While it is not unusual for a manufacturer’s rep firm to have its own showroom, Innovative Consulting and Marketing in Scottsdale, Ariz., takes that concept to the next level with its recently upgraded experience center that offers much more than product demos. The wide-open space includes all the technological amenities of a luxury home, along with an art gallery and a conference room, all with an eye toward attracting some very specific clientele.
“The building originally housed a distribution facility,” says Patrick Boyer, principal, Innovative Consulting and Marketing. “When they moved out, my director of business development challenged me to create a space like this because she was calling on architects, designers, and builders, and, while she was successful, it was not at the scope that she was looking for. She wanted people to be able to experience what she was describing to them.
“We wanted to have a space that would be particularly inviting to the design community. So, we focused on making it a very gallery-like experience, where we partnered with local artists to create artwork for this space with the idea that the interior designers would then engage them with commissions for their clients. We also got several of our vendor partners to cooperate, including Lutron, Samsung, Leon, Origin Acoustics, Fortress Seating, and Josh.ai. They all came to the table and contributed.”
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Being a rep firm, Innovative Consulting has plenty of access to outside tools and talent to work on this project, although they also have a talented in-house staff. “We have dedicated lighting design and implementation folks on staff, so all of the lighting was designed in-house,” explains Boyer. “Then we contracted with electricians to install the fixtures and did all the programming ourselves. For the audio and video, we partnered with a local AV integrator for that.”
Walking the Walk
The experience center sets itself apart from the moment you walk in. Where most facilities have a lobby, Innovative Consulting has a mock-outdoor Zen garden that includes outdoor furniture with Bollard speakers and a Samsung outdoor television.
Across the way from the garden is a real-world videoconferencing setup, where the company meets with clients. The television at the head of the table features a Leon Edge Media Frame setup to show how you can frame the TV to fit a luxury décor.
Right next to that — and viewable from the conference table for the curious — is the art gallery. The paintings are illuminated with Lutron Ketra. In fact, the entire facility features Ketra lighting. “We have every type of product Ketra has to offer displayed here,” says Boyer. “And all the AV distribution comes from AudioControl and AVPro.”
The gallery area opens up to a media room space that is built around a 146-inch Samsung videowall that commands your attention — until you see the wall-sized wine racks, which are also carried by Innovative Consulting, leading to the bar area. The table in the bar area features a 36-inch dome pendant light above it with three Ketra bulbs.
“That area is like a WeWork for the spec Community where they can roll plans out,” says Boyer. “They can meet with their customers back there. It’s a working table — it’s counter height instead of table height. We have all our samples there, and we have a big Lutron keypad display there as well.
Heading upstairs, past the eye-catching AV Pro Mosaic tilted, multi-screen displays, visitors will find a fully working kitchen area that can host 32 people for lunch-and-learns or other training programs. There are also a pair of listening rooms on this floor — one is a full-blown home theater with Fortress Seating and the other is a 2-channel lounge featuring Leon and AudioControl.
“We are going to turn our current storage room into a home office setup that will have a love seat behind a desk,” says Boyer. “Visiting guests can work at the desk, but we will still have a 2-channel speaker system in there.”
That future home office area is also where Boyer will be installing Lutron’s new Rania D2 2-inch aperture lighting fixtures. And he is pretty excited about it.
“Traditional dimming is phase-control dimming that we’ve been doing the last 25 years,” he says. “I think it’s going to be a dead dog — nobody wants to sacrifice 50 square feet of $2000 per foot real estate to house dimming panels. Rania is a game-changer. It’s got .1 of 1% dimming, tunable, and warm-dim in one product that goes from 1800 Kelvin to 5500 Kelvin. So, it’s Ketra light for the natural show.”
Spreading the Word
The experience center opened in November 2023, and at first, it was hard to get the attention of architects and designers, but Innovative Consulting seems to have cracked the code. “Our goal for 2024 was to have 100 meaningful one-on-one meetings with architects, builders, and interior designers,” says Boyer, “and now sometimes we have seven meetings in a week, so we are going to blow away our original goal.
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“It’s been like dropping a pebble in a pool. The first people came and experienced it and then they’re telling people. The next thing you know, an architect will come in and say, ‘I want to bring these two builders,’ and then the builders say, ‘I’ve got two interior designers that have to see this.’ It was really hard to get architects to come in at first, and now most of the top architects in town have been through here.”
Boyer believes that getting the design team involved is the best way to help its AV integration customers. “We’ve been in this business since 1995, and we want to make sure that the AV integrator is part of the anticipated budget that’s required. We work hard to elevate the stature of the AV integrator as not just a trade to the builder like an electrician or a plumber, but as the person who can make the magic and the quarterback that executes the vision. If the AV guy gets relegated to be a subcontractor, then the homeowners get whatever the builders tell them.”
As for the next phase of Innovative Consulting, beyond the new home office area, the company is looking to expand beyond Scottsdale. “This location has been more successful than we could have imagined,” concludes Boyer, “so the next step is to build a similar space in Las Vegas.”
For more information, visit www.innovativeconsult.com.
