This is awesome! Are there any plans to include retail purchases in earning loyalty rewards? MicroCenter would be more convenient for me than ordering online, but I don’t want to miss out on points.
It is a possibility for sure – honestly, this opportunity came up as a test run – if it’s successful, we can move to additional stores. The rewards program has the ability to scan a receipt for points, so it’s definitely doable! Let’s make this test a success 
A salesman once told me “…once you’ve made the sale stop talking…” I’ll ignore that advice here.
With the model number on the box / package, you must be sure the “exact” number matches your website. I have often googled item numbers while in the store, Best Buy even has a computer for you to google items. If I can’t find it by google and easily navigate to the info page I might think it is an off brand and pass it up.
John
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LOL – great advice! I often struggle with this one.
Great point – we’ll definitely try our best to keep it consistent. I can’t think of any areas we change up the model numbers, but I’ll make sure we keep a tight leash on it.
I just googled “LZW31sn” and found this page as the first non fcc page. Web page.
One issue is… the webpage specifies V2. We’ve not mentioned that in this thread. If I had a product in my hand that did not say V2 and the website mentioned V2 I would assume the one in my hand is a old one and not purchase it.
I think you should drop the V2 altogether. You have different model numbers, that would be sufficient. If you think the V2 is helpful then you must be very consistent.
John
“inconsistency leads to doubt, doubt leads to questions, questions lead to no / delayed sale”
I think this points out something important.
It’s still the only game in town as far as switches that:
- Are powered by mains
- Can run smart bulbs as load with selective relay
- Integrate/relay in a mesh
There is a segment of the market for whom those features are nonnegotiable and makes Inovelli the only satisfactory choice. Dunno if that impacts packaging but it is probably worth keeping in mind.
This is a good point. Smart Bulb Compatible should be on the front, and on the back there should be an explanation that this can directly associate with Z-Wave smart bulbs but leave the power always on for them.
Is the packaging capable of having a sticker with the model number, version number, serial number, or other info that might get updated more often than the packaging? I’ve seen packaging like that (IP cameras for example), but I don’t know how it is handled on an assembly line.
With IP cameras they have a single box that fits a certain body style, then they use the sticker for the variable information. Model, sensor size, lens size, mac address, serial number, etc.
Well… dang… it feels like a short while ago this forum was way more boring, now we have super awesome discussions!
I agree that “Smart” has lost it’s shiny-ness and hype, but its not a bad thing. It just means its become a household term, and that is understood to have a fixed meaning to the consumer. By removing “Smart” from the name, you need to be careful, as it can confuse some consumers, especially the “Less knowledgeable” ones who are looking specifically for Smart switches/bulbs.
100% People will think Zwave is some kind of fancy wifi thing that works with thier router just fine.
I actually prefer the flap idea, especially since it would set you apart. Not only that but you can also put info that points them to other products you offer. In a retail setting information will make you look better than your competition, especially if you educate them too!.
A retail secret is also that retail reps get most of their info from reading your boxes when they come the store. If your box is giving them a ton of info, and they are reading it to better understand your product and others, they will be better able to recommend your stuff!
I have a size suggestion, if you see that its after 3 switches where there is the biggest drop, then offer a 4 pack. You have raw data showing people willingly pay retail for 3 bulbs, but dont seem to want to/afford to pay retail for 4 switches, so offer the incentive for them to reach a little further and get a discount. If they don’t need 4 switches, they wont buy it, but if they have that little push, you might get a jump in your average order income and net revenue per customer. Also thats one less switch that Casa/Leviton marketing can steal from you.
Actually now that I think of it you would probably get a bunch of people who only need 3 switches, since they will want the deal and will keep the 4th switch “just in case”.
Oooo OOOOooooo you could even put a title along the lines of “The Inovelli user community is here to help you with our products, and even some of the other guys’s too!” Just to slap the other guys lol
I think he means something like this, where one edge is curved so the consumer is enticed to open it, maybe have the bulb or switch be visible both with the flap open and closed.
But we both know what Inovelli really needs is this:
Not that its impractical or anything… but maybe for online orders? 
I have also noticed we seem to be all giving our ideas of what the packaging should look like, but are straying in a few different directions. @Eric_Inovelli Could you maybe tell us what the primary Target message is? We seem to be pulling towards Innovation, prestige and trust all at the same time. I feel we could use some direction.
@Chris What do you do? You got awesome insights and experience man!
@Eric_Inovelli The way you set up this forum reminds me of Reddits Elon Musk AMA:
I think the biggest reason for success is we are being asked by decsion makers for input and opinions for your decisions. We actually feel like we are making a difference and that we are helping. So heck ya we will continue to help! Eventually you will become a busy guy, but if you assign the actual team to chat with us, as opposed to a “Media Manager” of some kind or form, I think this new culture will continue!
Speaking of that stuff, Why aren’t you getting into Wifi and Bluetooth? Or is that just on the to-do list?
Let me know before you discontinue so I can stock up, I’m just working on the decor/furniture side of our next project ATM.
Second, Somewhere on the back of the box by the barcode.
Sounds like a great idea for the Blue Series of switches (Could replace the Black series?)
Freelance IT, with an occasional side of entrepreneurship and a history of a whole bunch of other stuff. A lot of what I know comes from reading though. To quote Tyrion, I drink and I know things… only I don’t drink much so maybe I know more things? 
I sincerely hope Inovelli DOESN’T get into those markets, not in the near future at least.
Judging by their current product development cycle and posted timelines, it is taking them about a 6-12 months to get a product from concept to delivery, and they only have the resources (from what I can tell) to focus on 2 or 3 products at a time. Some of that seems constrained by their manufacturer who only has so much attention to give them, and I’m sure they take a lot- most companies making a smart switch would design the physical button then ask for a clone of their white label firmware with the manufacturer ID changed. Inovell’s current dimmers probably took more firmware work than the next 5 products put together, especially with having two chips in the switch each of which needs its own firmware.
Point is, from what I can tell, getting into WiFi and Bluetooth would take their attention away from their core markets. And WiFi/Bluetooth switches are more or less commoditized- they will be up against all the Chinese knockoffs. And let’s not forget that the consumers who buy WiFi/Bluetooth switches are generally less advanced, thus won’t be as interested in Inovelli’s extra features, and will require more tech support time.
They’re already getting into ZigBee, which I understand- ZigBee is much like Z-Wave (it’ll just work on its own) and a LOT more people have Echo and Google Home than Z-Wave hubs.
I think they should focus on the markets they can excel in, and focus on bringing some of their new innovative products (BFF for example) to life.
(I don’t mean to be negative and apologies if that’s how the above came off. I just don’t want their focus to drift away from the target market that is increasingly engaged).
Agreed, this is exactly where it should go.
Unless you know less… That’s awesome though, I never really thought of IT being freelanceable, but it makes sense.
I do agree, its a different consumer base, but Brilliant and ecobee have been able to sell some pretty complicated stuff, I was thinking of how Inovelli seems to want to go big, so you got to go to where the market it.
I agree that zigbee is a good move, Zwave after all is more techy and commercial, so they have targeted the highest potential and easiest to get help from market combination. But if theybare putting all the work into Zigbee, just as much work could go into bluetooth or wifi instead with a larger base market.
I have been accused of this as well by people trying to get me to drink more
Brilliant from what I can tell is all WiFi and perhaps ZigBee. But like everyone else they are creating a system from scratch and want to be your smart home base (download our app!!!)
WiFi and Bluetooth both have far more compatibility issues, because there are fewer standards. If they do a WiFi dimmer they’ll need their own app and cloud server, which is a whole separate bunch of stuff to build and support. If they do Bluetooth they’ll again need an app and also interoperability with other bluetooth gadgets, probably homekit, which takes a whole extra set of Apple licensing.
Inovelli has shown no interest in building hubs or apps or clouds, and I think doing so would only be a distraction for them.
ZigBee makes sense becuase it’s like Z-Wave, just with slightly more compatibility issues but a much bigger target market.
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Hey guys – sorry for the hiatus this weekend – I was working on tickets all day yesterday!
Yeah this is a good point – Idk, I think it’s more for us to easily reference with people and then show a picture (ie: what version do you have? Gen 1 (picture) or Gen 2 (picture)). But I see your point for sure. Something to consider from a communications standpoint.
Yeah we can definitely do this!
Completely agree
Yeah, I think I’m coming back around to the flap idea – especially as we just found out it will only add $0.20 per package, so that’s a win in my book. I thought for sure it would be $0.50+. It will also have a magnetic strip on it to keep it closed.
Definitely a good point – I hadn’t thought about this, but it makes sense!
Another good point – I’ve been meaning to play with the data a bit further to see where that exact cutoff is and what we could get away with from a margin perspective. The key to the 10pks success is that it eliminates the fancy packaging, eliminates the extra faceplates, and eliminates the extra instructions, which allows us to give a better discount. I wonder if the same would apply to the 4pk (ie: can we remove faceplates?)
Yeah that’s a great call-out – I like putting the community on there as you all are more credible than a marketing video
Dang… that is an awesome package!
Hmmm… what about all 7?
What it comes down to is that we design our products to be the best (I know everyone says that and it’s become cliche, but we truly believe it and strive to be), yet also innovative. Let’s take the Gen 2 switches (w/the LED bars). Our Gen 1 switches were arguably one of the best on the market from a feature standpoint, but they were essentially a white-label design. I take a lot of inspiration from Apple and it’s a love/hate relationship I have with them. I absolutely will never buy an iPhone as I love Android, but I have a MacBook and will not go back to Windows. Anyway, what I respect about them is their ability to market. Not only with how they display their products, but how they communicate their message.
One of my favorite stories was of the iPod. They were not the first to come out with an mp3 player, but they were the first ones to communicate what it could do. Instead of saying, “this device is 2 Gigs, (insert all specs here)”, they said, “Fit 1000 songs in your pocket”. That’s the game we’re trying to play. The majority of the market has no clue what Z-Wave is, what the latest series is, what any of the main tech specs are, but they do know they want something that they can turn on/off remotely. Unfortunately for us, there are 100’s of companies that make smart switches that do this, so we can’t simply say, “Smart Switch” as you all have pointed out that this is overused and has lost its meaning. So what’s next… displaying the sleek features of the switch/bulb/etc – this is where you capture their attention and they know/feel that this is something different, something innovative and that the LED bar looks cool.
Ok, we’ve captured their attention, now it’s time to sell them on what they didn’t know they needed (ie: Scene Control, LED Notifications, Power Monitoring, etc). This is where the inner flap or back of the box tells the story. I’m leaning towards the inner flap telling the story and the back listing out all the features for people that are more educated and are looking for the information they found online.
Part of the story that also separates us, which I think Apple actually did a great job (despite being what they marketed against) is conveying the message that they’re the brand you want to break away from the norm (1984 Video, MacBook Pro, etc). This is what we’re trying to convey too – you’re used to all the normal smart stuff out there, but check this out, it’s different, it’s, “sexy”, and you want it.
NET: Our brand should portray passion, innovation and mystique.
I know it’s controversial, but I like Elon Musk. @Brianna_Inovelli calls me a, “Muskrat” lol. I promise I won’t be as polarizing or go off the deep end like some of his tweets or life decisions!
Yeah, definitely – I think one of the things I took away from my job at Kellogg was that I had two different bosses… one that made me feel like a COG in the machine, and another who allowed me to make a difference and put me in front of the decision makers. My Director was amazing at allowing everyone to chime in before she spoke and the President of Snacks was the same way and that stuck with me.
@Chris, I’ll respond to your comments here too as this is a good discussion.
We aren’t getting into WiFi and Bluetooth for the reasons Chris outlines. The main one being that they just don’t seem as stable as the other protocols and can be cheapened by foreign companies that make shoddy products (ergo people start to lose faith in the protocol). In addition, it would require a ton of R&D to make an app, server costs, security risks, etc that would indeed distract us.
It is unfortunate that the big 3 (Amazon, Google, Philips) do not support Z-Wave, so we do need to start adding a secondary protocol to the mix (to be clear, we are not abandoning Z-Wave as there still is high demand from a B2B and B2C standpoint for Z-Wave due to its security). When we heard of CHIP, we thought, bingo – all the main players are in on this and we can start developing ZigBee as CHIP will use the same chipset as ZigBee and it would only require a firmware change if someone wanted to switch from ZigBee to CHIP and we could do the same once CHIP launches. If it doesn’t ever launch, at least we’d have ZigBee that works with some of the Amazon Echo’s and ties into Philips Hue.
A lot of the same features we have on our Z-Wave devices can translate to ZigBee so from an R&D standpoint, it shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish.
To be clear Black Series sells great individually – we’re just not selling 10pks. We actually just made the decision to convert the 10pk Black Series Dimmers to 10pk Red Series Dimmers as one person purchased a 10pk Black Series Dimmer lol.
We want to become the Ring of Lighting. Ring went in and disrupted the security space by allowing people to do it themselves. There are only a few brands that are innovating in the lighting space and we hope (once the right investor comes into play) we can do the same. We have some pretty amazing ideas.
You haven’t seen our pitch deck lol jk – while we’d love to build a hub, we’re finding it would take 1-2 years minimum and while we believe we could build the best on the market, we’re likely going to license someone else’s technology, but put our spin on it from an aesthetics standpoint.
With everything in that previous post it kinda sounds like you are wanting to imitate Fibaro’s design and marketing style, while still being unique.
So let’s play that game. Everyone knows what a smart switch is and what its feature set is (remote on/off, timers, voice assistant control).
So maybe put on the box ‘Smarter Switch’? Or ‘Smartest Switch’? Immediately implies that this does more than a normal smart switch. And maybe if you have a Micro Center with a shelf full of ‘smart switches’, having one called ‘smarter switch’ will inspire a curiosity like ‘why is that one smarter than the others?’. Hopefully enough to make the shopper pick up the box and read about the features.
‘Smarter Switch’ might be trademarkable too.
I think you should go for ‘evolution’ as your theme. I think the first 10 seconds of your Next Generation video illustrates this PERFECTLY- generations of light switches, each a bit better than what came before. The rest of the video could have done a better job illustrating the use cases (not features, use cases) of the product, and I thought the music should have stayed at crescendo after the build up. But that first 10 seconds conveys one single and powerful message- this is the next evolution of light switch technology. That 10 seconds captures the attitude I think you guys should take in all your marketing.
I think that’ll resonate more than ‘break away from the norm’ in this space. ‘Break away from the norm’ worked because people didn’t like the norm- computers weren’t easy to use and most non-nerd people didn’t like that. Nobody hates the ‘norm’ of light switches. You flip switch and light comes on, there’s no problem there. Smart switches don’t break away from that, they add to it. Inovelli doesn’t break away from smart switches, you build the next level of it. So go with that.
Yes exactly, that’s why you should keep the flap (especially at only 20c/box). Outer box captures customer attention. Inner flap closes the sale with ‘here’s why this switch is the next evolution of switches, here’s what it will do to improve your life’. Examples like ‘is the garage door open? LED bar is red!’. It’s the value prop pitch to the consumer, what this switch can do for you to make your life better. And it’s (secondarily, through wording choice) a lifestyle pitch, about how with this switch you won’t have to worry about things like whether garage door is closed or alarm is on or whatever you choose.
I also think you should mention that the config button can do scene control here. Have arrows pointing to the parts of the switch- paddle up is kitchen light on, paddle down is kitchen light off, config button is under cabinet light on/off (requires hub compatibility and additional LED strip module sold separately). Or paddle up is kitchen light on, double tap paddle up is all 1st floor lights on, triple tap paddle up is all house lights on, config button is movie mode (light dim, TV on, fan off, etc). The config button is one hardware feature that sets you apart from all others. Use it.
Personally I can’t stand this. It takes me back to the old days of IT- Linksys had a great Ethernet card, model LNE100TX. It was great and its drivers were built into Windows, and for that reason alone I bought them (no driver disks needed). Then they started versioning to reduce manufacturing cost… different chipset, smaller PCB, etc. V2 no longer had drivers built into Windows, and by the time they hit V5 I refused to buy them because now to work on a computer with a LNE100TX I’d need one of five series drivers, and I’d have to open the PC case to match the PCB with the website picture to get the right driver. I hated it, especially since I got no benefit from it, it was only for manufacturing cost savings.
For Inovelli- I suggest versions should ONLY apply to the branding name (red series dimmer), NEVER the model number. So right now you have Red Series Dimmer (v2), model LZW31-SN. If/as/when there’s a V3 with 700 series chipset and even more features, it should be branded ‘Red Series Dimmer (v3)’ model LZW41-SN (or whatever).
Packaging wise- this is the thing that should go on the sticker near the barcode. IE, ‘Red Series Dimmer V2, Model LZW31-SN, Firmware 1.47’. Front of the box can just say Red Series Dimmer or Red Series Smarter Switch, keep that clean.
I agree. Red series has a strong consumer value prop. If you can make that work for a consumer that only has a Google Home or Amazon Echo, you will sell a ton of them. IMHO, right now one of your biggest barriers to mainstream success is that the value / ease of use / overall user experience of your product depends significantly on the capability of the hub the consumer uses. Make it work as well with Google/Alexa as it does with HomeSeer or SmartThings, and you have something huge.
I’d love to see it if you can share. TBH I wish I was in a place to discuss making an investment.
I’d caution you about only putting an aesthetic spin though- you don’t want to dilute your brand. Inovelli to me represents functionality and capability far above the average. One thing you guys do that (to me at least) hurts the brand a little is the RGBW bulb firmware- no ramp rate control (and a very slow factory ramp rate). Compare RGBW’s parameter list with Red series and it’s night and day. Red series = ‘this is a Swiss Army Knife product that will do almost anything I can think of’, RGBW = ‘this is a barebones product that works well but doesn’t do some things that I’d like it to’.
(Side note) For me, flexibility is what I love. If I put Red dimmers everywhere, they will (due to your great firmware) do any use case I need. I have a Red dimmer on an outdoor floodlight, 700ms delay off, ramp time 0, basically working as a Black on/off switch, but it matches the other switches and it means I don’t have to future-plan what I want to do later while installing it now.
Hubs also have an 80/20 type problem in a few ways. Making a Z-Wave hub that does basic control and scheduling isn’t difficult. Making it flexible/powerful enough to deserve the Inovelli name, while still simple enough that anyone can use it, THAT’S hard and the entire hub industry has struggled with that balance for a long time.
That said, I think an Inovelli hub (or even a basic Inovelli sponsored hub) as an idea has some merit, if only so you can make an ‘installer starter kit’ with a few dimmers and switches and a hub that an installer can buy for $500 or whatever and smart-ify a home. ZigBee will help with this… throw a few switches and an Echo in a box and you have a winner.
While also making it cheap enough. I think hubs from Fibaro and Zipato both come pretty close to achieving simple and flexible/powerful, but then they want $500+ for the hubs.
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Agreed. $500 for the hub wouldn’t fly. Should be closer to the $100-$200 area.
Maybe the answer is take a white label hub, and specifically call it the Inovelli Basic Hub- core feature set only, don’t focus on working with everything, mostly white label firmware, but brand it in such a way that’s obvious it’s not a feature packed product. That could work. Or perhaps use the iLumin brand for that.
That could actually be a good branding split- iLumin are white label products, solid and vetted but not ultra feature packed. Inovelli are products developed by Inovelli, complete with 50 parameter options and ultra functionality.
Honestly, I wouldn’t buy a hub that was limited to one brand. I like Hubitat because it’s flexible with many other manufacturers. I don’t want to have to have multiple brand hubs to run my “smart home”.
I don’t mean only works with one brand.
I mean focuses on a core strength, and a handful of integrations (Alexa / Google / etc), with perhaps a 3rd party API. Do the basic things a new user will need, but don’t try to be everything for everyone like the more advanced hubs (HomeSeer / HA / etc).
//edit: But for this, it would need to be obvious this wasn’t a full feature hub. It should go under iLumin brand, and be called ‘basic home hub’ or something like that.