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Residential Systems Magazine
January 2008

A New Design Scheme

Company Profile:
Cosmopolitan Entertainment Systems

by Joy Zaccaria

The D&D Building in Manhattan holds a certain cache for interior designers. Home to more than 120 showrooms, the Decoration & Design Building on Third Avenue and 59th Street represents manufacturers and products that range from fabrics, wall coverings, furniture, carpets, and lighting. In today's rapid technology turnover, the need for a new design scheme in the living room generally signals the time to upgrade a flat screen and thus follows the need for distributed audio.

While custom installers are no strangers to partnering with interior designers and architects, Cosmopolitan Entertainment Systems (CES) has infiltrated this legendary home furnishings landmark in cooperation with the Robert Allen/Beacon Hill Furnishings showroom and set up shop with a showroom for high-end residential systems consulting and installation.

CES is the residential division of Real Time Services Inc., a commercial systems integration company based in New York City. Kevin Berman, principal at CES, started with Real Time 10 years ago and gained much commercial AV experience working with conference rooms and command centers. About two years ago, Real Time Services realized that the random residential jobs they were doing would constitute a legitimate business. "We had been doing residential home theater, distributed audio, and home automation systems for a lot of our clients on the commercial end," Berman said. "We were doing it somewhat reluctantly, because we were tooled up for commercial applications."

Berman sat down with the Real Time partners to strategize how to take advantage of the demand for residential installations. When writing the business plan for Cosmopolitan Entertainment, Berman applied basic principles from the commercial side to the residential world. "You're never looking to sell a single conference room," he said. "You're never looking to install a single display or a single control system. You're looking for companies that have hundreds of conference rooms in multiple locations in multiple cities around the country. With that underlying philosophy, we leveraged the residential work."

Forming Alliances

Berman pursued a wholesale kind of an approach. "An interior designer may do 10 jobs a year with 10 different clients," he said. "By aligning with the furniture distributor that designers consult with, there's a constant awareness of CES since it's likely clients will also need custom installation services."

The design trade clients who come into Robert Allen/Beacon Hill are buying furniture for their clients who just got a new house or are redecorating a house. "Every time someone is refreshing their furniture, they always need a flat panel," Berman said. "Discussion of the TV always leads to 'Oh, we can do home theater' or, 'We can do distributed audio or lighting control, shade, climate control.'"

The Robert Allen/Beacon Hill sales people that meet with designers and create quotes for them are encouraged to bring CES into these projects. "While they're sitting there with the designer, they would ask, 'Does this client require any AV? Have you considered putting a flat panel here?'"

CES positions itself as a resource to the designer. When the client is looking to redo his house, he engages a design company. "When they get up to the part about having music in every room, then the designer can say he has a firm that he uses for this, CES. The designer is the one bringing us into the project."

The clients who are actively seeking a professional's help with designing the decor of their home are already pre-qualified to consult with a residential custom installer. "We're selling more of an experience," Berman explained. "If you buy from us it's because you want something more than what you get at Best Buy or Circuit City."

In considering where the most high-end business is generated from, Berman sought his contacts in the furniture world at the NY Design Center's Henredon Interior Design showroom on Lexington Avenue and 32nd Street in Manhattan, where CES already had a showroom. "What we've done, both in the D&D Building and in the Henredon showroom, is integrated our entertainment technology with the design of the furnishings. It's more of a real-life type of approach."

As a mutually beneficial arrangement, the furniture showroom host gets its own perks. It can be hard for the interior designers to show how modern technology fits in with classic furniture. "Even people buying the most traditional furniture still want a TV," Berman said. "One element of co-existing showrooms is that the interior designers can demonstrate how technology fits in. It helps to sell the furniture into environments where there's going to be technology like a flat panel in the living room."

Making a Good Impression

From the standpoint of working on their business as opposed to in their business, Robert Allen/Beacon Hill frequently hosts presentations for designers. With about 100 people in attendance, they are always looking for ways to run sales presentations more smoothly. "They were going out and renting equipment on a regular basis, several times a year," Berman said. Now CES with its rental and staging division handles all of Robert Allen/Beacon Hill's technology needs as part of the arrangement.

From Berman's perspective, "Every time there's an event at Robert Allen/Beacon Hill, if those in the design trade get to touch, see, smell, feel my stuff, it will give them exposure to the Cosmopolitan Entertainment brand, while they're here getting exposure to the Robert Allen/Beacon Hill brand."

Historically, for the high-end furnishings company, custom audio/visual installation has had nothing to do with the image and reputation they spent many years establishing and maintaining. "There's the balancing act of knowing where that line is," Berman said. "Having our equipment in the showroom here is tolerated to a point. We can't take over. There's a delicate balance. They want us here for a reason. We want to be here for a whole list of reasons."

History vs. New Technology

The credibility of co-locating with an established and legendary interior design Mecca works to Cosmopolitan's advantage in terms of an alliance for clients, but working in a somewhat historic New York City building does come with its challenges. "There's the usual New York City building problems," Berman said. "Getting workers and equipment in and out of the building can be a problem with the unions along with insurance issues."

Cosmopolitan brought in its own electrician to rewire the space for its technology costing several thousand dollars. "Bringing in your electrician into a building like this where there's already electricians," Berman said, "there were union concerns." Being an old building, Cosmopolitan also has to work around the existing Internet connection that is slower than dial-up when demonstrating equipment that requires an IP connection.

With two years of experience under his belt in the custom installation world, Berman would like to see CES become more efficient from the perspective of the process. "I'd like to see our process be more streamlined in terms of meeting with a client and identifying their needs systematically," Berman said. He would like to address all the customized needs in a way that is standardized but takes into account the variables working with clients likely to change their minds constantly.

"The whole idea behind it is that it is custom," Berman added. "If you want something custom made, then it's hard to work off a template. In order for anyone to buy a premium product they have to experience it. And in order to experience it, we have to build it and let them experience it. This way the client can say, 'Yes, I want this new home audio system' while they are redecorating their home."

Joy Zaccaria is a freelance writer living in New York City.