 Welcome to this episode of Door Hardware Nerds. Today, we have a panel here to talk about upgrade your opening. We're going to be covering some great opportunities for our current end users. I'm your host, Mia Merrill. I'm a senior product manager here and the host of A Minute with Mia series. I have a co-host today, Benji Balik. You know him as the door dork. Benji, why don't you tell us about your new role with ASSA Abloy? Awesome. Yeah, no, I'm excited to be here, Mia. Thanks for having me and just recently got promoted to the senior door dork. I'm just kidding, senior digital communication specialist. And basically, that means that if you are following one of our digital platforms, you'll probably be seeing a little bit more of me and hopefully that's a good thing for you. That must be quite a change for you from being out in the field with our DSS team. Yes, definitely is definitely is quite the change. Yeah, can you please introduce our panelists today? Sure. The first nerd I would like to introduce is Gary Agans, director of business development for Corbyn Ruslin and Sergeant in the ASSA Abloy Door Security Solutions, region two and three. You're not familiar with our different regions. He will be covering the Midwest, South Central and Southeast of the United States. And yeah, that section of the United States. The next nerd I would like to introduce is Dave Higginson, director of business development for Corbyn Ruslin and Sergeant for ASSA Abloy DSS regions one and four and Canada, which basically is the rest of the United States, that northeastern states and then the western United States and Canada. And lastly, our nerd panelist for the final nerd panelist I'd like to introduce is Daniel Gills, director of business development for Arrow and Yale commercial. Thank you, Benji. Welcome, everyone. Daniel, could you tell us about some of the upgrade your opening opportunities for Arrow and Yale? Absolutely. And Mia, thanks for that. So we definitely got some nice opportunities here when you look at applications outside of health care. So one of the ones that has been really on our radar is following trends in society in and around door status indicators. You know, you think about it as people are getting back into their daily lives and being out in public more. Well, people kind of really want to know if somebody's in a room these days. So one of the things that we've taken head on is taking indicators and adding them to our existing and bringing out some new product lines. You think about a public restroom. You really want to know who's in that restroom so you don't get walked in on. Definitely. I've been there before. I see that there are more and more single-use gender-neutral bathrooms, mother-nursing rooms, family restrooms. They're everywhere. And even some school districts are requiring to have single-use restrooms in their facilities as well. You know, Benji, that's absolutely true and that's not going to slow down. There's been changes in code and legislation. There's definitely a need to have more single-use restrooms. We're seeing that in just about every type of end-user application. And so one of the things that our team did as that trend is continuing in society, we want to look at how our products could benefit from that and help customers with those applications. So what we did, we actually took a look at our deadbolts from Arrow, the E-Series Grade II deadbolt and the Yale D200 series. We've got status indicators on the outside of those deadbolts, so I'm going to go a little off-script to your guys and do a little show and tell today. But you look, you can always tell on the outside whether it was locked or unlocked. But one of the creative things our engineering team came up with is an indicator on the inside. So now imagine yourself in that restroom at a glance. You can look up at that door and definitely confirm whether you locked it or not. So you know you're not going to have somebody walking right in on you. Well, Dan, that's a great upgrade. But what about Yale? I can see indicators for Mortis Locks. We had perfect opportunity right there for an upgrade for us as well. And you take a look at what we've done on the Mortis Lock side. We really followed the lead with what Sergeant Corbin Russo did a couple years back. So we'll go off-script again, but one of the things Yale did in looking at our install base, we saw a tremendous opportunity to put these nice, aesthetically pleasing indicators on our Mortis Locks to give us, again, another upgrade solution all in and around where privacy and security is front and center. We've got these for new Mortis Locks right out of the box, but we also offer retrofit kits that can work on the Yale 8800 series going back to 2002. You're correct, Daniel. That means that there are several million of the existing Locks out there that can be upgraded with indicators today. Tremendous opportunity for existing end users, new end users, and all of our customers who supply these products, Dave. You know, we've got some really great features for the occupancy indicators, don't we? You know, Mia, we sure do. You know, the indicator offering includes both full-escussion trim and sectional trim for all three of our brands. And these indicators are available for use on either the outside of the door, the inside of the door, or both sides of the door, depending on the function specified. Yeah, so also, when you start looking at the features of these new indicators, the window is located above the cylinder and above the thumb turn, so it doesn't block. You can visual see it without having anything interfere with what you see there. The indicator window itself is 25% larger than anybody else's in the industry, giving you a good view of whether it's locked, unlocked, occupied, what have you. The curved escutcheon is patented and it gives you the ability to see that from 180 degrees. So if you're sheltering in place, maybe in a school, you can be up against the wall and look down at the line of sight of the wall and be able to see whether that indicator is locked or unlocked without putting yourself in front of that door in harm's way. There are two color options today, either red and green or white and red. And I do say this, that the male population, 8% of the male population is colorblind. So be careful, they can't tell the difference between red and green, but that's why we've added an actual padlock indicator to help identify if you do choose to use red and green. So we do have three standard word options that are available and you can also get some custom ones done for you too. And then also to keep people from tampering with that indicator, we have a polycarbonate shield over the top. You think about hockey players and what they have in their face masks and how tough they are if they get hit by a puck and they don't shatter. Well, we have that same type of material protecting this indicator to keep everybody safe. And then lastly, if you look at the red that we use on these indicators, it's highly reflective. You think about when you drive up to a stop sign at night and your headlights hit it and it kind of magnifies the red of that stop sign. Well, we've used something similar. So if you do have low light in the classroom or in another area, it'll still pick up that red reflective color to give you a piece of mind that it is locked and you can go about doing your business. Those sound like some really outstanding features and I can think off of the top of my head tons of different applications for the use of these indicators from restrooms, mother nursing rooms, classrooms. I mean, think of the classroom security benefits that these indicators could provide. And I mean, we all crave that confidence and security in that environment when we are most vulnerable, right? We want to know we're locked and secure. Truly, truly. You know, Daniel, when you were showing it before with the dead bull indicator and Hig, when you just mentioned it, one of my favorite features of our mortise indicators is being in the bathroom and knowing that it's locked. And really, I mean, I love it when we have those in the office. It is really that nice, safe feeling that we have. Daniel? Over there. Daniel, isn't there another great upgrade your opening opportunity with the indicator coming from Yale? There is and it's actually gonna be Yale and Aromia and we're really very, very excited about this. So what we're working on right now and we're in testing with is taking the exact same aesthetically pleasing sectional indicator kits and we've designed them to retrofit against the best 35 and 45H mortise locks and Schlage L-series mortise locks. So you look at the install base, not just with ASA obloy, but with those two brands as well, best with 35 and 45H Schlage L-series, we can take our unique, beautiful designed sectional indicator kit, put it right over top of the specific and popular functions they offer to upgrade those openings to these new indicators. So the opportunity, not only for security, but privacy and convenience is really untapped and we're gonna cover a great deal of the market being able to update and upgrade those openings. This has been great and so informative. I love looking at opportunities to upgrade your opening and thinking about the next products we can create to help provide upgrades for you. Our information, for information about these ASA obloy products, you can follow the links below. Also be sure to connect with each of our panelists on LinkedIn because we share great ways and opportunities to upgrade your openings as long as new product announcements and product updates. You can find links to their profiles below as well. Well guys, I'm really excited that we could talk about a few upgrade your opening opportunities today. If you have any upgrade your opening opportunities and you are an end user, you can reach out to your local hardware providers and installers. If you're a locksmith, you can contact your favorite arrow, Corbin Ruswin, Sergeant, and Yale Wholesale accounts. If you're really excited about what you saw here today, but you just don't know how to reach out too, I'll put a link below where you can find your local DSS office. You can also find links to all the products we talked about below. Don't forget to click like on this video and subscribe to stay up to date when we release new videos. I look forward to future discussions where we can discover more openings that need to be upgraded. Thanks for watching.