INTRODUCTION
Established in 1959, Hy Cite’s success story began in Madison, Wisconsin, out of a garage, where they purchased, warehoused, and distributed a cookware line. Today, Hy Cite has three well-known, premium cookware lines, including Royal Prestige, which are exclusively sold by authorized distributors in the U.S., Canada, and numerous countries throughout Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
THE CHALLENGE
For its brand-new 90,000 square-foot corporate headquarters in Middleton, Wisconsin, Hy Cite wanted to outfit 40 rooms with intuitive video conferencing, wireless presentation, and room scheduling technology that would help foster greater employee engagement, collaboration, and productivity.
THE SOLUTION
Hy Cite worked closely with Shaun Trudell, President at Automation Arts, to bring all 40 spaces, comprised of meeting rooms, training center, and executive boardrooms, to life with Crestron technology. “We have so many dynamic spaces in our building,” says Sellek. “Our team really wanted to help enhance them with technology that would not only provide our employees with a better working experience, but also ensure easy setup and configuration for the IT team.”
THE TECHNOLOGY
The rooms that required video conferencing capabilities were all equipped with Crestron Flex systems, which provide staff with a flexible, simple BYOD solution. Staff can easily plug in their laptops and start their meetings with just one touch. “Crestron Flex provides us with an easy to deploy conferencing device that our people love to use,” explains Sellek.
Another reason Hy Cite standardized on Crestron Flex is its built-in advanced room scheduling capability. Crestron Flex connects directly with the company’s room scheduling application to make it easy. Inside meeting rooms, the built-in graphics engine generates an onscreen display of the room calendar and simple instructions to start a meeting. “With Crestron Flex all of our spaces are highly collaborative workspaces and provide our people with infinite visibility to the room’s availability throughout the day,” says Sellek. Additionally, with Crestron AirMedia® wireless presentation technology deployed in each space staff can now connect their personal devices to the room display wirelessly to share content. The facility also includes larger meeting spaces where executives did not want to have any devices on the table. To accomplish this Greg and his team deployed AirMedia and DM NVX® AV-over-IP technology, which distributes flawless video content over the network. The DM-NVX-D30 network AV decoder mounts discretely behind the room displays and transforms them into DM NVX endpoints.
An HD camera at the front and microphones located in the ceiling also keep technology off the table. Audio and video control are simple using the Crestron touch screen mounted on the wall in each room. Each room features the same intuitive user interface so everyone can get right down to business, instead of wasting precious time trying to get the technology in the room to work. “By standardizing on Crestron, we are able to deliver a consistent and seamless user experience as employees travel throughout the office,” says Sellek. For Shaun and his team, having a tool like .AV Framework™ software available helped alleviate the typical pain points of programming and designing custom GUIs for multiple devices. “.AV Framework allowed us to quickly and easily duplicate GUIs for each Crestron Flex unit,” says Trudell. “This tool saved my team a tremendous amount of time.”
RESULTS
With an assist from Crestron, Hy Cite has built a work environment where technology facilitates and encourages greater collaboration and frees up more time to create and develop new ideas. As the company continues to grow and more meeting spaces are introduced, the scalable Crestron platform is perfectly suited to provide the AV technology backbone.
A graduate of DeVry Institute of Technology, Doug has been in the Technology industry since 1976 and actively oversees Fearing’s daily operations. Along with his wife, Lois, and three others, Doug started Fearing’s in a 600 square-foot facility in Portage, Wisconsin. In the 25 years since, the company has grown to over 30 employees with offices in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Doug likes to say he’s a “TV Technician with a dream� going back to his history with the family’s original business-Fearing’s TV and Appliance.
Doug values time with family, watersports, hiking, snowshoeing and skiing. In addition to being a devoted member of his church, Doug serves as Board President for Kinship Mentoring of Columbia County, Board member of Schools for Haiti and Scripture Chair of the Gideons-Portage camp.
A graduate of MATC, Lois oversees Fearing’s daily book keeping along with various HR responsibilities.
Along with Doug, Lois is deeply connected to community outreach, serving as a Board member and Fundraising Committee Chairperson for Kinship Mentoring of Columbia County. She also serves on the Schools for Haiti Fundraising committee. In addition, Lois’ ongoing passion and commitment to provide care for the elderly comes from her 10-year history of working in a Reedsburg, Wisconsin Nursing home.
Lois enjoys singing, hiking, sunny days on the pontoon, and spending time with her 4 grandchildren.
Ehren drives Fearing’s technology by continually seeking out trends to enhance capabilities while supporting Sales, Engineering and Installation teams. Throughout his years with Fearing’s, Ehren’s talent and vision have joined forces to create a wide variety of projects and strategic solutions that exceed expectation.
Ehren loves music, family time, movies, nature, sustainability efforts and electric vehicles.
With 10 years with Fearing’s and over twice that long in the industry, Ben continues to lead, coordinate, and develop the Commercial AV team.
By consistently delivering an outstanding experience and outcome, Ben contributes to the Fearing’s legacy of long-lasting partnerships that truly make a difference. Whatever the Commercial AV need may be, Ben and team deliver at the highest level.
Ben is an avid fisherman and photographer. He enjoys coaching his sons and other youth.
Chris has been with Fearing’s for 20 years and in the industry for over 2 decades. As a Certified leader in Sales Acceleration and trained in EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating Systems), Chris successfully utilizes his skills to lead the Fearing’s Salesforce. Chris and team are motivated and driven to develop new client partnerships while continuing to reinforce loyal long-term relationships with ongoing Service excellence.
Married for 19 years with 3 children, Chris enjoys skiing, hiking, fishing, boating, hunting, camping and golf. He’s also been actively involved as a Youth Football and Softball coach for his family and others.
