By George McClure
Nice North America is a division of Nice S.p.A., an Italian multinational company that designs, manufactures and markets smart home automation and security products, with distribution in over 100 countries throughout the world. We recently had a conversation with Jeff Shaw, Head of Product Management, about what’s new at Nice.
George McClure: Nice just entered the North American market fairly recently, but the company has been on the global scene for quite a while.
Jeff Shaw: Yes. Nice was founded in 1993 and is based in Oderzo, Italy, which is just outside of Venice. We’re a global leader in home and building management. We’ve got offices in 23 different countries, with over 3,000 team members. So, we are a fairly large organization worldwide. Nice acquired Nortek Control in 2021, which then became Nice North America, a regional entity of the global organization. Nice North America is headquartered in Carlsbad, California.
George: What are some of your product categories?
Jeff: For Nice, the idea is to give people the ability to do just about anything with their home and their property and really simplify their lives. That’s the mission. Nice offers solutions for home audio, home management, energy management, window treatments, gate and door controls, security and more. We like to talk about home management versus smart home control, because for us, home management encompasses smart home control, but there’s more to it than that. When you talk about a smart home, a lot of people think of a smart thermostat or a smart doorbell, but it is more than that for Nice. We see it as a home whole management system. People are managing their power, they’re managing their environment with air quality and water management and appliances that are now connected. So, it’s now become less of a smart home for audio/video (A/V), and really more of a control system to manage the entire home.
George: Along those lines, in our Performance Home Awards last year we handed out a prize to the HR40 held remote control. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that product and what differentiates it.
Jeff: The Nice HR40 is our latest remote control, and it was in development for a number of years. What we wanted to do with the HR40 was rather than just introduce a remote control where someone can control media and A/V and maybe some lighting and some other things, we really wanted to take that to the next level and have it be a single device to control multiple systems. So now we can do things like answer the doorbell right from the remote control, we can use it as an intercom system so we can page or intercom other user interfaces in the home. If you’ve got other remotes or other touch-panels or other people on mobile, those devices can communicate, so there’s much more functionality and usability than just a remote control that sits in the media center and controls media and might control a scene in that room or maybe some lighting.
It’s more of a touchscreen in your hand, is the way we think of it. You might have a phone, a mobile device that can do very similar things, but you’re missing the hard buttons to control your media. So, it really does everything between what a mobile device would do, a touch-panel would do, and a remote control would do. It gives a much greater usability to the device. When most people are interacting with their home systems, they’re not looking at all the black boxes in the equipment rack. That’s all pretty, sometimes they look really nice, and people show them off. But really, what is the end user using when they’re controlling their home? It’s the remote control, it’s the touchscreen or it’s the mobile device, and we put a lot of effort into that. We still want to make sure that our products are beautiful in the rack and that they look good. They don’t just look like square black boxes. But when we designed this remote, we put a lot of effort and thought into the user experience, the industrial design — all of those elements that go into the user experiences were very important to us.
George: And you have apps with some of the same functionality to go on tablets and mobile phones?
Jeff: Absolutely. We also have a PC user interface. We give the user the ability to do it whichever way works best for them. The other important thing to us is if you look at our user interface, if someone is using more than one device, so they have a remote control, they have a touch-panel and they have a mobile device with an app on it, we want to make sure that that user experience is consistent across all of those. So, they’re not learning to use one versus learning to use the other. If they have used one, they should be able to use any of the others, as well. And also important is that somebody should be able to pick up our device and not need to have a tutorial on how to use it. It’s like turning on a light switch. Very easy and intuitive.
George: When Nice acquired Nortek Control, that included such well-known brands as ELAN (smart home control), SpeakerCraft (architectural speakers), Panamax (surge suppression and energy management) and more. In terms of branding, are you guys transitioning to the Nice name or are you still trying to hold onto a little bit of that equity of those original brands?
Jeff: For ELAN, Panamax and SpeakerCraft, we finalized the brand transition last year at CEDIA. It took us about a year and those three brands have completely transitioned to Nice now.
George: What is the benefit to end users and dealers in having everything under one umbrella?
Jeff: Great question. Before, we were trying to develop products around seven, eight or ten different brands. In consolidating that effort under one brand, we can put more into making our dealers more visible with what they sell in the marketplace. Our marketing efforts, our promotional efforts are all behind one story, and dealers can go out and sell a very strong brand.
George: And I suppose part of that story is the assurance to the end user that all this stuff is designed to work well together. It can be kind of overwhelming when you’re talking about ten different companies.
Jeff: Exactly. With multiple brands, a client might wonder, well is this product really compatible with that one? Having one brand really simplifies that part of the story. But we do want people to understand that with a new name on the product, it’s the same technologies, the same quality, the same people developing all the great stuff behind those products.
George: Cool. Then let’s talk a little bit about audio. SpeakerCraft was kind of an iconic brand, as one of the originators of the architectural speaker, and they’ve been known for their innovations over the years. Tell us what’s going on there.
Jeff: For audio, we have a lot of great things just launched and more that we are working on now. We just introduced a line of small aperture in-ceiling speakers, which is a great solution for designers when you want to match the opening of smaller can lights today. The 3.5-inch speaker fits in a 4.75-inch cutout. With that, there’s also a small aperture in-ceiling subwoofer that delivers great deep bass performance, also through a 4.75-inch cutout, to meet the aesthetic needs of the modern home. To power this system, we’ve also recently introduced a 4-channel analog amplifier designed specifically for these speakers and made everything easy to configure and install.
George: Tell us a bit about the AIM Series in-ceiling speakers.
Jeff: The AIM Series was a SpeakerCraft innovation. They were the first in-ceiling speakers to feature an aimable woofer/tweeter module that aims the sound in any direction you choose, making for more flexible placement options. Now we’ve just introduced the next generation of the AIM speakers, redesigned and revoiced for even better sound performance.
George: And you’ve got a whole variety of in-wall models, soundbars and other solutions.
Jeff: Yes, including outdoor. Outdoor landscape speakers, rock speakers. You name it, we have it. We’re continuing to develop more audio solutions, more speaker solutions using the same great technologies that were once under the SpeakerCraft brand.
George: Okay, switching gears a little, let’s hear about your shading options.
Jeff: Yes, we’re really excited about those. The Nice brand has been selling shade motors for the last 20 years, so this is not a new category for us. Nice has been selling those motors primarily in Europe, but also some of the larger shade manufacturers in the U.S. have been using Nice motors, as well. So, we’re not new to the market. What we decided to do on the Systems Integration side is the custom shade. We are providing a solution for our dealers to have access to high quality motors, the quietest motors on the market, plus the ability to do the most options in terms of what type of shades they can offer their customers. We can do peaked windows, we can do bottom up, top down. We can do exterior, we can do skylights, we can go horizontal — you name it, we can do it.
We’re not coming into this business new — again, the motors have been around for 20 years. The fabricator that we’re working with has been providing quality shading solutions for three generations. We now are providing a solution for our dealers that is better than what they can find on the market today and gives them the widest range of shading options for their customers.