Unfortunately, what this did to us was discount the value of the switches it seems.
Disagree. I think most people (myself included) assumed that the fancy (beautiful) box added a significant cost to the switch and thus the switch was heavily discounted due to the lack of packaging. I don’t think many people devalued the switch.
Here’s the thing- when I bought my first Inovelli switches I wasn’t fully ‘sold’ yet. It was a test. IMHO, very few people who go to the trouble of setting up a Z-Wave hub are going to buy one or two switches and then call it a day. There is always the ultimate goal of having most/all switches be smart. Thus, the real sale to be made isn’t the 1-pack, it’s getting that person to mentally decide which brand they are going to standardize on. The 1-pack is just a demo to close that sale. And that ‘sale’ doesn’t happen until well after the first couple switches are installed.
So when I buy the first one or two, the retail package is good. The signatures on the inside are nice and the box is well laid out; it gives the impression that a lot of thought went into the product and the people really care about their product. It helps make that sale of making me enthusiastic enough to choose Inovelli as my standard.
Once I make that decision though, packaging becomes irrelevant. You no longer need to sell me because I’m already sold. You can throw the switch and the neutral pigtail in a Ziploc bag if it saves me a couple bucks. And that’s what I think people assumed- that dumping the box saved a significant amount of money.
The Red series is worth the $35-40 it’s going for now (or would be if you could get some in stock, hmmph). I don’t think people question that. I know I don’t. It’s a HomeSeer-level dimmer for a Zooz-level price, there’s nothing not to love. If I can get it for less without the box I’ll do that. If I know there’s such a sale coming I may delay a purchase. But I don’t at any point mentally devalue the switch. I just assumed a large part of the switch cost was the packaging (and I think others did also).
the nightmares of the holiday pack where we literally gave bulbs away for free still haunt me at night!
Don’t let it haunt you too much.
My first Inovelli purchase was that holiday pack. As previously mentioned, this was my ‘test purchase’. I’d been following you guys on Reddit and this forum for a while, and you obviously had your hearts in it, so I wanted to give you a try. 4 Red dimmers for $160 ($40 each) was a good deal, and while I wasn’t ‘sold’ for the whole house I figured I’d give them a try and if they suck they’d go in the basement where there are way too many light switches but I still want to automate. I assigned zero value to the smart bulbs as I’ve always believed dimming switches > smart bulbs; they were a ‘nice to have’ throw in that I’d probably never use.
As it turned out, the ‘worthless’ smart bulb was the first thing I used, and it was a huge help. (I replaced a fixture that’d been broken since before we moved in, only to find it was a fan circuit- unswitched, the switch I thought controlled it actually controlled an outlet hidden behind furniture). Then when improving a guest bedroom with no installed fixtures (just switched outlets), I just redid the outlet to be always hot, installed the dimmer with nothing on the load terminal, and paired it to a smart bulb. Couldn’t be happier.
Point is- that holiday pack might not have been profitable, but I’m sure between it and the unboxed teardowns of it, you now have a LOT of ‘sold’ customers who’ve decided to standardize on Inovelli. I know I’m one. If you had an unboxed 10-pack of Red dimmers on the website ready to ship I’d stop writing this and order it right now. As it stands, I’ve probably got 12-15 more switches that I plan to be Inovelli Reds (mostly dimmers, couple switches)). I doubt I’m alone.
