 Welcome to this episode of Door Hardware Nerds. I'm your host, Mia Merrill. Today, I'm joined by Kevin Waring. Kevin, please introduce yourself. Thanks, Mia. Great to be back here again. So everybody, my name is Kevin Waring, Director of Business Development for Norton and Rickson. Been in the industry for over 15 years now and I'm happy to be back on another segment here for the Door Hardware Nerds. Well, we are very glad to have you back with us. But I have a question. Yes. Hi. Do we offer so many different kinds of operators? Oh, what a great question. So, surprisingly, I get this question quite often because we'll hear, you know, I don't know where to go with Norton. They have so many different power operators in their lineup and it's really confusing. On our, from our perspective, we like to simplify it very easily to say we have a solution for every customer. It can be based on a price-driven customer. Maybe it's a features-driven customer, benefits-driven. Maybe it's a solution-driven. We have everything that can accommodate that really entry-level price point to that really intricate double door, double egress hospital solution. So, a variety of steps in between. So, to answer the question, we just like to provide a solution for everybody out there. All right. Can you walk me through maybe an application of why you would choose one type over another type? Well, so, yeah. So, let's say you're looking for a door that maybe you just need a restroom application, right? You know, there's no electrified lock. It's a free-swinging door into a stall. You don't need a lot of fancy bells and whistles. You know, we have a model that will fall right into that play. Or, you know, now you need to tie in with your smoke evac system and it's a stairwell tower and what inputs and outputs do you have on that or what, you know, relays interface with it. We have solutions for that. And then maybe to expand a little bit further, if we look into some of the power operators that we have, we really define our business by two distinct styles of operators. We have electromechanical and electrohydraulic. And different features for different purposes. And quite simply, I guess the way to think about what an electrohydraulic power operator is, it's a motor open and a door closer to bring that door closed and secure that door. Whereas an electromechanical would be considered a motor open, motor closed solution. So really how we kind of define our business in those two different types of power operators. Okay. Now there's two types of automatic operators, right? There's low energy and high energy. Can you walk us through the differences between those? Sure. So high energies, let's think about where you'd see those applications, right? You'd see it at a grocery store. You're coming up to the door with the cart, the slider's open really fast or maybe it is on a really fast swing door and it's opening at a very excessive speed so that people can get through that opening very fast. So it's for high traffic, high speed applications. Flip that over to the low energy. You think about the swing doors where we need that automated assistance, but maybe not every time. And maybe we don't need it on such a high speed frequency. We think of public facilities like a library or maybe it's the front entrance for an ADA accessible door to school, right? So different applications where you can swing that door at a lower and what we would call a safe speed without adding an additional or a set of additional peripheries to like sensors or rails or mats to make that opening safe and secure. So that's from a high level looking down that the two types of low energy and high energy on the Norton side, right now, today we only operate in that low energy market space. We feel it's a safe way to go and there's really when you're looking at that upgrade opportunity, the low energy operator is a great solution to go ahead and put on those doors. Yeah, and I wanna point out something in that upgrade opportunity that you mentioned that you didn't call it explicitly, right? To upgrade to a low energy operator, you really just need to run some wires to the door. But if you're gonna go to a high energy operator, it can be like an entire footprint for footprint change to your building, right? For sure, I mean, think about some of the public buildings that you go into are some of the retail spaces, right? You go into a Dick's Sporting Goods or a Walmart, for example. The opening that those sliders take up is a massive opening and it's a full install solution. It's not just running a couple of wires to it or in some cases, we have solutions that are sustainable where it's a battery operated solution that you could use. So a lot more opportunities that you can do with those low energy swing door applications. Yeah, all right. Let's talk about some of the unique features that Norton operators have that set them apart from competition. Well, sure. So I mean, I think one that we can start with right now is we're the first in the space with a Wi-Fi programmable device. And really, what does that mean? So we think about how you previously would program power operators, right? You get up on a ladder, there'd be potentiometers, you twist the dial and you'd get down off the ladder, swing the door, hope that it worked or go back up on the ladder, adjust that potentiometer, right? So you go through different phases of it and then it moved to more advanced so that you had an auto-tuned feature, right? So it would swing the door, it would get the properties of that and set the door and set that programming for the environment that it's into that day. Let's say you need to get really specific. You want to add additional features like latch boost or latch assist, maybe. Maybe you want to add push and go. You can now do that from a smart device right in your hand. So any device that you have that's a smart device will connect to one of our operators with the Wi-Fi programmer in it. You don't need to be on a building's local area network, it's a direct connection between the operator and your smart device. And you can set that door to be very specific for the application that you need it. So, I mean, that's just one advantage as we look to some of the features that set us apart. I can name a few more and I'll go into, if we think about a single technician install, that's huge. If we think about what labor rates cost, especially if you're in a high rent district area, right? You're up in New York City to send two guys where one is just going to hold that wave of the operator up there and the other is going to do the work to install it. It's a high cost to do that. We've been able with our platform to have a modular product where we have a back plate that mounts to the door. It also serves as the template for the mounting for the LAP assembly, the arm control assembly and the motor housing. And you mount those individual components onto that back plate. And really, no component's greater than 20 pounds. So it's very easy for one technician to go ahead and do those installs. So there's some of the different solutions that we have or some of the things that Norton does differently than our competition to help with that experience. Yeah, I mean, I think about all the labor savings there, you can do it with one person and then all the savings with the Wi-Fi programming that now instead of, did I turn the potentiometer a quarter turn this way or a quarter turn this way? Like you don't even have to remember that anymore. You just, you have the app and do it right from there. One person, yeah, it's worlds above. Think about the benefit to an end user, right? Let's say we're in an elementary school. We're in a K through five. These kids, they don't know the difference of different door. They don't know that they're gonna go through a door to the school district. They want every door to operate exactly the same. So the kids don't have to understand that one door might be heavier than another and learn which one's which. With the Wi-Fi programming, you can save the settings from the first door that you set. You can go to all of the subsequent doors and sync your settings. So now you have every door within inside of that facility operating exact specs as the first. So great, great feature and benefit for the end user. Yeah, that's awesome. All right, wonderful. Any final thoughts you wanna share with us today? No, I think that's great. I appreciate being invited back to this segment. I look forward to multiple segments coming up in the future and I thank you for having me today. Yeah, well, we appreciate you being here with us again. Below you'll find the link for the Norton Door Controls website where you'll be able to find all the information you need about all the operators Kevin mentioned today. If you are interested in any of the products we talked about and don't know how to reach out, I've included a link to your local DSS office. Please like this video and subscribe to our channel. Thanks for joining us. Thanks everybody.