June 17, 2025 • 24 mins
What does the future of home access look like? Jeff Meredith, CEO of Chamberlain Group, breaks down the strategy behind smarter garage tech and connected convenience. 🔧📶
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- Smart Garage Door Systems Are Enhancing Home Security
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steven Ruffing (00:01):
Welcome to the Tomorrow's World Today podcast.
We sit down with experts,world-changing innovators,
creators, and makers to explorehow they're taking action to
make tomorrow's world a betterplace for technology, science,
innovation, sustainability, thearts, and more.
On this episode, host GeorgeDavison, who is also the host of
(00:22):
the TV series Tomorrow's WorldToday, sits down with Jeff
Meredith, CEO of ChamberlainGroup, to discuss the company's
journey from industrialmanufacturing to becoming a
leader in smart accesssolutions.
Jeff highlights innovationslike the MyQ app and AI-powered
features that enhance connectedgarage systems, while
emphasizing customer insight,storytelling, and ongoing
(00:44):
innovation as keys to stayingcompetitive.
George M. Davison (00:47):
Welcome to another edition of Tomorrow's
World Today.
Today we have a guest namedJeff Meredith.
Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff Meredith (00:54):
Thanks.
Great to be here, George.
George M. Davison (00:55):
And you're the CEO of Chamberlain Group.
Is that right?
That's
Jeff Meredith (00:58):
correct.
George M. Davison (00:59):
I
Jeff Meredith (00:59):
sure am.
George M. Davison (01:00):
Well, I was hoping you'd tell us a little
bit more about that.
You want to give our audience alittle...
understanding of what the groupdoes?
Jeff Meredith (01:06):
Absolutely.
So Chamberlain Group is aleader in access control.
Many people may know us for theLiftMaster garage door opener
that's in their garage, but wealso have products that support
industrial buildings, commercialfacilities, and we've recently
pushed aggressively into thedigital space with our MyQ app.
(01:26):
MyQ app.
Do tell.
Yeah, so our MyQ app is a wayfor our consumers, both on the
residential and on thecommercial side, to be able to
use our products in a digitalformat.
So whether it's a remote openand close of their garage door
or the ability to let peopleinto their home, say a dog
(01:51):
walker or a family member thatneeds access.
George M. Davison (01:56):
I see.
That's It's nice to have, andit's all digital.
Jeff Meredith (01:58):
Absolutely.
George M. Davison (01:59):
Isn't it nice to have a digital product?
You don't have to manufacturewith raw materials and ship it,
and it just goes to the cloudand comes down?
Jeff Meredith (02:06):
Absolutely.
We've historically been theleader in industrial access
products, but the overlay of MyQon top of that has really
provided a very seamless,engaging experience for our
customers.
One of the things that peopletell me is, I don't know if I
(02:26):
closed my garage door when Ileave in the morning.
Right.
And they circle back around tomake sure, well, you don't need
to do that.
You have an app that helps youto be able to see whether or not
you did without circling backand driving past the home.
So the simplicity with whichyou can manage access through
our app, I think, has been a bigplus for our customers.
George M. Davison (02:46):
That's a peace of mind, right?
Absolutely.
I've gone through that myselfmore than once.
I unfortunately have to admit.
Jeff Meredith (02:53):
Yeah.
And we're really enhancingthat.
Recently, we've started to addSo we have visual cues for our
customers to be able to seewho's going in and out.
So the idea of the garage doorfor many of our customers is the
front door.
For 70% of American homes, it'sthe front door.
It's so true.
(03:13):
So being able to see the goingsand comings, especially of
loved ones, your kids cominghome from school, it's a much
more enhanced experience andprovides a great deal of peace
of mind.
George M. Davison (03:28):
You know, we were talking earlier about how
the garage eventually cameabout.
We went from the horse barn tothe Model A car garage, so to
speak, and here we are todaywith this high-tech garage that
does all this magical stuff forus.
Jeff Meredith (03:45):
Yeah, it's really been an interesting ride over
the last several years,especially for us as a company.
We had deep roots as a companyin industrial manufacturing, and
we made an array of productsuntil the mid 70s we switched
over to make access products andparticularly garage door
openers and it wasn't until wepartnered with Sears and Roebuck
(04:08):
and and really started to pushmore aggressively into
mainstream homes in the late 70sand 80s with an automated
garage door opener but if youlook at the pace of innovation
over just the last few years youcan now have a garage door
opener that has Wi-Ficonnectivity that has the camera
that has AI features embeddedin it to be able to identify
(04:30):
family members.
And so if you think about thatprogression just over a short
period of time, it's prettyexciting.
And it also bodes well for someenhanced innovation as we go
forward.
George M. Davison (04:41):
Yeah, that's interesting.
The Sears company, when youpartnered up with them years
ago, what was the brand that wasestablished that Sears was
selling?
Craftsman.
Jeff Meredith (04:50):
Yeah, it was sold under the Craftsman brand.
Our products were, they reallybecame a mainstream item in
American homes.
And if you think about this, alot of people talk about smart
home today.
But the first smart homeproduct in most homes in the
U.S.
was actually a garage dooropener.
It was an automated smart homedevice long before a lot of the
(05:12):
things that are in our homestoday ever appeared.
George M. Davison (05:16):
Well, it sounds like you've been on a
pretty good journey.
How long have you been withChamberlain?
Jeff Meredith (05:21):
About six and a half, coming up on seven years.
George M. Davison (05:23):
Okay.
And...
Can you run us back to thebeginning?
How did Chamberlain getstarted?
Jeff Meredith (05:29):
What was he doing?
Yeah, so Chamberlain started inthe early 1900s making small
industrial mechanical products.
It had ropes and chains for awhile and ammunition for a
while.
But then it acquired a companyin 1968 called Permapower that
was in the business of makinggarage door openers.
(05:52):
And they actually made thefirst radio frequency controlled
garage door opener.
And so that marked a change ofpace for the company in a
movement over the next severalyears into access control, both
on the residential side throughthe opener, as well as a lot of
acquisitions that actuallyenhanced the portfolio on the
(06:15):
commercial side.
So we make gate operators, wemake heavy duty commercial
operators for big industrialbuildings.
So the push in the 70s and intothe 80s for the company was
really a more concentrated focusaround access.
George M. Davison (06:31):
You know, it's interesting because access
back in the day, probably mostpeople don't remember.
I mean, it was the car doors orthe garage doors were open in
this way.
And then they went up this, youknow, they came this way, which
is a big change.
And then...
Jeff Meredith (06:45):
Yeah, putting them on rails and actually
trying and unifying them alittle bit more in terms of
dimensionality helped tofacilitate the, you know, the
automation dimensionality.
of our business.
George M. Davison (06:57):
I can remember my mother.
It was pouring down rain,right?
She wants to put the car in thegarage.
Kids are in the car.
Mom's got to get out of the carand open the barn doors and in
you go.
So a real problem was found.
Did she make you get
Jeff Meredith (07:12):
out and do it?
Probably.
Probably eventually.
I was the one that always, Iwas the guy changing the remote
and opening the garage doors inmy house.
George M. Davison (07:20):
I was pretty young at that point.
Yeah, my mom's pretty, when shewants to go do something, she's
on her way.
Yeah, she's on
Jeff Meredith (07:27):
it.
George M. Davison (07:28):
But, well, it's good to see the progress
over the years.
Jeff Meredith (07:31):
Yeah.
You know, the company's alwaysbeen a leader in innovation, and
even in our early years, wefocused on enhancing customer
experience.
There's two things that I thinkare really cool about the
history of our company.
One, we invented PhotoEye.
the safety eyes that are nowcommon so if you think about you
know you know when you walkinto the garage and it's closing
(07:53):
it'll reverse out
George M. Davison (07:55):
and that started with a problem I
remember you might want to tellour audience that what was the
problem before that existed
Jeff Meredith (08:01):
yeah the problem with that is is there was
actually between animals andyoung children and things like
that that were you know in thepath of a closing door and it
was a hazard it was a safetyhazard and so One of our
engineers, Colin Wilmot, whorecently passed, but he was,
many people believe, thegodfather of the garage door
(08:23):
opener, came up with a way to,through the safety sensors, if a
beam is broken, the doorautomatically reverses.
And the thing that I'm so proudof is we didn't patent that.
We actually gave it to ourindustry because it was a safety
problem.
It wasn't something that weshould try to compete on.
(08:45):
It was something that we shouldsolve for our industry.
So in 1993, that becamestandard.
The federal government actuallymade that a standard for our
products.
And so that was a major pointof innovation.
There was another one that weinitially had dip switches
actually in the openers as a wayto communicate with them via
(09:09):
remotes.
not the most secure path, eightand 12 dip switches.
And so we also invented what wecall security plus protocol,
which is a rolling code, whichis much more secure and prevents
the possibility of peopleactually kind of hacking into
and opening your door.
Steven Ruffing (09:29):
So
Jeff Meredith (09:29):
we've really been focused since the very
beginning on innovation.
Our innovation path has justshifted to more digital in most
recent years.
George M. Davison (09:38):
So you have a consistent history of
identifying challenges in themarketplace or how people are
interacting with your products.
Is this a focused effort byyour organization?
Jeff Meredith (09:50):
Yeah, you know, the idea of continuously pulsing
our customers and by customers,it's actually interesting for
us because we have very tightrelationships with our dealers,
our local distributors.
We have thousands of customersall over the world that install
our products.
So we try our best to listen tothem.
not just provide them or supplythem with products.
(10:13):
But then also we spend a lot oftime with our end users.
So the homeowners or thebusiness owners or the guys that
are loading trucks and movingthrough docks to really
understand what their points ofview are.
And I think even over the lastfew years, we've tried to up our
game dramatically to gaincustomer insights at a higher
(10:34):
level than we ever have so thatwe identify problems.
One of the major thrusts, and Iknow you know this from all
your work on innovation, youhave to actually allow the
innovation to flow through you,flow to from insights that you
derive from people on the otherside.
If you work too hard to createthose insights on your own, but
(10:56):
don't listen, the innovation isoftentimes useless, to be
honest.
It doesn't meet a real need.
Yeah, it doesn't meet a realneed.
And so I think that as acompany, we've always had our
ear to the ground to try to makesure that we pay attention to
what we're hearing from both ourend users as well as our sort
(11:18):
of customers or partners in themarket.
George M. Davison (11:21):
So let's talk a little bit about your brand
today.
How big is this company?
First of all, if I go to thestore and I want to buy a garage
door opener today, what's thebrand I should be looking for?
Jeff Meredith (11:33):
So if you go to a retail store, you would find
Chamberlain brand as ourproduct.
If you are...
A person that wants to call aprofessional installer, you
would find the LiftMaster brand.
So LiftMaster brand is our leadbrand for our commercial
business, as well as for our prochannel on the residential
side.
Our Chamberlain brand is thebrand that you would find in
(11:56):
Lowe's or Home Depot.
Overlaid both of those brandsis our ecosystem brand called
MyQ, which is our app that hasnearly 13 million users already
of that app.
George M. Davi (12:09):
Congratulations.
Jeff Meredith (12:10):
Yeah, it's been a really interesting last several
years and the growth has beeneven, you know, exceeding my own
expectations.
But a lot of users in an appthat is, I'd stack it up versus
any other smart home app that'sout there.
So Chamberlain, LiftMaster, andreally overarched by MyQ.
George M. Davison (12:30):
So let's talk a little bit about how all that
happens.
How many employees do we havehere at Chamberlain?
Jeff Meredith (12:35):
You know, we have...
around 6,000 employees intotal.
George M. Davison (12:40):
Okay.
We're moving quite a bit ofproduct.
Is that right?
What are we talking?
Jeff Meredith (12:44):
Yeah.
I mean, we sell in the millionsevery year of all of our
different access products.
So between our openers on theresidential side, several
million, and then as well on thecommercial side.
So it's a business that hasscale to it.
One of the cool things aboutour business, and this was a
(13:06):
reason that I sort of tooknotice when I was thinking about
joining the company.
We're present in 51 millionhomes in the US.
If you think about a brand likeWhirlpool, it's in 40, you
know, around 40 million homes.
So the fact that we're in that,there's 62 million homes in the
US that have a garage.
So our presence is strong.
(13:26):
And whether it's newconstruction or repeat
purchases, we're oftentimes theincumbent.
And so we'll gain that thatresale or that sale of the next
product as well.
So yeah, it's a sizablebusiness and one that we're
overlaying MyQ on top of toreally provide that framework to
(13:50):
enhance with services and justa better overall experience.
George M. Davison (13:53):
Yeah, sounds like you're making good
progress.
Speaking of progress, I washoping you could take us a
little into the future today.
Sure.
And it seems like the hotbuzzword is AI nowadays.
And is Chamberlain starting topush for further into that
space?
Jeff Meredith (14:08):
Yeah, we really are.
And we're trying to findartificial intelligence
applications throughout ourbusiness.
But I'll give you a coupleexamples of ones that I'm really
proud of.
And I think so many people are,as you said, sort of grabbing
onto this idea of AI in abuzzword sort of sense, but not
thinking about practicalapplications and things that are
(14:31):
actually going to enhance userexperiences.
There's two things that we'vedone recently that I think are
examples of how AI can bring newdimension and new capabilities
to your product the first is ifyou think about the idea of your
child coming home from schoolwe can historically we would
(14:54):
have provided you a notificationthat says you know it's 3 20
your door opened and then itclosed Now we can actually, with
the help of our video-basedproducts that we offer, and you
identifying those family membersthat you want to have their
facial recognition capabilities,we can say, in my case, it's
(15:19):
3.20, your daughter Megan justgot home from school, she's
safely in the house, and wouldyou like to see a quick video?
That's peace of mind that Ithink is super valuable to a
parent.
So I think that's AI becauseit's identification and it's
stitching together a series ofevents.
(15:40):
Another is, let's say you got anotification at 11.30 at night
that there's motion in yourbackyard.
If the notification saysthere's an animal detected in
your backyard, that says maybemy dog's out.
Very different than motiondetected could be anything.
(16:04):
If an animal is identified,you'll check to see if, in my
case, my dog Rex is safely inthe house.
And so I think use ofintelligence and putting stories
together to help users reallyunderstand context is how we're
trying to deploy AI in a verymeaningful way.
George M. Davison (16:25):
That is meaningful.
I know I've been there manytimes.
Lights are going on, alarms aregoing on, you don't know what's
going on outside.
So to have that peace of mindis a real blessing in my book.
Jeff Meredith (16:38):
Yeah.
Again, it's tapping into thingsthat you as a homeowner, and as
a customer of ours, would valueadditional insight on.
It's those things that give youa warmth inside to know what's
happening as opposed to theuneasiness of something that
gives you just a little bit ofinformation but not enough to
(17:00):
sort of squelch the anxiety thatyou might
George M. Davison (17:03):
have.
Sure, sure.
All right, now that we've kindof hit the future, what about
some of the challenges you seecoming in the future with...
the industry that you're in.
Are there any other challengesyou can see?
Jeff Meredith (17:15):
You know, I think every industry faces A similar
challenge in that pace is goingto have to continue to
accelerate.
As you infuse technology intoevery industry in ways that may
not have existed in the past,you bring new competitors,
(17:36):
potentially new competitors, andnew competitors that are coming
at businesses from differentangles than you that may have
not endured three-year, two-yeardevelopment cycles but may be
on six-month development cyclesthat may offer really enhanced
digital experiences that youmight not have done in the past.
(17:59):
I think in our case, and I'mtalking more about industrial
businesses because I thinkeverything over time is going to
actually migrate into more of atech-based overlay to whatever
business it is.
So if you're just providing anindustrial hardware experience,
you better be put in servicesyou better be put in digital
(18:20):
capabilities on top of it thesedays or else you're going to get
passed by so I think pace ofplay is really going to be
critical and as a company we'retrying to do things in a way
that has the right back-endinfrastructure the right
architectures the rightmodularization to be able to
(18:41):
move at a pace faster than weever have
George M. Davison (18:44):
that's nice yeah that's if you can make that
a core competency of yourbusiness makes it harder for
your competition to get in thatspace of yours, right?
Jeff Meredith (18:52):
Absolutely.
George M. Davison (18:52):
Yeah.
So, okay.
So I see the challenge.
How do you make sustainabilityand speed happen in the R&D
department and then integratethat into manufacturing and out
into the storytelling phase,right?
Jeff Meredith (19:06):
Yeah.
And I think the other thing,and you and I have talked a
little bit about this, butstorytelling is going to be more
and more important because theexperiences that you're bringing
aren't as simple as they usedto be, right?
Mm-hmm.
Trying to tell a parent thestory of peace of mind seeing
their kid come home from schoolevery day is a little bit more
(19:26):
complex, right?
Sure.
Than just we open and closeyour door.
George M. Davison (19:30):
Right.
Jeff Meredith (19:30):
Right?
So I think storytelling andcoming up with unique ways to
make sure that what you've donefrom an innovation standpoint
can be told to the ultimateconsumer is critical because if
not, then no matter how cool itis and how amazing it is, it's
not going to be embraced if it'snot understood through proper
(19:53):
storytelling.
George M. Davison (19:54):
Exactly.
Yeah, we're big on storytellingaround here.
Yeah, I know.
Jeff Meredith (19:57):
That's one of you guys' real strengths.
George M. Davison (20:00):
The way you said that, it's very interesting
because I don't get a lot ofCEOs who really grasp that
concept as well as you have.
So it's nice to hear.
Because if you have thegreatest innovation in the world
and you can't figure out a wayto tell that story, it's just...
It's a door going up and down,right?
Jeff Meredith (20:18):
Yeah, it's tech for tech's sake.
It's not tech for humanbenefit.
George M. Davison (20:23):
I
Jeff Meredith (20:24):
have an engineering background myself
and one of the worst things thatyou can do is work for a year
or a year and a half onsomething and then it doesn't
achieve the commercial successthat you actually wanted and you
feel like it was such anamazing thing what happened.
And I think a lot of timescompanies don't go the last mile
and make sure that the story istold effectively and they've
(20:46):
really thought about about thego-to-market strategy with the
same rigor and the same focusthat they did the innovation
itself.
George M. Davison (20:53):
Right.
A lot of companies, they havestrengths in the R&D side, and
some companies have a lot ofstrengths in the manufacturing
side, and some have thestorytelling.
But if you have all threeworking really well together,
that's like a symphony.
Jeff Meredith (21:09):
Yeah, no, it is.
And it's been a lifelongmission for me to try to piece
that whole thing together.
And it's challenging because...
Sometimes, you're right, yourcompany's history is more on the
engineering side, maybe less onthe storytelling side, or vice
versa.
And you've got to try to makesure that you piece the whole
thing together.
And it's not a handoff, it's anintegration all the way
(21:34):
through.
Because the best stories thatyou can tell actually start from
the beginning.
So if I craft a story and thenthe innovation flows, as opposed
to I try to stick a story onthe end, And after the
innovation is done, it's justvery different.
George M. Davison (21:50):
I've found sometimes that the area where
you're talking with customersand they're giving you feedback,
they're telling you where thereare challenges, maybe where
there's something great, maybesomething not so great that
identifies a problem.
We go invent a solution, right?
And that's really good groundto find compelling stories,
(22:13):
right?
Yeah.
I know it's tough to talk aboutsometimes, but back in the old
days before that invention camearound where the eye stopped the
door from coming down, severaltimes a year you'd hear about a
dog or somebody getting hurt bya door coming down.
And that's a very dramaticsituation.
So by solving that problem,that's a heck of a great story.
(22:35):
It's got all the right makingsfor how to tell a good story and
let the population lift theircurrent situation and prevent
that problem from happeningagain.
We had a
Jeff Meredith (22:50):
lot of really passionate engineers that wanted
to solve that not for the sakeof our business, but for the
sake of our customers and justthe safety of our population.
So I wasn't in the company atthe time, but it's one of the
stories that I'm really proudof.
But I think your point, therewas a need, a real need, right?
(23:15):
And uncovering the real needand having passion around
solving for that real need iskind of the lifeblood of
innovation.
You know, to me, that's, youknow, if you can really sort of
think that this is such acompelling need and we are the
(23:36):
company that's going to solvethis need and get everybody sort
of rallied around that, that'swhen, you know, cool stuff
happens in an organization.
It really is.
George M. Davison (23:47):
Well, thanks for everything you're doing.
Jeff Meredith (23:48):
Yeah.
Thank you for having me today.
I really appreciate it.
You betcha.
George M. Davison (23:51):
Well, everybody, that's another
edition of Tomorrow's WorldToday.
Bye now.
Steven Ruffing (23:56):
Thank you for listening to this episode of
Tomorrow's World Today podcast.
Join us next time as wecontinue to explore the worlds
of inspiration, creation,innovation and production.
Discover more attomorrowsworldtoday.com.
Connect with us on social mediaat TWT Explore and find us
wherever podcasts are available.
Welcome to the Tomorrow's World Today podcast.
We sit down with experts,world-changing innovators,
creators, and makers to explorehow they're taking action to
make tomorrow's world a betterplace for technology, science,
innovation, sustainability, thearts, and more.
On this episode, host GeorgeDavison, who is also the host of
(00:22):
the TV series Tomorrow's WorldToday, sits down with Jeff
Meredith, CEO of ChamberlainGroup, to discuss the company's
journey from industrialmanufacturing to becoming a
leader in smart accesssolutions.
Jeff highlights innovationslike the MyQ app and AI-powered
features that enhance connectedgarage systems, while
emphasizing customer insight,storytelling, and ongoing
(00:44):
innovation as keys to stayingcompetitive.
George M. Davison (00:47):
Welcome to another edition of Tomorrow's
World Today.
Today we have a guest namedJeff Meredith.
Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff Meredith (00:54):
Thanks.
Great to be here, George.
George M. Davison (00:55):
And you're the CEO of Chamberlain Group.
Is that right?
That's
Jeff Meredith (00:58):
correct.
George M. Davison (00:59):
I
Jeff Meredith (00:59):
sure am.
George M. Davison (01:00):
Well, I was hoping you'd tell us a little
bit more about that.
You want to give our audience alittle...
understanding of what the groupdoes?
Jeff Meredith (01:06):
Absolutely.
So Chamberlain Group is aleader in access control.
Many people may know us for theLiftMaster garage door opener
that's in their garage, but wealso have products that support
industrial buildings, commercialfacilities, and we've recently
pushed aggressively into thedigital space with our MyQ app.
(01:26):
MyQ app.
Do tell.
Yeah, so our MyQ app is a wayfor our consumers, both on the
residential and on thecommercial side, to be able to
use our products in a digitalformat.
So whether it's a remote openand close of their garage door
or the ability to let peopleinto their home, say a dog
(01:51):
walker or a family member thatneeds access.
George M. Davison (01:56):
I see.
That's It's nice to have, andit's all digital.
Jeff Meredith (01:58):
Absolutely.
George M. Davison (01:59):
Isn't it nice to have a digital product?
You don't have to manufacturewith raw materials and ship it,
and it just goes to the cloudand comes down?
Jeff Meredith (02:06):
Absolutely.
We've historically been theleader in industrial access
products, but the overlay of MyQon top of that has really
provided a very seamless,engaging experience for our
customers.
One of the things that peopletell me is, I don't know if I
(02:26):
closed my garage door when Ileave in the morning.
Right.
And they circle back around tomake sure, well, you don't need
to do that.
You have an app that helps youto be able to see whether or not
you did without circling backand driving past the home.
So the simplicity with whichyou can manage access through
our app, I think, has been a bigplus for our customers.
George M. Davison (02:46):
That's a peace of mind, right?
Absolutely.
I've gone through that myselfmore than once.
I unfortunately have to admit.
Jeff Meredith (02:53):
Yeah.
And we're really enhancingthat.
Recently, we've started to addSo we have visual cues for our
customers to be able to seewho's going in and out.
So the idea of the garage doorfor many of our customers is the
front door.
For 70% of American homes, it'sthe front door.
It's so true.
(03:13):
So being able to see the goingsand comings, especially of
loved ones, your kids cominghome from school, it's a much
more enhanced experience andprovides a great deal of peace
of mind.
George M. Davison (03:28):
You know, we were talking earlier about how
the garage eventually cameabout.
We went from the horse barn tothe Model A car garage, so to
speak, and here we are todaywith this high-tech garage that
does all this magical stuff forus.
Jeff Meredith (03:45):
Yeah, it's really been an interesting ride over
the last several years,especially for us as a company.
We had deep roots as a companyin industrial manufacturing, and
we made an array of productsuntil the mid 70s we switched
over to make access products andparticularly garage door
openers and it wasn't until wepartnered with Sears and Roebuck
(04:08):
and and really started to pushmore aggressively into
mainstream homes in the late 70sand 80s with an automated
garage door opener but if youlook at the pace of innovation
over just the last few years youcan now have a garage door
opener that has Wi-Ficonnectivity that has the camera
that has AI features embeddedin it to be able to identify
(04:30):
family members.
And so if you think about thatprogression just over a short
period of time, it's prettyexciting.
And it also bodes well for someenhanced innovation as we go
forward.
George M. Davison (04:41):
Yeah, that's interesting.
The Sears company, when youpartnered up with them years
ago, what was the brand that wasestablished that Sears was
selling?
Craftsman.
Jeff Meredith (04:50):
Yeah, it was sold under the Craftsman brand.
Our products were, they reallybecame a mainstream item in
American homes.
And if you think about this, alot of people talk about smart
home today.
But the first smart homeproduct in most homes in the
U.S.
was actually a garage dooropener.
It was an automated smart homedevice long before a lot of the
(05:12):
things that are in our homestoday ever appeared.
George M. Davison (05:16):
Well, it sounds like you've been on a
pretty good journey.
How long have you been withChamberlain?
Jeff Meredith (05:21):
About six and a half, coming up on seven years.
George M. Davison (05:23):
Okay.
And...
Can you run us back to thebeginning?
How did Chamberlain getstarted?
Jeff Meredith (05:29):
What was he doing?
Yeah, so Chamberlain started inthe early 1900s making small
industrial mechanical products.
It had ropes and chains for awhile and ammunition for a
while.
But then it acquired a companyin 1968 called Permapower that
was in the business of makinggarage door openers.
(05:52):
And they actually made thefirst radio frequency controlled
garage door opener.
And so that marked a change ofpace for the company in a
movement over the next severalyears into access control, both
on the residential side throughthe opener, as well as a lot of
acquisitions that actuallyenhanced the portfolio on the
(06:15):
commercial side.
So we make gate operators, wemake heavy duty commercial
operators for big industrialbuildings.
So the push in the 70s and intothe 80s for the company was
really a more concentrated focusaround access.
George M. Davison (06:31):
You know, it's interesting because access
back in the day, probably mostpeople don't remember.
I mean, it was the car doors orthe garage doors were open in
this way.
And then they went up this, youknow, they came this way, which
is a big change.
And then...
Jeff Meredith (06:45):
Yeah, putting them on rails and actually
trying and unifying them alittle bit more in terms of
dimensionality helped tofacilitate the, you know, the
automation dimensionality.
of our business.
George M. Davison (06:57):
I can remember my mother.
It was pouring down rain,right?
She wants to put the car in thegarage.
Kids are in the car.
Mom's got to get out of the carand open the barn doors and in
you go.
So a real problem was found.
Did she make you get
Jeff Meredith (07:12):
out and do it?
Probably.
Probably eventually.
I was the one that always, Iwas the guy changing the remote
and opening the garage doors inmy house.
George M. Davison (07:20):
I was pretty young at that point.
Yeah, my mom's pretty, when shewants to go do something, she's
on her way.
Yeah, she's on
Jeff Meredith (07:27):
it.
George M. Davison (07:28):
But, well, it's good to see the progress
over the years.
Jeff Meredith (07:31):
Yeah.
You know, the company's alwaysbeen a leader in innovation, and
even in our early years, wefocused on enhancing customer
experience.
There's two things that I thinkare really cool about the
history of our company.
One, we invented PhotoEye.
the safety eyes that are nowcommon so if you think about you
know you know when you walkinto the garage and it's closing
(07:53):
it'll reverse out
George M. Davison (07:55):
and that started with a problem I
remember you might want to tellour audience that what was the
problem before that existed
Jeff Meredith (08:01):
yeah the problem with that is is there was
actually between animals andyoung children and things like
that that were you know in thepath of a closing door and it
was a hazard it was a safetyhazard and so One of our
engineers, Colin Wilmot, whorecently passed, but he was,
many people believe, thegodfather of the garage door
(08:23):
opener, came up with a way to,through the safety sensors, if a
beam is broken, the doorautomatically reverses.
And the thing that I'm so proudof is we didn't patent that.
We actually gave it to ourindustry because it was a safety
problem.
It wasn't something that weshould try to compete on.
(08:45):
It was something that we shouldsolve for our industry.
So in 1993, that becamestandard.
The federal government actuallymade that a standard for our
products.
And so that was a major pointof innovation.
There was another one that weinitially had dip switches
actually in the openers as a wayto communicate with them via
(09:09):
remotes.
not the most secure path, eightand 12 dip switches.
And so we also invented what wecall security plus protocol,
which is a rolling code, whichis much more secure and prevents
the possibility of peopleactually kind of hacking into
and opening your door.
Steven Ruffing (09:29):
So
Jeff Meredith (09:29):
we've really been focused since the very
beginning on innovation.
Our innovation path has justshifted to more digital in most
recent years.
George M. Davison (09:38):
So you have a consistent history of
identifying challenges in themarketplace or how people are
interacting with your products.
Is this a focused effort byyour organization?
Jeff Meredith (09:50):
Yeah, you know, the idea of continuously pulsing
our customers and by customers,it's actually interesting for
us because we have very tightrelationships with our dealers,
our local distributors.
We have thousands of customersall over the world that install
our products.
So we try our best to listen tothem.
not just provide them or supplythem with products.
(10:13):
But then also we spend a lot oftime with our end users.
So the homeowners or thebusiness owners or the guys that
are loading trucks and movingthrough docks to really
understand what their points ofview are.
And I think even over the lastfew years, we've tried to up our
game dramatically to gaincustomer insights at a higher
(10:34):
level than we ever have so thatwe identify problems.
One of the major thrusts, and Iknow you know this from all
your work on innovation, youhave to actually allow the
innovation to flow through you,flow to from insights that you
derive from people on the otherside.
If you work too hard to createthose insights on your own, but
(10:56):
don't listen, the innovation isoftentimes useless, to be
honest.
It doesn't meet a real need.
Yeah, it doesn't meet a realneed.
And so I think that as acompany, we've always had our
ear to the ground to try to makesure that we pay attention to
what we're hearing from both ourend users as well as our sort
(11:18):
of customers or partners in themarket.
George M. Davison (11:21):
So let's talk a little bit about your brand
today.
How big is this company?
First of all, if I go to thestore and I want to buy a garage
door opener today, what's thebrand I should be looking for?
Jeff Meredith (11:33):
So if you go to a retail store, you would find
Chamberlain brand as ourproduct.
If you are...
A person that wants to call aprofessional installer, you
would find the LiftMaster brand.
So LiftMaster brand is our leadbrand for our commercial
business, as well as for our prochannel on the residential
side.
Our Chamberlain brand is thebrand that you would find in
(11:56):
Lowe's or Home Depot.
Overlaid both of those brandsis our ecosystem brand called
MyQ, which is our app that hasnearly 13 million users already
of that app.
George M. Davi (12:09):
Congratulations.
Jeff Meredith (12:10):
Yeah, it's been a really interesting last several
years and the growth has beeneven, you know, exceeding my own
expectations.
But a lot of users in an appthat is, I'd stack it up versus
any other smart home app that'sout there.
So Chamberlain, LiftMaster, andreally overarched by MyQ.
George M. Davison (12:30):
So let's talk a little bit about how all that
happens.
How many employees do we havehere at Chamberlain?
Jeff Meredith (12:35):
You know, we have...
around 6,000 employees intotal.
George M. Davison (12:40):
Okay.
We're moving quite a bit ofproduct.
Is that right?
What are we talking?
Jeff Meredith (12:44):
Yeah.
I mean, we sell in the millionsevery year of all of our
different access products.
So between our openers on theresidential side, several
million, and then as well on thecommercial side.
So it's a business that hasscale to it.
One of the cool things aboutour business, and this was a
(13:06):
reason that I sort of tooknotice when I was thinking about
joining the company.
We're present in 51 millionhomes in the US.
If you think about a brand likeWhirlpool, it's in 40, you
know, around 40 million homes.
So the fact that we're in that,there's 62 million homes in the
US that have a garage.
So our presence is strong.
(13:26):
And whether it's newconstruction or repeat
purchases, we're oftentimes theincumbent.
And so we'll gain that thatresale or that sale of the next
product as well.
So yeah, it's a sizablebusiness and one that we're
overlaying MyQ on top of toreally provide that framework to
(13:50):
enhance with services and justa better overall experience.
George M. Davison (13:53):
Yeah, sounds like you're making good
progress.
Speaking of progress, I washoping you could take us a
little into the future today.
Sure.
And it seems like the hotbuzzword is AI nowadays.
And is Chamberlain starting topush for further into that
space?
Jeff Meredith (14:08):
Yeah, we really are.
And we're trying to findartificial intelligence
applications throughout ourbusiness.
But I'll give you a coupleexamples of ones that I'm really
proud of.
And I think so many people are,as you said, sort of grabbing
onto this idea of AI in abuzzword sort of sense, but not
thinking about practicalapplications and things that are
(14:31):
actually going to enhance userexperiences.
There's two things that we'vedone recently that I think are
examples of how AI can bring newdimension and new capabilities
to your product the first is ifyou think about the idea of your
child coming home from schoolwe can historically we would
(14:54):
have provided you a notificationthat says you know it's 3 20
your door opened and then itclosed Now we can actually, with
the help of our video-basedproducts that we offer, and you
identifying those family membersthat you want to have their
facial recognition capabilities,we can say, in my case, it's
(15:19):
3.20, your daughter Megan justgot home from school, she's
safely in the house, and wouldyou like to see a quick video?
That's peace of mind that Ithink is super valuable to a
parent.
So I think that's AI becauseit's identification and it's
stitching together a series ofevents.
(15:40):
Another is, let's say you got anotification at 11.30 at night
that there's motion in yourbackyard.
If the notification saysthere's an animal detected in
your backyard, that says maybemy dog's out.
Very different than motiondetected could be anything.
(16:04):
If an animal is identified,you'll check to see if, in my
case, my dog Rex is safely inthe house.
And so I think use ofintelligence and putting stories
together to help users reallyunderstand context is how we're
trying to deploy AI in a verymeaningful way.
George M. Davison (16:25):
That is meaningful.
I know I've been there manytimes.
Lights are going on, alarms aregoing on, you don't know what's
going on outside.
So to have that peace of mindis a real blessing in my book.
Jeff Meredith (16:38):
Yeah.
Again, it's tapping into thingsthat you as a homeowner, and as
a customer of ours, would valueadditional insight on.
It's those things that give youa warmth inside to know what's
happening as opposed to theuneasiness of something that
gives you just a little bit ofinformation but not enough to
(17:00):
sort of squelch the anxiety thatyou might
George M. Davison (17:03):
have.
Sure, sure.
All right, now that we've kindof hit the future, what about
some of the challenges you seecoming in the future with...
the industry that you're in.
Are there any other challengesyou can see?
Jeff Meredith (17:15):
You know, I think every industry faces A similar
challenge in that pace is goingto have to continue to
accelerate.
As you infuse technology intoevery industry in ways that may
not have existed in the past,you bring new competitors,
(17:36):
potentially new competitors, andnew competitors that are coming
at businesses from differentangles than you that may have
not endured three-year, two-yeardevelopment cycles but may be
on six-month development cyclesthat may offer really enhanced
digital experiences that youmight not have done in the past.
(17:59):
I think in our case, and I'mtalking more about industrial
businesses because I thinkeverything over time is going to
actually migrate into more of atech-based overlay to whatever
business it is.
So if you're just providing anindustrial hardware experience,
you better be put in servicesyou better be put in digital
(18:20):
capabilities on top of it thesedays or else you're going to get
passed by so I think pace ofplay is really going to be
critical and as a company we'retrying to do things in a way
that has the right back-endinfrastructure the right
architectures the rightmodularization to be able to
(18:41):
move at a pace faster than weever have
George M. Davison (18:44):
that's nice yeah that's if you can make that
a core competency of yourbusiness makes it harder for
your competition to get in thatspace of yours, right?
Jeff Meredith (18:52):
Absolutely.
George M. Davison (18:52):
Yeah.
So, okay.
So I see the challenge.
How do you make sustainabilityand speed happen in the R&D
department and then integratethat into manufacturing and out
into the storytelling phase,right?
Jeff Meredith (19:06):
Yeah.
And I think the other thing,and you and I have talked a
little bit about this, butstorytelling is going to be more
and more important because theexperiences that you're bringing
aren't as simple as they usedto be, right?
Mm-hmm.
Trying to tell a parent thestory of peace of mind seeing
their kid come home from schoolevery day is a little bit more
(19:26):
complex, right?
Sure.
Than just we open and closeyour door.
George M. Davison (19:30):
Right.
Jeff Meredith (19:30):
Right?
So I think storytelling andcoming up with unique ways to
make sure that what you've donefrom an innovation standpoint
can be told to the ultimateconsumer is critical because if
not, then no matter how cool itis and how amazing it is, it's
not going to be embraced if it'snot understood through proper
(19:53):
storytelling.
George M. Davison (19:54):
Exactly.
Yeah, we're big on storytellingaround here.
Yeah, I know.
Jeff Meredith (19:57):
That's one of you guys' real strengths.
George M. Davison (20:00):
The way you said that, it's very interesting
because I don't get a lot ofCEOs who really grasp that
concept as well as you have.
So it's nice to hear.
Because if you have thegreatest innovation in the world
and you can't figure out a wayto tell that story, it's just...
It's a door going up and down,right?
Jeff Meredith (20:18):
Yeah, it's tech for tech's sake.
It's not tech for humanbenefit.
George M. Davison (20:23):
I
Jeff Meredith (20:24):
have an engineering background myself
and one of the worst things thatyou can do is work for a year
or a year and a half onsomething and then it doesn't
achieve the commercial successthat you actually wanted and you
feel like it was such anamazing thing what happened.
And I think a lot of timescompanies don't go the last mile
and make sure that the story istold effectively and they've
(20:46):
really thought about about thego-to-market strategy with the
same rigor and the same focusthat they did the innovation
itself.
George M. Davison (20:53):
Right.
A lot of companies, they havestrengths in the R&D side, and
some companies have a lot ofstrengths in the manufacturing
side, and some have thestorytelling.
But if you have all threeworking really well together,
that's like a symphony.
Jeff Meredith (21:09):
Yeah, no, it is.
And it's been a lifelongmission for me to try to piece
that whole thing together.
And it's challenging because...
Sometimes, you're right, yourcompany's history is more on the
engineering side, maybe less onthe storytelling side, or vice
versa.
And you've got to try to makesure that you piece the whole
thing together.
And it's not a handoff, it's anintegration all the way
(21:34):
through.
Because the best stories thatyou can tell actually start from
the beginning.
So if I craft a story and thenthe innovation flows, as opposed
to I try to stick a story onthe end, And after the
innovation is done, it's justvery different.
George M. Davison (21:50):
I've found sometimes that the area where
you're talking with customersand they're giving you feedback,
they're telling you where thereare challenges, maybe where
there's something great, maybesomething not so great that
identifies a problem.
We go invent a solution, right?
And that's really good groundto find compelling stories,
(22:13):
right?
Yeah.
I know it's tough to talk aboutsometimes, but back in the old
days before that invention camearound where the eye stopped the
door from coming down, severaltimes a year you'd hear about a
dog or somebody getting hurt bya door coming down.
And that's a very dramaticsituation.
So by solving that problem,that's a heck of a great story.
(22:35):
It's got all the right makingsfor how to tell a good story and
let the population lift theircurrent situation and prevent
that problem from happeningagain.
We had a
Jeff Meredith (22:50):
lot of really passionate engineers that wanted
to solve that not for the sakeof our business, but for the
sake of our customers and justthe safety of our population.
So I wasn't in the company atthe time, but it's one of the
stories that I'm really proudof.
But I think your point, therewas a need, a real need, right?
(23:15):
And uncovering the real needand having passion around
solving for that real need iskind of the lifeblood of
innovation.
You know, to me, that's, youknow, if you can really sort of
think that this is such acompelling need and we are the
(23:36):
company that's going to solvethis need and get everybody sort
of rallied around that, that'swhen, you know, cool stuff
happens in an organization.
It really is.
George M. Davison (23:47):
Well, thanks for everything you're doing.
Jeff Meredith (23:48):
Yeah.
Thank you for having me today.
I really appreciate it.
You betcha.
George M. Davison (23:51):
Well, everybody, that's another
edition of Tomorrow's WorldToday.
Bye now.
Steven Ruffing (23:56):
Thank you for listening to this episode of
Tomorrow's World Today podcast.
Join us next time as wecontinue to explore the worlds
of inspiration, creation,innovation and production.
Discover more attomorrowsworldtoday.com.
Connect with us on social mediaat TWT Explore and find us
wherever podcasts are available.
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