I've been watching posts over the last few months and it seems to me that more and more dealers are taking on " Control 4" as a control solution. I only do Crestron so my view point is single minded in a sense so I'm curious if C4 is gaining market share on Crestron.

I realize that the 2 are different animals in alot of ways but I'm still curious if dealers are selling C4 because the market is demanding a cheaper more simplified solution and if dealers are moving that way because programming and implementation costs are cheaper......

Your thoughts?

I'll take on part of your question. Both C4 and Savant have eaten into Crestron's market share in residential. In Commercial and education the market changed long ago and Crestron's DM and other solutions work ( Roomview ) work rather well. But as the thread on the other site should suggest, any dealer who whose business plan is based purely on price is not going to survive in the long run.

You need to stick out. How you will do this may differ from place to place and dealer to dealer. If all you offer is someone else's solution you are subject to the commodization and subject to taking on jobs with little margin. Since we control so little that can be dangerous.

There is no doubt that Crestron's market share has declined. The company I work for is rediculously busy. The trick is jobs and finding processes that get you in and out successfully and profitably. How many CI's perform job costing? How many know if a job or subsystem is profitable to install? Ultimately, someone will be found to do a job for less money. As long as you are making money that doesn't matter. As long as you have jobs it doesn't matter. How to stick out from the crowd is what one of this site's smart folks has advised.

I think you will find a lot of folks have been busy selling C4. Ultimately, you also want to know about net profitablity. Selling Crestron is not necessarily a sure solution to net profitability.Selling any single solution may not be the path to profitability.

We tend to be profitable on our Crestron jobs. We have run up against C4 several times in the last month or so which has lead me to believe that more dealers are selling it now. We generally get the job against C4 after explaining the differences in the technology and the process that needs to take place to create a great system.

I don't know if I agree with your comment about selling a single solution. I could be wrong but my thinking tells me that investment in time to learn another control system dilutes the process of becoming excellent at one. We do a decent volume of Crestron gear and receive the benefits of the rewards program, which is considerable when analyzing profitability .

I'm not sure if their market share has declined or if C4's entry rice point has made the market that much larger. Of course we have all lost jobs to Control 4 but I think the market is just bigger.

I agree that it seems the over all market has grown because of the likes of C4 over the years. Not sure what that has done to over all sales for Crestron or the industry. I am with a company that does several control systems, and C4 has its place in the market.

Aside from the DM system that crestron has what else do you feel really seperates C4 and crestron?
I do sell C4 and I love it. I used to sell RTI and I used to feel that the customizable GUI was so important. I have found that the majority of clients do not care about a customizable GUI (although I already see a few arguing against this.....before you do think apple). Now I agree that there are some instances that it makes sence, just not as many as some may think.

So with the availability of many third party options that allow me to bridge the missing gaps in product between C4 and crestron what is it that you feel truley seperate the companys?

What ever happened to Prodigy? I'm not hearing much buzz these days. What about ADMS?

To play devil's advocate, how can you explain the difference in platforms when you only master one?

Now that im busy and can swallow the opening order i will be bringing on C4 for all the reasons you mentioned.

I dont do ultra high end homes that require a crestron solution and if i did run across that i would partner with a firm that does crestron. I am well aware of the limitations regarding C4 and as long as you stay within it and dont oversell it it is an awesome solution now that all the bugs have been worked out

I think the statement regarding C4 has made the market segment larger is spot on. I also believe C4/Savant have taken a large bite out of Crestrons market

I still feel that Crestron offers the most flexibility, customization, and robustness when you compare all of the options out there. What I think is happening, and others have mentioned it already, is that the market is growing. More and more people are wanting integration and automation. And with this growth, there are is obviously a customer base with a wide range of income and priorities which determines how much they can and want to spend on a control system.

This is where you have seen companies come in and "take away" some of the market from the "big guys" like Crestron. RTI, C4, CF, URC, Thinkflood, now KDS, and more, and who knows who else will pop up tomorrow.

It is good for the industry IMHO. It is going to drive everyone into innovation mode and hopefully some brilliant concepts, products, and applications will come out of it. And that goes for both ends of the price spectrum.

But the key to being profitable and selling the more expensive systems over the entry level stuff is being able to understand and easily explain why it is better and why it costs more. Ready for the car sales analogy again? Everyone knows why a Porsche costs more than a Hyundai. There are people who want the better car and are glad to pay the premium to have it. You have people who understand why the Porsche costs more, and maybe could even afford it, but decide that the Hyundai will get them from point A to point B just the same and happily justify buying the cheaper car even though they know the Porsche offers more. Then you have the people who could not afford the Porsche if they wanted too and are relegated to the Hyundai by force. They may not even think about the Porsche at all since they cannot buy it. Then you have the people who cannot even fathom spending Porsche $$ on a car and think the people who do are insane.

Our industry is similar except that most people who have not shopped for integration/automation control systems before are not educated and/or experienced enough to know what kind of $$$ they are looking at until you tell them. They do not understand the reasons why system A is better than system B. Our job is to explain simply, and be able to demonstrate these things and work with the customer to find the best product to fit their needs and budget. But I think most people are willing spend more $$ on something if they firmly believe it is superior to the less expensive option. We have to prove to them the added value of the more expensive systems if we want to sell them.

From the CI view, the only thing I would like to see from Crestron is a move towards making the programming a bit more "quick and easy". :) I am NOT a Crestron programmer...I did level 1 and decided that I would pull my hair out if I had to do that week in and week out. Of course, now with C4, I am pulling my hair out because I cannot make the remote do what I want. It will not let me. I cannot re-label things, change graphics that do not make any sense, or put a button on the remote that needs to be there. While this might speed up the programming, it also creates an end product that feels, to me, unfinished, unpolished, and a bit "crippled", if you will.

I am also not sure I am ok with everyone wanting to use tablets and mobile devices only. It seems like the newcomers to this arena are all based on using iOS and/or Android interfaces exclusively. I want a nice handheld remote with mainly hard buttons and cool graphics/touchscreen. I do not want an on-screen GUI. I want to push the Tivo button on the remote when I want to watch Tivo. I do not want to press the 4 button, wait....wait....wait...then select Watch, then cursor over to Tivo and press enter....THEN I can watch Tivo. I know the list view speeds this up...but it is still not what I prefer. :)

I like the programming environment of C4. The driver based setup, connections/bindings, make it easy to see at a glance what you are doing. I think a hybrid system where you have the visual driver tree/connections setup like C4, with the ability to create custom GUI such as with VTPro, and the ability to go behind the scenes and do whatever you want a la Crestron, would be the ideal front end for me. Even if C4 would allow me to hide/move/relabel things, I would be much more excited about it.

That was a long answer. I am hungry.

With prodigy going to Avad exclusively and becoming composer / SW only, the loss of the touch screen in wall and touchscreen remote, prodigy really doesn't have much place.

I signed up with crestron mainly for prodigy as a solution as a prodigy only dealer, within a few months I was a full line dealer and prodigy was gone.

My main issue with this is that I don't get residential crestron clients, Ive been seeing a lot of 15k to 25k jobs come my way these days, but that is with RTI and pro control.

In retrospect C4 probably would have been a better fit for me but crestron gives me the options when the situation comes up.

Dave
why have you not switched all those RTI sized jobs over to Crestron? The price points are that far off.

Everybody ran screaming.

In my experience, too many issues. Remote failures, processor issues, so on and so forth.

We have 4 Prodigy systems out there and they account for probably about 30% of our service calls. We won't even quote a system with it anymore (RTI for budget clients, Crestron for higher dollar jobs).

Julie
Crestron Killed Prodigy....not sure if it was on purpose or by accident but they killed it. I picked it up as soon as it became available and ate crow for about 6-8 months while they worked on making IT WORK.

My first job that was slated for Prodigy went Full line once I imposed a not configurable limitation (in house strategy to separate the two lines). While I am still missing its perfect price point I have gone back to a URC or Crestron model.

They NEED a middle market solution because they are loosing sales. Not sure if that equals profit for them but for small shops one vendor makes life oh so sweet.

I don't have any real world experience with C4 so I'm unable to comment intelligently on their system with respect to its OS and reliability. What I do know is that in most cases, with my clients, customizable GUIs are not only handy but critical. What I think ( or a GUI focus group) is logical for a client is generally not the case. I have this conversation with every customer before programming starts. How a person operates their system is generally not the same as the next person. This is what I see as the biggest difference between Crestron and C4