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Guest Commentary: Listen up - you might just learn something! (3/1/2008)

By James Johnson-Flint, Opus Technologies

This last year has probably been the most interesting yet for Opus and especially for me as its founder. The company was officially incorporated back in 2002 after a lengthy research and development programme, and I'm pleased to say that it and the industry we have been working with since then, have really lived up to my expectations - with a few surprises along the way!

Distribution of any brand - particularly a new one - is one of the greatest challenges manufacturers face. We've been fortunate enough to work with some great partners over the years but recently - as you'll have read in HiddenWires and other press - we decided to take back distribution of Opus within Europe, and during this process, I and my team have done a lot of listening.

We've had our own sales organisation in Dubai for several years now, and despite a slow start - an integral characteristic of a market where long-term personal relationships are king - we've had great success in the Middle East. So I was keen to see if we could replicate this same success elsewhere by removing a tier in the distribution process. Listening to your dealers - the guys at the coalface of the business - is frankly the most important thing any brand can do.

Before we decided to go ahead and change our distribution model, we ran a number of dealer focus groups to try and understand what our retail and installation partners really need and expect from us. Aside from confirming the decision to go it alone, we learned a huge amount from this exercise. Our dealers have achieved many remarkable successes. As well as securing lucrative multiroom installation contracts from sizable UK developers - where small businesses can face considerable barriers to entry - some of our best dealers are even working on projects in places as far afield as Moscow, Saudi Arabia and Spain.

In the past we have worked centrally with the UK's major house builders, occasionally directly, and often in partnership with a dealer. Having seen however, the impressive inroads many of our dealers have made in this area, I am now convinced that many developers will definitely be even better served by working only via our dealers. Why? Because our dealers are able to be local to the development and also stock many complementary products such as lighting and curtain control, and are able therefore to offer busy developers a true one-stop-shop. Of course there's always a place for us to work on marketing to drum up business with developers for our dealers to engage with at an early stage, and we'll be doing this in 2008 as part of our Certified Installer Program.

Another reason why we took distribution in-house is that I'm also a firm advocate in involving dealers in the product development process. Our sessions over the past few months have already given me the opportunity to ensure we have set the right priorities. A major 'must' according to virtually every store owner, installer and sales assistant is the old adage K.I.S - keep it simple! Customers want more and more functionality in their homes, they do not want more complex control panels which granny can't use and that the kids can easily break, and of course, additional items that destroy the aesthetics of their carefully-considered rooms. This message is reinforced from my own experiences and from personal friends with installed multiroom systems. These are normally chosen on the basis of a slick demonstration, but users I know have occasionally come to hate their systems because they're designed in a way that's far too complex for the average user, or because they have to call out an engineer to do things they believe they should be able to do for themselves.

So why do misguided manufacturers make such complex interfaces? Sure they're clever and have maybe won some industry awards, but would they have acted differently if they had involved their dealers to a greater degree in the development process?

To sum-up, I've learned that while it's really important to lead the way in developing new products, what's just as crucial is that every single design we introduce answers the needs of end users and perhaps more importantly, has the full support of every dealer in our network. Without you guys, we're nothing! Pretty obvious really, but to my surprise not every manufacturer gets this right.

James Johnson-Flint is the Founder and CEO of Opus Technologies. If you have any comments or thoughts, drop James a note at james(AT)opus.eu.

www.opus.eu