room,” explains Alex. “The challenge with that is now it becomes confusing because you’re not sure what you’re looking at or what you’re in listening to because you spent so much time in them. The different theaters had different price perspectives to give a better idea of what it is you could buy, but you have to trust the work as the client. It’s not so much the budget, but the solution. You might have a room that has a lot of windows or a room that has no windows at all. And that is just the theater — every single room in the house is probably going to have some sort of lighting or a window or some practical automation.
“That’s where we’ve steered the ship — to focus on that practical automation that is in most homes. However, we never get away from our base of being that home theater or golf simulator expert because these are things that people enjoy.”
If the exterior of the building didn’t tell you that you were entering a unique space, the live moss wall that greets you when you open the front door certainly will. What once was a reception desk is now a stylish dining-room-style area that directs clients to move to the left to enter the new reception area.
From there, clients can experience an open room with an eye-catching giant Ascendo Infrasonic Subwoofer at the front of the room. And it’s not just for show — all the speakers in the room can be sampled.
“That’s the only 50-inch subwoofer in any retail space in the country,” says Alex. “It’s a real conversation piece. It belongs to a client of ours, but when it was brought in, it was so big we couldn’t take it upstairs. So, we talked to our designer here and asked if he could design around it. He said, ‘Had I known you were bringing a car into the room, I would have designed it differently,’ but he was able to pull it together and make it the center of attention, as if it was in a real living room.”
The interior designer who worked on the showroom, as well as the Evanses’ home, is Michel Smith Boyd, well-known by many for his HGTV show Lux for Less and his appearance on the competition show Rock the Block.
“We always try to use Michel Boyd and integrate him into the space because he knows us very intimately,” says Maria. “He’s done our home top to bottom, and he knows how we like to do things with technology and make it beautiful.”
The first floor is also home to a revamped, dedicated home theater that shows off the company’s accent lighting skills in addition to its AV capabilities. A second, more traditional home theater is also on the first floor, and that will be getting a makeover shortly, while still keeping its opulent, traditional theater feel.
The middle floor features a conference room that is used by the company but can also show off home office technology. The second floor is also home to a 2-channel listening system, a nod to Alex’s earliest AV passions.
The third floor is what separates AHT from many showrooms with three high-tech areas. The first one encountered is an extravagant lighting demo that shows the power of Lutron’s Ketra in an open living space.
“It shows all the capabilities of how it can highlight artwork and different textures and textiles,” says Maria. “You’ve got your woods and your marbles and your furniture and your rug and a colorful painting on the wall. Art galleries use this smart lighting to showcase vibrancy and art and bring out different colors and textures on the canvases and sculptures.
“For our lighting, it is a show where you hit one button and it goes through the whole lighting show. There’s a voiceover talking about all the possibilities. With just one button press, shades start coming down, lighting starts to change, and the TVs turn off.”
The next area is a golf-simulator room with a very comfortable look that adds style to a tech normally tucked into a garage or basement. “It’s a space that we warmly designed to feel like a country club at home,” says Maria. “A lot of people like to have a golf simulator and have it be multi-purpose as a theater as well. We’ve done that two-for-one type of a situation for clients, and it gives you that feeling of having a golf simulator at home that doesn’t look clunky and awkward in a space. The room is built out and you can have an area where you can relax in the back. They have all kinds of different sports on this simulator. It’s just a fun way to showcase what you can put in your home.”
If the client is looking for something more fast-paced than golfing, the third area may be of interest — the racing simulator. “With the race simulator, what we wanted to do was create a driving simulation where it felt like a real car,” says Alex. “This gives you the ability to get on the real tracks — it has all the tracks that are in America — learn the track, get a better understanding of it, and then you can go out and drive it, or, should you not want to do all that, you have the opportunity to do it in your own home! This unit is on actuators, so it tilts and pivots. Even the pedals are active, so they provide real feedback like you’re in a real car.”
The Next Phase
The Evanses are nowhere near finished with the showroom, and have more spaces planned for the near future. In addition to redoing the traditional first-floor theater, they are also planning to add a beauty bar and a speakeasy.
“A lot of our high-end clients have glam spaces where they have hair and makeup come in and they get dressed,” says Maria. “We’re going to do something similar to that and cater to the women as well because the men are always sold on the technology, but you have got to make it flexible for everyone.”
As for the speakeasy, that is part of AHT’s event planning. The facility hosts several meetings each year — sometimes for networking events like building groups or realtors, but also for anyone who would like to rent the space.
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“We typically bring in bartenders when we host an event,” says Alex. “The idea is that I can hire a bartender and do a speakeasy on the third floor and have somebody there all the time serving classic cocktails so that this can feel like a real functioning luxury home.”
“That caters to us also working in commercial spaces as well, like a bar or any other type of retailer where they can use our services inside of their business,” adds Maria.
The Client Connection
Having so recently been clients of the company they now own gives the Evanses a clear perspective into the minds of their customers and informs not only how they build a showroom to service them, but also how to ask the right questions during a visit.
“I think that it’s key that we were the client,” concludes Maria. “Sometimes I will go on a walkthrough and I’m asking questions because I am used to living with it. So, I’m asking about what they do in their day-to-day, and I let them know they could have this something that they didn’t know existed. That’s helpful, too.”
