 Welcome to this episode of Door Hardware Nerds. I'm your host, Mia Merrill. Today, I'm joined by Silvan Zayawu. Silvan, please introduce yourself and tell us about your role here. Hi Mia, thanks for having me in the show today. I'm Silvan Zayawu. I am the Senior Product Manager for Adam's Right. I've been with this business for the last four years and with Assa Abloy for the last 10 years. With Adam's Right, my role is to launch new products, generation planning, and that's primarily what I do. And it's an exciting job to do. Now, product management is right in the center of everything, isn't it? Yes, it is. All right, let's start off today. Can you tell us about what is unique about the Adam's Right brand? Adam's Right is a very unique brand from the perspective that we have products for nanostyle aluminum doors. We have five different focused product categories. We have dead locks. We have dead latches, crimps, exit devices, and electric strides, primarily focused on locking mechanisms. And our products do work with medium style and white-style doors, but our specialization is nanostyle aluminum doors. OK, so can you explain how installers are able to tell the difference between Adam's Right and other low-cost options that are available in the market? Yeah, Adam's Right is one of the most knocked off product in the industry. There are so many offshore brands that make or manufacture products that look very similar to Adam's Right. A lot of brands have copied or designed our door prep. So Adam's Right has a very unique door prep, which is called MS Door Prep. So most of our competition have copied that prep. So if an installer needs to take off Adam's Right product and use a knock off product, it will actually work in the same prep. But what happens is the quality of our build, so installation is much easier when it comes to installing a Adam's Right lock. Sometimes the dimensions are not accurate with a knock off brand, so they sometimes struggle to install that. Also, when it comes to Adam's Right, the reliability of the product, the life of the product. You can see Adam's Right locks and exit devices that have survived for over 50 years. So locksmiths and installers who have been using the brand for a long time really know the quality of the product. So it's super easy for them to differentiate. But for new locksmiths and installers, they are slowly learning how to differentiate. But the other reason is we have a wide range of products. There are certain applications where they cannot use a different brand. They have to use Adam's Right. So that way they know you go to Adam's Right, you get a complete solution for natural aluminum doors. OK, so typically, like you said, I think Adam's Right is known for mechanical products. Is there an easy way for customers to upgrade them to a life-to-life locks? That's a great question. So Adam's Right is kind of a really old brand. We've been in this business for over 100 years and primarily focused on mechanical products. But for the last few years, we have this marketing campaign called Mechanical to Electrical. So in that campaign, what we did was we came up with products that can fit into existing door prep and upgrade the existing doors into electrified doors. So we have a wide range of products that can actually retrofit into existing doors. So we have electrified dead latches. We have electrified exit devices. We have electric strikes. And we have electrified paddles as well. So we have all these options that helps our customers to upgrade from a mechanical door into an electrified opening. OK, what is the most common application where you see installers asking for help with their product selection? Yeah, so one of the common things we see is, as I said, upgrading a mechanical door into electrified opening. So what typically happens is we have sold millions and millions of dead locks and dead latches for aluminum storefronts and aluminum doors in the last 40 to 50 years. And when an installer goes to a site and if he wants to upgrade that door into electrified opening, they do not know which is the right product to use in that applications, especially system integrators and other installers as well. So they keep asking us, will this dead latch fit into it? Or will this strike fit into it? So those kind of questions keep coming up. Because as you said, we've been primarily known for mechanical products. In the last few years, we have gone into electromechanical. So we are still trying to communicate to our customers on how they can upgrade and make them more aware of the solutions we have. The second thing we hear from our customers or installers is we have this preload problem. So there is a door because of preload. The door is not opening. The lock is not unlatching. So how do we figure that out? Like, how do we solve this problem? So that's one of the common question we come across from our installers as well. OK, so how do you solve that preload problem? So what is preload? So typically preload is a kind of force that's acting on the latch because of the weight of the door that's being transferred into the latch. And this can be because of various reasons. It can be because of misaligned door. It can be because of the door seals. It can be because of a HVAC system. It can be various reasons. So one of the best ways to counter this is to use the anus-rite preload electric strikes. So we have two different series of electric strikes, one for motor slots and cylindrical locks, the other one for exit devices. And those can take up to 25-pound preload. And that can really solve this problem. Great. All right, so can you let us in on some of the secrets? What does the future for mechanical to electrical strategy look like for Adams Wright? Yeah, that's a great question. So I already said that we've been trying to move our customers from mechanical to electrified products. And the strategy for us, the future strategy, which we have already started, is mechanical to electrical to wireless. So what we are having a product roadmap where we are going to have products that are wireless. So why do we need wireless products? So when we go from mechanical to electrical, the customer needs to hardwire the product, to power the product, as well as they need data communication, data communication. So the hardwiring is required. So it's kind of labor intensive when we talk about hardwiring all this locks, DPS switches, Rex switches. It's a lot of hardwiring that goes around the door. So that's the reason we thought the future is going to be wireless. So what is the benefit of using a wireless lock? So you don't need to hardwire the lock. So what we are doing is we are taking our locks, electrified locks, and making them work with a battery operated standalone reader that can be connected to a wireless hub and in turn into the access control system. So if you're familiar with the Aperio technology from SI Abloy, we are leveraging that technology to launch Aperio locks, wireless locks, that will help our customers to upgrade from a mechanical lock into a wireless lock very easily by just using a battery. So they don't need hardwiring and the communication is wireless. Great. And can you tell me what the next product launches for Adam's right? Yeah, so that's a great segue. So the next product we are going to launch is a dead latch 100, DL 100. That's an Aperio product. So what we did was we had the legacy steel hawk electrified dead latch, which was solenoid operated. So we took that dead latch and we upgraded that dead latch into a wireless dead latch. So what we did was we came up with a technology called eco latch. So it's nothing but a motorized mechanism. So we upgraded the steel hawk into a motorized mechanism and we also added a wireless reader into that. So the battery powers both the reader and the lock and it's super easy to upgrade an existing dead lock or dead latch with the MS prep with this new product. And it talks to the wireless hub and in turn into the access control system. So wide range of compatibility and the reader is a feature rich reader, which is a multi-class reader plus it is NFC and mobile capable. So it's a fantastic product. And we will be launching this product by the first week of June. So it's really close and looking forward to it. Wow, I can't wait to see it. All right, any final thoughts you wanna share with us today? Sure, we did discuss about the preload issues our customers face and what products we have for preload problems. So one of the things I would like to highlight is the preload electric strikes for exit devices. So we have the 74R1 and the 74R2 electric strikes. These two are kind of the only preload exit device electric strikes which are grade one in the industry. So if a customer uses a exit device and if they have a preload problem with that they can definitely choose our electric strikes which is the 74R1 or 74R2 and that will give them an easy solution to the preload problem. That's something I would like to highlight. Great, that's wonderful. All right, well, for more information about any of the products you heard today please visit adamswrite.com. I will put a link below for that. If you have any questions or comments please leave them below as well. Make sure you like this video and subscribe to our channel to stay up to date when our new videos come out. Thanks for watching.