D-Tools 'What's the Buzz' About... Distribution Services

Distributors are becoming more vital to the integration industry. Of course, the crux of that importance is primarily related to their ability to provide integrators with the products they need for their projects, but it stretches well beyond that. Distributors have truly become partners with integrators. 
Blackwire Designs is a great example of a distributor that has diversified to offer unique vital services for integrators, including lighting configuration, AV distribution configuration, and network provisioning. 
Cody Crossland, VP of sales, and Seth Johnson, software development manager, joined the October 2024 episode of the D-Tools "What's the Buzz" podcast to discuss how integrators can partner more closely with their distribution partners. The duo also discussed the general state of the industry and the hot category of lighting. 

Transcript

Jason Knott   
 Hello, and welcome to the October installment of the D Tools.
 What's the Buzz podcast?
 I'm Jason Knott, data solutions architect at Det Tools and with me as always.
 Is my Co host, Tim Bigoness, chief marketing officer at Detro S Hey, Tim.
Tim Bigoness   
 Hey, Jason, how you doing?
Jason Knott   
 I'm doing great. I'm doing great and as always, everybody out there listening, please hit the subscribe button for the what's The Buzz Podcast in Spotify and your other podcast platforms. And watch us on the D Tools YouTube channel so you don't miss a single episode. So Tim, I know October is one of your favorite months.
Tim Bigoness 
 It is I I love October.
 I love everything about it.
 I love Halloween.
 In fact, it's so spooky that this is a special audio only podcast because it was so scary we couldn't even get the cameras working.
 But I love Charlie Brown.
 Christmas. I love Halloween.
 I also like October because now I live in the Atlanta area.
 It's we get a full Four Seasons and fall is is really awesome here.
 The weather's still nice, but the trees are are boom, bam. Like lots of colors and you know.
 CDs behind us.
 It's the beginning of the fourth quarter.
 We can finish the year strong.
 Prep for next year and then you know it's it's the pathway to the holidays.
 And you know, at this time of year it's it's always good to think about, you know, ramping up.
 What can we do to, you know, run better businesses?
 Connect with our partners, connect with our service service suppliers.
 Whether it be a software company such as ours or or like our guest today, a distributor like black wire designs, I'm really psyched.
 Our guests today are Cody Crossland, vice president of Sales, and Seth Johnson, software development manager from black wire designs.
 You know, they're one of the leaders in the industry and they know a lot about helping integrators achieve their goals.
 Hey, welcome guys.

Well before we kind of dive deep into how you work with integrators and how they can work closer with companies like yours to to get an edge in the market.
 Tell us a bit about how you guys came to be.
 What's the what's the background of black wire designs?
 What's the? What's the back story?

 Cody Crossland   So blackwire is actually celebrating our 15th year.
 We were founded in 2009 and kind of our specialty is that we were founded by and our staff with former integrators, right?
 We took the approach of knowing that, you know, as a dealer, as an integrator, you face unique challenges in your installs.
 And your system designs in your quotes everyday, right?
 And we feel like having had the same experience as former integrators, we we bring kind of a different approach to distribution.
 Not just here to move boxes, but we're here to sell and support products that we believe in products that we've tested and know are are good products that can help solve particular problems on the job site and deliver enterprise grade solutions to our customers. And then we also.
 Have value added services that we bring to the table that can either save an integrator time or money or both whenever they do business with us.

 Tim Bigoness 
 That's great. You know, it's it's it's ironic that we actually were founded.
 Details was founded in 1998 by an integrator, Adam Stone, and he really started the company because he found a way to be able to produce drawings and proposals faster for his clients and then realize that, hey, he can really help the industry by, you know, sharing.
 Sharing the knowledge and then building the software platform to what it is today. So.
 We we we share a lot of similar DNA and.
 In our shared mission to, you know, help integrators run better businesses.
Cody Crossland   
 Absolutely.
Tim Bigoness 
 Jason, you want to jump in?
Jason Knott 
 So Seth, let me turn to you.
 What are you hearing right now about the state of?
 The business out there from the integrators and the integration community.
Seth Johnson 
 Cody's definitely probably the better one to ask on that 'cause he does talk to a lot more than I do, but I still have friends locally that all have integration businesses and well, I'm in Florida, so it may be a an outlier, but everybody says we are.
 Slammed, we are weeks out, you know, right now there, there's been a couple storms we've had. So everyone I know is just just straight busy and really doesn't have time to think.
 I think they'd love to have more help.
 They they would love to have.
 You know more staff on hand.
 Because the the the amount of work that we have here is, is quite honestly just kinda daunting at this point in time.
 Every everything that was outside was broken.
 And then, you know, sometimes you have cases where stuff inside got broken, and especially the way we build houses here.
 On the keys and on the barrier islands. Sometimes there's a kind of an A space under it, a basement, if you will. A Florida basement and you're not supposed to build there.
 But people totally finish that out in theaters, and that kind of thing.
 So I I can't imagine how many theaters have been.
 Washed away with the last couple of storms, considering every island all the way from like Naples all the way north has has gotten been flooded at some point.
 So there's there's definitely a lot of work out there for every tradesperson in Florida, including custom integrators.
 I know we, the guys I've talked to, like I said, I've just said they're so busy right now.
Jason Knott 
 You were in Florida?
 It's been brutal.
 We obviously have seen that.
 It's funny you growing up in Southern California, I I I worked for a tile shop for many years.
 We did tile, you know, kitchens, baths and and every earthquake was a boom for business, for us. 'cause, every dial cracked.
 So it was horrible when these earthquakes happened, but it was big business for for a lot of the trade.
 So Cody, it's same thing in the the Phoenix area.
 Are you in the Phoenix area?
Cody Crossland 
 No, I'm actually in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex and you know both, I would say that both markets are still pretty strong.
 You know Dallas Fort Worth has been growing pretty rapidly for the last, I don't know, decade and 1/2 or so 2 decades.
 You know, places that used to be what you would consider out of the immediate Metroplex area are now part of that Metroplex area. And so you have to go.
 Further and further out, in order to get kind of outside of the area. So with that growth.
 You know, across the various price points that we have here in the Metroplex, you know there's there's a ton of integration companies. There's a ton of business, you know, new constructions still going strong.
 I mean, even when we had the housing market problems in the late 2000s.
 You know it slowed down, but it didn't stop here in the Metroplex like it did in some other places.
 So I think we've been pretty fortunate with regards to, you know, just the the explosive growth in the DFW area.
 So you know, there's plenty of work to be done and you know a lot of opportunity to have it, you know, and in some areas, you know where there's not any new land to build new houses on.
 What they'll do is they'll buy existing houses and tear them down and build something else there.
 I think I was seeing a a video on the local news where Dak Prescott who's you know, the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. He had bought a home and and prosper, which is a little well used to be a little town right outside of the Metroplex not so.
 Much anymore. But he recently tore that house down that he had for a couple years there and is building a new house.
 So you know, they're they're doing it everywhere and you know, really just kind of depends on where you want to be and and whether or not that you get the ability to build new construction or.
 To remodel or to work with what you got.
 So there's a lot of different opportunities here.
Jason Knott   
 Let's hope Cowboy fans don't know where that house is 'cause I know the way they've been playing lately, but.
Cody Crossland   
 Yeah. It it's too too late for that.

Jason Knott 
 So you know Cody, you touched on something that I really wanna make the crux of the conversation today, and that's the value add services that distributors bring to the market.
 You know, it's not just moving boxes. As you said, it's training and design and business advice and you, you know, black wire designs even goes even step further with writing control drivers for for integrators, so.
 When you, when you look at the the the breadth of services that you provide.
 What are some of the most important services that distributors provide in general, but then also specifically you provide the integrators?
Cody Crossland 
 Yeah, so I think.
 In general, I think distributors can be a great partner to the integrator because the distributor should have an excellent working relationship with the vendors that they work with so that they can help answer questions and steer the integrator into the right product, right.
 You know, they may come to the distributor with questions about, hey, you know, I've got a problem.
 You know, here's XY and Z information that I have, and so a lot of times dealer will lean on the distributor to.
 Help them.
 Kind of try to problem solve it, which can be.
 Challenging at times, whenever you know we've never seen the project. You know we've never seen the plans in some cases.
 So a lot of times we're just kind of spitballing ideas.
 Just to kind of get them into the right products, but to take it a step further.
 Black wire really wanted to focus on things that we can do that an integrator would normally have to do on the job site. But we're saying, hey, instead of you guys.
 You know, buying networking equipment from us and spending two or three hours on the job site trying to get that set up, you know and firmware updating it and configuring it.
 You know, why don't we do that for you, right?
 We've been doing it for decades with just that power and video over IP systems like that where, you know, an integrator could come to our website, they could have a pre sales consultation and make sure that they're getting the right.
 Pieces and parts and then they can also fill out a little questionnaire about it.
 And you know, they tell us, hey, what are, you know, the source name?
 What are the display names?
 Things like that.
 What we would do is pull all those parts out of our warehouse, plug them into the switch that they're going to use and pre configure firmware update and label the whole system and print a little connection guide that says hey, plug, you know this transmitter into this board.
 On the switch, plug this receiver for this display into that port on the switch, and we took something that can be very intimidating if you've never done it before and AV over IP system and made it as easy as plug and play.
 So, you know, taking the next step from that, we launched our network provisioning services earlier this year.
 That does something very similar for an enterprise grade networking system.
 So let's say you buy, you know, a firewall, a router from us.
 Let's say you buy a Netgear switch and Ruckus Wi-Fi access points.
 It's kind of the same concept where you fill out a survey about hey, what do you want your networking IP address scheme to be?
 What do you want?
 Your Wi-Fi, SSI DS and passwords to be and we get this information from the dealer for the project.
 And we take the equipment that they've purchased before we ship it.
 We unbox it, we plug it in.
 We firmware update it.
 You know, we put labels on the APS that say, hey, you know, this is the master bedroom access point or this is, you know, the waiting room access point or, you know, Jim's office, right.
 And we put those labels on it and we configure the ruckus to our best practices guide that we all offer for free on our website. The Ruckus 101 guide. And we do that for them, so.
 When the integrator gets this and they get to the job site, all they have to do is unbox it and they can look at it and go OK.
 I know where this access point needs to go.
 They plug it in and power it up.
 And now it's ready to go out-of-the-box, right?
 This gets them 99% of the way there and for a lot of guys it can be 100% of the way.
 And what that does is it enables integration companies, you know, maybe they don't have somebody who's super strong in networking.
 That's great.
 You could take advantage of this free service and now you have a leg up, right?
 You don't have to stay on top of networking.
 You don't have to hire a guy who's a networking expert, or if you're a company who does have someone who is a networking expert.
 But maybe he's the only guy and he's on.
 A service call, right?
 But you're trying to start a new project and deploy the Wi-Fi and get the network up to speed, so you can start programming the automation system when you take advantage of the service.
 You're deploying a turnkey networking solution and you don't have to pull the network expert off the service call, right?
 You're you're able to better utilize your company resources and you know have multiple people in multiple places.
 More efficiently or you know, you can actually take a lunch or go home at a reasonable hour because you know we saved you two or three hours on the job site.
 Now you can get that time back.
Tim Bigoness 
 Yeah, that's that's huge.
 That. That, that's that's really becoming a partner to them and you know, I'm sure that that that's probably you know helped a lot of guys either get into a new area like you said or just you know save their save their **** on a job, right even then.
 Right now, that's huge.
Seth Johnson   
 The labor saving is massive.
 I mean, if you get, you're getting all the product in the box.
 It's already been labeled.
 You can just hand it out to, you know if somebody can relabel that's that's about as qualified as they need to be for the job.
 You hand it to them, say go mount this behind the TV and plug the CAT5 into it and on the other end you know you can be standing there or you know, the head technician can be standing there looking at the the, the the directions or not.
 The directions but the little sheet that Cody talked about and just plugging the wires in.
 Where where they're supposed to go on the switch.
 I mean it it it I can't tell you how quickly that makes these jobs go and you know, it's already been burned in and tested. I mean it's it's a huge hump that have to do at the office, you know, before you go out in a week or.
 Two ahead and burn the system, and we've already done that for you.
 You can get there and and and get the whole video system or network system up and going before you have to leave.
Tim Bigoness 
 Yeah.
Cody Crossland   
 Yeah, there's no risk of DOA.
 There's no risk of trying to do a firmware update on the sketchy Internet that maybe is at the job site. If you have Internet, some places don't even have reliable Internet when you're trying to get these systems installed, you know there's no risk of braking a device because.
 The firmware update failed in the middle of downloading that crucial file.
 You know where it says. Please do not turn off.
 Very important.
 You know something?
 There's always that risk of something happening and you're sweating it out there.
Tim Bigoness   
 So that sounds like an awesome service.
 So how how's the adoption so far?
 And how are you letting? How are your letting?
 How are you letting your integrators know about it?
Cody Crossland 
 Yeah. So the adoption has been pretty great.
 Like I said, we we launched it a little bit earlier this year, right before the CDs show.
 So we spent some time talking to the folks that stopped by our booth about it and showing it and and it was really, really well received by our integrators because they could see exactly how that can save them time and money in the field, right. And so we.
 Hitting up our folks in our newsletter, letting them know that it's available that way, but also on our social media platforms as well.
 And we're always looking.
 For feedback, you know if somebody decides that you know, hey, maybe it would be cool if you know your system could do XY and Z for us.
 You know, we're always taking that into consideration and building on the service because it needs to be a living service, right?
 It's. It should never be something that's fixed because you know, as we know from being former integrators, this technology stuff changes all the time, you know, so we're updating our guide.
 We're updating recommended firmware that we like to use.
 Changing settings you know and as Wi-Fi 7 becomes more of a an adopted thing here in the next couple of years, I think we're a little bit early on the on the hardware side.
 There's not a lot of clients just yet, but as we get there, you know our Ruckus 101 guide is gonna update for best practices that we see once Wi-Fi 7 becomes more of a standardized thing.
 So you know these configuration options that we see, you know, are a living document to that extent too, where they'll always be updated and tried to make them better and faster. And you know more reliable for our customers.
Jason Knott 
You won a couple of awards at CEDIA Expo for this network provisioning service, so congratulations to that. But I don't wanna dig too deep in the weeds, but I do have some questions.
 First of all, what's the typical time frame when they wanna deploy that service on your standpoint?
 Obviously it's gonna depend on the size of the project. I'm guessing the number of components, but give us a sense of that that time frame.
Cody Crossland 
 Sure. I mean on a standard size project, let's say you've got, you know, a router, a switch and then maybe 10 or fewer access points, right?
 If the order gets placed in the morning before lunch and we've got everything in stock, which is our goal is to always have these products in stock because we know how important it is because they're critical the the the IP system, the network is the backbone of every.
 That happens in the House these days, right? So.
 If they place the order in the morning.
 And we get the information form that we need from them right at the time of ordering and it's before lunch. In most cases, the system will ship out same day, right?
 That's our goal now.
 More realistically, we know that.
 You know, they may place an order and there may be a delay.
 Getting whoever knows the information about the project to fill the form out, you know, maybe they do it late in the afternoon or something like that. You know, in a situation like that, it's going to ship the next business day in most cases.
Jason Knott 
 It's fantastic in general, when you looked at this networking area, is it?
 Is it an area you know, like you were describing that that maybe they are short on the manpower there or is it just a matter of in general that integrators aren't up to speed as to where they should be or is it combination of both?
Cody Crossland 
 It could be a combination of both for sure and I want to make sure that we stress that this isn't an insult to anybody's intelligence, right?
 There are a lot of very knowledgeable people out there.
 Many people know more than us and, you know, have probably forgotten more than we've ever learned about networking.
 But we saw it as an opportunity to help out the guys who maybe don't have a comprehensive staff.
 Maybe it's just a couple of people you know on the team.
 Maybe they're growing and maybe they do have somebody who's strong and networking, but.
 Said they're they're having to do other things.
 You know the small integration companies will all the employees wear mini hats, right? And so that guy who may be good at that, he may be over meeting with a new customer, trying to close a job because he's also the sales guy, right?
 So we were thinking about the best ways that we can help our customers and the easiest return on the investment is allowing us to do things that save the integrator time and money.
 And so our video over IP configuration service, our network provisioning service.
 And even our black light LED design tool.
 You know these resources are all things that we decided to share our knowledge about so that we could get these integrators, our customers, you know, a leg up and just say, hey, you know what, if we could help you be more efficient save you time, save you money.
 So that you can get on to doing the things that we can't do for you, right?
 We can't hang  a TV or calibrate a projector or anything like that necessarily, right?
 Some of those things have to be done on site and and so we we're enabling them to have the time back so they can do those things and get paid, get the job done.

Seth Johnson   
 Yeah, we're integrators. Oh, sorry.
 I was gonna say at heart, we're integrators as well.
 And you know, we're we like automation.
 So you know the the faster, the faster. The only thing that's gonna speed us up right now is automating some of these things.
 And we're we're automating the input of the forms and the reports, and heck, automating a lot of the programming and everything.
 So it it's a, it's a matter of it's a, it's a matter of just finding those efficiencies.
 You know, it may not make sense for an integrator who does.
 You know one or two video distribution jobs a year, but we we do a lot.
 Here we do many video distribution systems every year and it makes sense for us to be able to put those together and ship those out pre configured and ready to go for integrators to take advantage of of having that expertise and everything on the back end but before.
 The product even ships out.
Jason Knott 
 Very cool.
 So let's let me move on to another subject.
 Kind of. What are you hearing and what kind of product categories you obviously mentioned network being you know the engine that drives the car and and video distribution off distribution, but what are some of the areas where you're seeing real strength in the market right now from a?
 Product category standpoint.
Seth Johnson 
 Seeing I mean lighting is still a pretty big popular topic these days.
 We got involved with lighting a couple years ago.
 Heck, I think it was like five or six years ago now. Cody, I can't remember and I I know that we we we teamed up with American lighting and have quickly ran into a lot of the questions that that we we where we where we couldn't figure out.
 What dealers couldn't figure out how to put all these parts in pieces together.
 They've got beautiful products.
 But they're all parts and pieces.
 And you gotta put it all together.
 It's gotta be, right? All the specs have to match all the numbers have to match. All the math has to add up and if you do any of that wrong, you get blue smoke at the end of the day.
 Like something's gonna fry. And you're gonna be upset. Your customers gonna be upset, and you'll probably never do lighting again.
 And so like we, we identified that we said you know what, you know, we'll make, we'll make a LED configuration tool to help with that process.
 And it's it's been great.
 I mean we we we definitely seen a pick up in in lighting sales over the years and and a lot of interest in that category.
 He said.
 That's the one I'm familiar with.
 I'm sure Cody has a pretty good answer to.
Cody Crossland 
 Yeah, I think lighting's a good indicator of that as something that didn't really exist in our channel until you know the last couple of years and to kinda joke about that point with you know us preferring to use automation and you know finding ways to save time.
 And money for our customers. You know we we like it on the internal aspect of all the tools and utilities that we use too.
 And so when we first started selling lighting, that kind of became my curse.
 I was the guy that figured out.
 You know how to.
 Do some of the specifications and make sure all the parts and pieces work together and then that's what I spent all of my time doing and I got to a point where I didn't want to do it anymore.
 You know, I did it all day, every day.
 And I was getting burned out. And Seth was, like, talking to me one day. And I said, look, we got to figure out a way to automate me out of a job, right.
 I don't want to do this anymore as far as the the lighting design stuff goes so that that gave birth, you know.
 To the the black light tool was because we wanted a way internally for us to be able to quote.
 These faster and more accurately so that the tape light didn't turn into a conversation of back and forth and you know, an hour and a half on the phone trying to lock down some of the information we made.
 All of those guidelines and things that we learned the hard way about, you know, power supply, overhead percentages and maximum with the run tape and all those different things and kind of rolled it into a utility with an easy to use interface that now a dealer can go.
 On to our website and use that tool.
 And crank out a linear lighting system design for a house and they've never done it before.
 But they could get, you know, a quote done for a house in probably 10 to 15 minutes at this point and click right?
Tim Bigoness 
 That's awesome.
 So so do you also help your guys? Kinda with general business advice and operational advice.
 So if they've never done lighting before and they're interested in that, that's that's a, you know, that's a different discipline.
 Is there, you know, different business model that they may want to think about?
 Do you help them with those types of questions?
Cody Crossland 
 I think at this point, you know, everybody's business is so different and you know, even then it's so different regionally, right?
 You know, some guys may do it as and a value add to the existing services that they have and some integrators.
 I know they they have their own like electrical department, right?
 They're fortunate enough to be.
 Av and electrical.
 And so there's really tight coordination between their so those guys can get.
 Into specifications and and designs that go beyond the four cans and a fan in a room, right?
 They can then bring in lighting layers and things like that where you know it's it's a little bit next level stuff and they can use black light to do the linear tape light designs and things like that.
 So you know, we kind of stopped short of of business services and business consulting, right to that degree. But we're here to help them as far as you know, choosing the right products.
 Specifying that and you know how to how to go from this is something that I'm interested in and I've never done it before to I'm confident because I've done this before.
 And I know how to use the utilities and you know we're we're giving them the confidence that they need to be able to just hit the ground running with it.
Tim Bigoness
 Awesome. So we're coming up to close to our time here.
 So then OK, so following on that. So how can integrators work with you? How can?
 They say, hey, I'm interested in this.
 I wanna start working with these guys.
Cody Crossland 
 Yeah, absolutely.
 Our website is blackwiredesigns.com they can go there and check out some of the products and services that we offer.
 It's super easy to get an account. They can start a chat with us right there.
 Drop a support ticket or give us a call, but they can set up an account for free.
 You know, we just need a little bit of their business information just to make sure that they are an integration company.
 We don't work with end users.
 But once we get that initial conversation rolling, you know it's just a a matter of getting set up and and getting their needs taken care of.
Tim Bigoness
That's awesome, Jason.
 Do you have anything else?
Jason Knott 
 No, I just wanna. You know, you guys have you think out-of-the-box and that's why I think it's so ingenious about what you've done here with these services. And I always think back to that.
 I'll call one of your trademark services where you included the snacks in the in the pack in the shipments for the integrators, and then when when when COVID came around you had the N95 and the hand sanitizer in there. I just thought that was ingenious and created a real partnership feeling and more than a feeling, but real partnership with the integrators out there.
 So congratulations and kudos to you guys for for thinking out-of-the-box with these services really broadening what it means to be a distributor in this industry?
 So no, that that's all I got, Tim.
 I'll throw it back to you.
Tim Bigoness 
 All right. So thanks so much you guys for joining us today.
 It was great to to learn about, you know, your success and and you know how you're helping your integrators.
 You're welcome back anytime.
 And yeah, we've, we've loved having you so quick reminder for everyone, if you like what you're hearing, hit the subscribe button for the what's The Buzz podcast?
 We're on Spotify.
 Other other podcast platforms you can watch us on the D Tools YouTube channel.
 And Jason and I will be back next month with another topic.
 Hope everyone has a great, great rest of their day and we'll talk to you next time.
Cody Crossland 
 Thanks Jason.
 Thanks Tim.
Tim Bigoness 
 Thanks guys.