Tom: This is the Money Pit’s Top Products podcast broadcasting today from the International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. LiftMaster is here promoting their products to the builders that are attending this show. LiftMaster is a brand that’s well-known in the industry and they have some new technology that they’re introducing to the builders called MyQ.
Paul Accardo is the manager of marketing and communications for LiftMaster. Paul, give us some background on LiftMaster.
Paul: LiftMaster is the number one brand of professionally installed garage door openers available in North America. We have over 4,000 dealers. Our products are available exclusively through those dealers who are experts in their field and can come and install a system that will manage your garage door perfectly.
Tom: Now, LiftMaster, would it be fair to call it a B2B brand? You’re essentially here promoting these products to builders as opposed to consumers?
Paul: I’d say we’re both a B2B and a B2C consumer brand as well. Certainly builders are an important influencer on the consumer when it comes to new construction. We want builders to know about and understand LiftMaster products so that they can offer them to consumers, but consumers can just as easily contact a LiftMaster dealer, find a LiftMaster dealer at liftmaster.com and set something up that way as well.
Tom: One of the hottest trends in home building right now is home automation. How is LiftMaster joining that fray?
Paul: LiftMaster has developed great new partnerships over the last year with key players in the home automation industry, like Apple, for instance, with their home kit, Nesk with their learning thermostat, as well as security providers like Alarm.com. I think many people in this industry want to partner together to create the smart home and not have everybody do things separately, so we are actively looking at partnerships and ways for consumers and builders to make things easier.
Tom: Now, one of the first products you came out with was MyQ, MyQ technology and MyQ garage specifically. How did the builders respond to that?
Paul: Builders are excited about MyQ because it’s an opportunity to offer homeowners, home buyers a less expensive way to automate their homes. It gets them into that sort of smart home zone very quickly and very inexpensively through a product that is ubiquitous, the garage door opener. Everybody has one. Customers are telling builders, “Look, we want to automate our homes. We want to create a smart home, so we want you to specify and recommend products that do that for me.” We think there’s no better product to begin a smart home than through a LiftMaster garage door opener that’s equipped with MyQ, which allows you to open and close it from anywhere with your smartphone and give you a notification that that door is open or closed.
We want to keep that primary entrance point to your home safe. Our garage door openers can help you manage your home and contribute to peace of mind. Builders are excited about that. They’re excited to offer home buyers that opportunity.
Tom: From this point, moving forward in 2015, what can we expect to see from LiftMaster?
Paul: Well, I think we can expect to see LiftMaster products become even more easier to operate and control and become even more a part of the smart home, so more good things to come from LiftMaster on that.
Tom: Paul Accredo from LiftMaster, thank you so much for being a part of the Money Pit podcast.
Paul: Thanks very much.
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