Self-Storage Smart Locks - Onity's Andre Lalande

Welcome to the Just Storage Podcast, where we talk about, well, Just Storage. Self Storage that is, your host Andrew Jones wants to understand the past, present, and future of this business, with his friends he met along the way. Our hope is to delve deeper into what makes this business so good. Thanks for listening. Here's your host, Andrew Jones. Hi everyone and welcome to the Just Storage Podcast. I am joined today by Andre LaLond over at Honeywell and we are going to be speaking about a couple of different products in the smart lock or smart entry kind of sector here in Self Storage as he oversees one of the companies within Honeywell called Honoree and Supra. So Andre tell us about yourself and your official title and what you do over at Honoree. Andrew Grant, great to be here. Thank you so much for the opportunity. So yeah name Andre LaLond. I'm the Senior Vice President of Sales for Honoree and Supra, everything except for our real estate business. So that is actually headed up by somebody else and I have been with the company for just over just nearly on six years. We became a division of Honeywell roughly both three weeks ago part of the Building Automations team. So very, very exciting opportunity and very, very exciting time for us at Honoree. Myself I was actually born and raised in Canada living in Northern Ontario. I am bilingual so for those who know French my name would be pronounced Andre LaLond. I went to University Waterloo and McGill, my MBA from McGill which is based on Montreal. Interesting enough I actually started in Telecom working for a company at that point was known as Bell Northern Research or B&R which merged with its parent company which ultimately became North home networks. But like many the internet bubble burst and I was kind of forced to being in the United States as a Canadian trying to figure out how do I get work and where do I move from. So I was able to get contract with North Carolina State University and then I was hired full time by Phillips Royal Dutch, the company Phillips Electronics as a product manager and projection TV where I spent about seven years working from projection television to micro display hospitality television and eventually into the pronto home automation system. So for those of you who remember pronto still out there. I then moved to Lutheran as Director of Marketing for their home automation and systems businesses and I helped introduce both the smart home systems for Radio Raw 2 and Homeworks QS. And then believe it or not I finally decided to get into the sales side of my life and I started with a company called Universal Remote Control moved on to working for a distributor before ultimately moving to addition their contract and then finally it landing with at that point, the owner and the owner of onity was a company called UTC United Technologies and for those you pay attention to stock prices and UTC split up in 2020 and which then at that point we became carrier and again once again we've now on these now under the guidance of Honeywell as our new owners. Perfect. Okay. So let's kind of go into your self, the actual role and I really appreciate that upbringing. Again everybody in the self-sourge industry has a myriad of different kind of backgrounds no matter if they're in acquisitions on the tech side like you are or if they're on my side on the third party management side. Everyone kind of has a very unique background and it is again a very ubiquitous kind of story in this industry is nobody ever thought that they were going to grow up and be a self-storage owner one day we just all kind of fell into it so that's fascinating. So how do you define your role at Onity and actually let's kind of back up a little bit what is Onity and Supra and how does it benefit the self-storage industry today? Great question. So Onity is actually a company been around since 1941. Onity is the second largest electronic lock manufacturer in the world for the hospitality industry. Supra on the other hand its sister company is actually started in 1955 and is the largest real estate box residential box provider in the world as well with over one million real estate agents actively using a super box today you know that little blue box that hangs on the doors. Oh yeah. That's the super business. So when it comes back to the definition of my role that Andrea great question because there used to be one person handing out both businesses but as the businesses kept evolving and expanding they actually split that role into two and during my intro I mentioned I am in charge of sales for everything except for real estate just gives you an idea of how much larger that business is. So there is an Andre's actually name is Jay. Jay runs the real estate business where I went on entering the company was given the reins for sales for the hospitality division, our commercial division, our automotive division, our traxis which is like a key box for industry division and now very exciting to be part of the self-storage division as well. Wow. Okay. And again the layman here and I kind of echo a lot of other sentiments in the industry is you know to us it seems that honesty is kind of newer to the side of the business and I'd really like to understand you know again 1941 it's been around for a very long time even longer than you know botter day self-storage. What's the story behind getting into the self-storage kind of real estate asset class and what kind of hurdles did you all see that you looked at and said you know what I think we can definitely overcome that. Great great question Andrew I mean for us it was about looking at a agency markets right the hospitality industry only had so much growth it was so much growth possible and then a lot of that is based off of what we call the flags or the brands right the barriots the built-ins of this world and it was like where are other areas that where are other what we call a Jason markets markets that are similar in scope maybe would be welcoming of the new technology maybe they're making a change towards more advanced technology that mimics what we already do in the hospitality space which again is really where our expertise was in and self-storage is the one that came up there now I'm not going to lie it also kind of helped that there was a request for proposal being at that point being basically passed around by some of the one of the larger reads and the business and they came across our technology found the relationships that we already had both again in the real estate side and the hospitality side and the the expertise that we developed in mobile credentialing not only lock systems but also credentialing to them was very appealing and we work very closely with them as or in order to not only understand the market but actually to help bring what we call the passport solution it's not even for our lock and the solution itself to life so it's basically a little bit of a little bit of luck a little bit of expertise and a little bit of adjacency searching that really brought us to this industry at this point in time fascinating okay and that that's a really great high-level overview is to really why you came into the market so I kind of want to move a little bit forward here what kind of makes the onity so the passport solution that you were just referring to what kind of makes you all stand out you know for any self-storage owner today that's looking at a smart lock solution or whatever solution you might have and say you know what I think I'm going to go ahead and go with onity rather than the other products that are out there. Well Andrew great question I think let's start off with more of our on a technical side then we'll get into maybe some of the business reasons but first of all so our directly I mentioned mobile credential we we call that direct key that's our name it's our brand and direct key Ashley has been around since 2050 and it features the latest AES 128 bit data encryption it provides an additional layer of security upon the lock and that technology is currently in use with thousands of hotels and millions of hotel rooms worldwide in the fact okay just using direct key alone you know Bluetooth essentially on a hotel lock we've opened doors more than 350 million times. Wow okay now take that technology now put it in that little lock box right that same super lock box which actually was the originator and that's that platform that real estate platform that over one million real estate agents use that every single day so conservatively you're talking about 30 million openings a day or 30 million open sorry a year plus the 350 add up together in the last 10 years we have opened doors more than a half a billion times 500 million what entries using Bluetooth technology so that's something that we take pride in is something that we know the security our device the security of our technology the ubiquity of the technology when it comes to Bluetooth and using a soap so we knew that right away that would be something that hopefully when we're talking to the customers they understand that we have that expertise right that is one of the things that makes us who we are today now let's add something else to it whereas we took when we were designing passport we wanted to also say but wait a minute there's got to be more hotels that we add to that and a big differentiator for us is that integrating an IoT based connectivity as well and wanting to partner with the best we introduced we actually working with a conductivity platform for a company called machine key they're actually owned by Comcast business they're a division within Comcast business so it makes sense right the big at that point we were care here now we're honey well you know partnering with Comcast it made a lot of sense to bring this this mighty powers of technologies together and so what you end up getting is contact operation contactless operations enabled through IoT so not only increased efficiency but actually enhanced security and enhance the services growth and the differentiation that we know our self-storage customers are looking for right so whether it be customer facing or solely in operations the combination of the two really give you that extra punch if you're looking to trying to take your self-storage site to tomorrow right as you're planning a tomorrow yeah no well that's I mean it's definitely something that a lot of owners are thinking about especially owners that are you know in the hotel space that already know of you all and then they want to go ahead and bring a lot of their capital into self-storage just because of the myriad of different reasons right um and and let's kind of move on to that what have been some of the so there's a lot of strengths that you're kind of talking to me about you know uh on a day today which is you know we have a lot of experience we know what we're doing it is a different asset class but we have I mean years and years and a lot of great great human capital what are what have been some of the hurdles that you've seen um coming into self storage and how have you overcome them or is there anything on the kind of the future product map where you're like yeah that might be a problem now but we can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel and we definitely still want to be best in class for this type of product it's another great question Andrew it's almost like you you've been thinking about this for a while so let's wait a minute yeah we started researching this industry back in 2020 so right at the beginning once we knew uh we were gonna get into this even before the R&D phase right we'd spent a lot of time securing voice of customer and also trying to better understand the industry I personally went to every ISS every SSA spring and fall trade show I had a business development person it was always going out there we developed relationships and the business was some of the key players not to try to help us learn for us it wasn't about it's our way or the highway it's more like okay what was on in this industry how to your point how can we mitigate or minimize some of the challenges that we could potentially be overcoming right and and one of the big differences I mean the advantage here is that the Bluetooth is the same the Bluetooth technology the direct key technology that we have in the passport lock is identical to the technology that we use in the real estate boxes and it's the same technology at reason hospitality okay so we get a check mark there but we also had to start understanding saying all right well what's really different right now the hospitality space works is in the main immense ecosystem of companies that have to work together right that we integrate together we have to work together and the industry itself has adopted technology early on especially in the 1980s when they went to MagStripe and again in the 2000s when we moved away to RFID and Bluetooth so you have a variety of companies globally around the world that are all focused and and in spearheading activities to work together so that becomes an integrated solution the person that maria wants everything to work I think that would be the same right you don't want your lights not to work and when you walk into the room in order would you want your thermostat not working everything has to work the same so we knew those were lessons coming in thank god we had done the research on at least some initial research into the industry because we need to understand okay so who are the new players right we've quickly found out that they were not the same players that have been played in hospitality by the way we weren't making that assumption but it's always good to validate that isn't the same players yes or no no it's not okay great so now we're learning again we're meeting new people we're meeting new companies we're understanding how they how they how they've coded their systems how they're working with their systems and to us I think that was an interesting an interesting I give you want to call obstacle was self storage seems to be one of you know a little bit of a laggard when it comes to embracing technology it's not that you don't love technologies that you're a little bit slower to roll it out which makes sense whereas hospitality or real estate was a little bit more on the forward looking site so it was about connecting those dots shall we say of how do I understand and learn and to brace the technology that is in play where's this technology going and how do I follow along to make sure that I can work both with your Gen 0 version as well as planned for when you're gonna bring out your Gen 1 version which is really we're getting into cloud based and more of the modern the modern way of of connecting systems into the space so those are really some of the challenges was understanding the players understanding how they work today understanding their romaps is to where they plan on playing tomorrow and making sure that our old map stays in tune with that so therefore we can move together with the industry at its pace wow and into that point so it sounds like four and a half years in um I mean you guys are still definitely in it you're looking forward to the future and as I really as I started this podcast one of the biggest things that I talked about to a myriad of different owners in the last decade or so I've been in this business is understanding you know the past present and future of this business and and Andre I want to go ahead and ask you the same kind of questions in that same order right so how do you see and again maybe even with being in the self storage industry for about four plus years but again you know seeing what it was like during the pandemic which was just a wild time for self storage yeah how do you see the past of self storage or even the past of your hospitality business and it being affected by the technology that you helped bring in create or manage over how do you see the past in general of this kind of technology be it self storage or hospitality and extremely proud and definitely worthy of their pride business ventures right business industry that um didn't really need to embrace technology until technology caught up with them well yeah right so it wasn't the need to change it's a desire to change right because of wanting to improve efficiency improve the results increase competition you're right let's face it the pandemic was an absolute boom for the industry right the complete boom everybody went into it and we saw a lot of growth and you construction a lot of growth in existing units whatever else and the industry with that level of growth was smart enough intelligent enough to recognize that it needed and advances in technology in order to keep pace with the growth that it was underway can you imagine still doing everything by hand oh no i mean what it's funny you bring that up because our last guest our VP of ops over at just storage his he echoed what you were saying you know it was a lot more paperwork um then you have today and that that was just one efficiency but that's how we really saw the past was kind of similar to your sentiments exactly and that's so now when I took a look at the presence the presence of the emergence of the smartphone is enter you know as revolution arise the way that we interact and engage it's not only a communication tool but it's now a digital compass and it becomes it's one of the the biggest technologies to influence the way we access certain devices right so the smartphone and you know with with technology like bluetooth helps us get into smart locks access control security systems they are completely transforming the way things around it and this is a technology that is now being more and more embraced case in point five years ago you know on maybe five or six years ago the ability of renting a unit using a smartphone was also something more for the elitist right you know the higher end the larger the larger players maybe not something that your standard regional player would maybe you will look at it and you know investing it at this point in time no to your point i can do it hand right right i can just come on in state you know nowadays the generational change as well as the technology change as well as thanks to covid the environmental changes i'd rather i can surf on the internet i can use my phone i can book a facility right there i want a 10 by 10 and i need it within three miles of my location great i want to pick this facility it's whatever color is the door and i walk in and there you go my rental unit is prepared for me and hopefully he's got one of the most modern day electronic locking solutions on there by on these so therefore i know that my items my treasures are protected and i have easy access to them at any time that i want based off of what the facility will permit and how do you see the future it almost sounds like you're getting to that point but do you see much higher usage of this kind of product across the 40 000 plus you know facilities in the United States today and anything else you'd like to add to how you see the future itself storage absolutely listen the the industry itself is still undergoing that digital transformation right so leveraging technology to enhance cost of experience through mining operations approves efficiencies is definitely number one but when you're getting into this is what we've also invested and have a you know have built in an IoT system so now it's it's not just about when did Andre last access his unit is how long was he in there what are the battery life what are what are sensors telling me about what else is happening in andries in andries locker for example that i can maybe either a from an operational perspective help me gain insights into what's going on there or be i could use it as a way to create more additional revenue streams for me as a self storage operator so that oh well it seems like Andre's very concerned he's always moving stuff around because he's concerned that there could be water in the facility even though it's on the third floor well you know what we can put a water sensor on there and we could charge maybe Andre a few dollars more a month or build that in and productize these sensors and this technology so to us it's about advanced security features data analytics automation tools the rise of this marked storage solution really is where we see this would be you know via intelligence coming from sensors and AI and other capabilities well well and this is something that i've talked to numerous owners recently is ancillary revenue streams so even you bringing that up is again kind of the current zeitgeist in the self storage industry and right now mostly because we just rode the biggest wave in self storage ever and now we're looking at you know our current revenue streams and we're thinking well how else can we make money and to your point i think that's very powerful moving on i we're kind of getting through this pretty quick but a lot of great answers here Andre one of the questions i love to ask everyone is um you've been in this industry for a while well not the self storage industry per se but you've been in tech for you know a couple of decades and what is some advice you would have given your younger self or maybe Andre you know younger version of yourself is listening to the podcast now they're thinking about getting into tech whether it be hospitality self storage or whatever it might be what advice would you give these individuals in and lastly what advice would you give to any new self storage owner kind of getting into the business i know that's a lot so we can kind of parse that yeah i appreciate it no you're you're right look to me it's all about the journey of learning right and understanding and embracing technology and understanding where you believe technology is going to go um look my background is i mentioned i went to university waterloo that's a computer science and engineering school in canada right it's the essentially equivalent of my teen canada um okay i learned i walked out a universe i walked out of there with um 14 computer languages apl cobalt four-trane basic right all these other languages all them i believe will be considered the day of the dinosaur in today's world right so i had to learn hdml i had to learn the most modern day working uh and and programming languages and i had to evolve my learning my technology understand right god how many of you used the lotus one two three yes i know i'm aging myself i remember the battle of word perfect makes us off work i mean it so i guess what i'm trying to inspire you is it's that that that journey of learning wanting to be ahead of the game right and not being afraid and making sure that you're not being left behind by staying in the present but always being prepared to be in the future to me that would be the lesson that i would be giving myself i played it smart by playing in computers because that's what was called when i was growing up it's not called that anymore it's actually called modern life so impressive take those risks really keep focusing on where things are going but don't forget to live in your day to day in life uh and into a you know again we have listeners here that are thinking about you know adopting on a day or just getting into self-storage in general because they're sick of uh you know fixed in toilets right and the uh maybe it might be hotel multi-family single family whatever it might be even manufactured homes um what advice would you give a new perspective self-storage owner um you know looking to jump into this industry take take a look at the technology around and look at the technology that is going to give you the opportunity to do the most growth avoid putting in systems that are single use or that seem to be only for serving one purpose and really kind of take a look at outside in where do you see the facility in five years where do you see the facility in ten years okay based off of that where the market's going what are the right investments that need to be made today what is what is the how do you chart your path to get to that well there that place we use the term compass earlier in this in this podcast right what is your compass pointing to and how do you get to that target that's really what you need to be looking at okay no i love that and lastly you know who do you look up to and why it's a great question and a bit of a sentimental one for me um my dad uh with his would be the person I would look up to now and i say that from that perspective my that was an entrepreneur he didn't ever he never finished his university um honestly was too smart for his own good uh he's he taught me some of my biggest lessons and i lost them at the age of eighteen and i'm way more than eighteen at this age of eight so i'm unfortunately i've had i've had to kind of go based off of memories and the lessons he taught me in those you know in my early years and i still refer to him today and to those lessons today as i teach my own children so obviously that would be the person that made the biggest impact on me well i think sentimental answers are some of the best answers you'll ever get so i um i sincerely appreciate that and happy belated fathers to say to you i know we're recording this uh the day after father's day so just want to go ahead and throw that out there love wise to you and you as well thank you i appreciate that and uh one last thing uh where can we find you how can we find you and uh just any kind of plug you kind of like to add before we end the podcast today? Absolutely listen we're look uh onali is around onali.com as our website uh feel free to also look us up on linkedin uh kendo simich who is with me uh she's our marketing manager uh she does an outstanding job of keeping our social media constantly up to date on including our website my email address is easy on red dot go long at honeywell.com so feel free to drop me a line or send me an email i'd be happy to respond or have somebody from my team respond and listen word i assess where it says say come by say hello come see the gentle giants there's a lot of people call me and uh let me uh you know let us let us help you let us only have a conversation with us you don't have to buy anything have a conversation with us and let's talk about where we see things going and what we what honesty what we believe on a tea and honestly the power of honeywell now behind us what what we could do for your facility uh i implore all self-storage owners to go ahead and um chat with as many vendors as possible so andrei i really appreciate your time today i know kendo was here with us as well looking forward to seeing you guys at the booth and uh thank you guys so much for joining andrew thanks for the opportunity and again feel free to reach out uh there's uh via andrew or directly to us and to honny and let us help you uh with uh better understand how passport is the right fit for you perfect thank you thanks for listening to the just storage podcast don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on spotify and find us on social media just storage pioneering the future of self-storage