Allison interviews Melissa Andresko from Lutron about their Caséta light switches and new motorized DIY smart shades. You can install the shades in about 20 minutes and schedule them to open & close at specific times or manually through a switch or mobile app. Caséta offers shades with black-out or filtered lighting options.
The interview setting is the CES show floor show floor in the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Learn more a https://lutron.com
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Transcript of Interview
Melissa Andresko: Everybody I know swears by Lutron Caseta switches and the thing they all say is that these are the most rock-solid switches that you’re never that they’re not fiddly is what everybody says about it so I’m here with Melissa Andresco from Lutron to talk about the Caseta switches but also a new fancy product she wants to tell us about.
Melissa Andresko: That’s correct and thank you for the kind words you know we’ve Lutron has been in business since 1961 yeah so long time we’ve been in the…
Allison: Almost as old as me.
Melissa Andresko: So we have been doing this a very long time and you say people are raving about it. Quality is you know forefront concern for us. So we like to think that our products are bulletproof they work as expected and it’s all about listening to what our customers need which takes us to Caseta. Lutron has been in the dimmer business since 1961 and in 2014 we realized that consumers needed an easy way to automate their dimmers, you know their lights in their house and so Caseta was born really as a DIY lighting control system that’s got various points of control. Over the last 10 years we’ve expanded it to now have you know voice activation. It’s the most connected lighting control system so we work with all the big brands with integration to really enhance that user experience.
Allison: So we don’t have to choose between Alexa, Google and Apple.
Melissa Andresko: Exactly, correct. We work with all the major platforms and not only that but we give people different choices. You know there is an app so you can control everything if you want from the app. You could use your voice. You could use what I have here. This is our Pico remote control. This will control lights for you, your shades. You also have controls on the wall. So we really put a lot of thought into what are the different ways people are going to use it. If it’s three o’clock in the morning and you need to make a trip to the kitchen or the restroom you’re probably not going to say Alexa turn on my lights and wake up the whole house, right? So it just gives people a lot of choice.
Allison: Does it also help with when you’ve got people in the house or visitors who walk up and just turn a switch off and all of a sudden when I say lightsaber nothing happens?
Melissa Andresko: Precisely and that’s another thing that our founder was very it was very important to him that the products not only be beautiful, but functional and easy to understand. He would always say I want a 10 year old and my 90 year old grandmother to be able to have the same experience and be able to know exactly what’s going to happen when I push this button. Or this it’s just intuitive so when you look at our product lines you’ll see that you know it’s very intuitive. You see LEDs will show you that the lights are on you’ve got you know different levels that will light up.
Allison: So that you understand so there’s up and down arrows in the middle there and little LEDs going up and down.
Melissa Andresko: Exactly. There’s a light on light off. So this is the Caseta line here so you’ll see a variety of different products from dimmers and switches and then like I said our Pico remote control which leads me to what we are announcing today at CES. Lutron has been in the motorized shade business for quite a while, but we have expanded the Caseta line now to include a Caseta specific shade.
Allison: What makes something Caseta specific?
Melissa Andresko: It integrates directly with Caseta and it’s the most DIY shade that we have. We do have DIY shades but this is very easy. it’s a single price point for any shade up to 80 inches so it really takes a lot of the guesswork out and it’s going to ship in just a handful of days. Very basic we have white and gray as our two colors.
Allison: So this is a roll-up shade for full opaque?
Melissa Andresko: The one I’m showing here this is a roller shade and we also make it in a honeycomb pattern as well and you can do light filtering or blackout. The one we’re showing here is a blackout, and you can see in the honeycomb.
Allison: It’s reflective on the inside…
Melissa Andresko: So that’s also yeah so it’s really good for energy savings obviously you’re going to be trapping the heat in here so yeah we’re super excited you know it’s just another another way to keep that Caseta name out there. Motorized shades have really taken off in the last decade…
Allison: People love them.
Melissa Andresko: Yeah people do and they solve problems. I’ve been with the company for 26 years and when we first came out with shades it was very much a product for the higher-end homes, right? And now when you have a shade that starts at $399, all of a sudden that window in the family room becomes a great candidate for a shade to make that TV movie viewing experience.
Allison: Now I know who wants one Steve wants one of those so when you were first saying DIY I was kind of like oh that sounds hard what you mean is you can do it yourself you don’t have to pay a professional.
Melissa Andresko: Exactly. We make it very easy to understand how to measure, how to install. We estimate it takes people about 20 minutes to do that first shade and after that it probably goes down in increments of about five minutes I’ve put many up myself I’ve done inside mount like you see here I’ve done ones that mount above the window and again very simple. We’ve got a great tutorial for people to understand how to measure. Help is a phone call away if you need to understand, “Am I doing this right?” or video chat whatever.
Allison: I assume it’s all controllable with your smart devices as well.
Melissa Andresko: It is a caseta shade, so it operates in the caseta system. it is brand new today and it’ll start shipping in February. This is fantastic I’m very excited I’ve really got to get going thank you very much . Oh where people would find these? You can start at Lutron.com or you can go to casetawireless.com but Lutron.com your best.
Allison: It’s a little easier to spell: LUTRON.
Melissa Andresko: You got it
Allison: All right thank you very much.