$30,000 is a good chunk of money.
Just to put it in perspective, with $30,000 you could buy a fully-loaded Ford Focus. And you could be leaving that money on the table because you don’t know the first thing about installing a home theater. Data from the 2014 CEDIA “Size and Scope of the Residential Electronic Systems Market” report revealed that the average home theater/media room project had revenues of $31,500 — and that is just for one project.
With the addition of immersive audio to the industry, home theater projects could get even more lucrative.
Is your company prepared to start offering this service that could give you an edge over your competition?
These three steps will prepare you to add home theaters and media rooms to your list of services.
Find Some Inspiration
When you think of a home theater or media room, the first thing that may come to mind is some plush, swanky setup in a millionaire’s mansion. While those projects certainly can be breathtaking, there are a variety of ways to execute home theaters or media rooms designed at any budget.
You can find sources of inspiration on the CEDIA blog (cedia.net/blog) where you can look at project profiles and glean information from how other CEDIA members executed home theater and media room projects.
Build the Right Relationships
Do you have relationships with the right manufacturers to deliver a home theater experience? The 2014 CEDIA “Size and Scope” report also found that 51 percent of revenue from residential projects was generated from equipment.
If home theaters and media rooms are a new offering for your company, you may not have the right product to get started immediately. If that’s the case, it’s time to start researching. There are many forums and articles out there designed to educate you about the products and brands. You should be well versed on the products you’re selling, so take some time to get familiar with the product lines before you start installing systems.
About Immersive AudioAtmos, Auro3D and similar systems are the next generation of fully immersive audio for cinema, and they are quickly moving into the home theater and consumer audio markets. These systems are not based on traditional speaker channels but on “audio objects” — basically any sound heard in a movie. Dolby Atmos supports up to 128 discrete audio tracks and up to 64 unique speaker feeds. That means for you as an integrator there are more speakers to sell and more wire to pull, among other things. |
Get the Skills
If you’ve familiarized yourself with the basic setup of a home theater or media room, it’s time to get the skills to actually deliver. CEDIA offers a few online resources to help you get started, and while those could help, the training that will really prepare you is CEDIA’s Home Theater Boot Camp, a three-
day course.
There’s an old saying that we remember just 10 percent of what we read and 20 percent of what we hear, but 90 percent of what we do and say.
In other words, when it comes to learning, there’s nothing like hands-on experience with the real thing. This course provides a comprehensive overview of the home theater installation process. Attendees learn how to properly install, set up and calibrate a typical home theater or media room system.
By the end of it, you will be able to understand the basics of room acoustics, describe the functionality of the system, install the components and perform calibrations. To learn more, including the 2015 schedule for the Home Theater Boot Camp, visit cedia.net/bootcamp. The first session begins March 12, 2015 in Indianapolis.
Will 2015 be the year you add home theaters and media rooms to your list of services, or will you continue to leave $30,000-plus on the table?
