I wrote last week about the Electronic wallet and said in passing that keys were next and Ravi K sent me a link to a company that is trying to build a smartphone activated add-on to a standard deadbolt. Lockitron has a very clever solution to the technical problem of this product and they illustrate it very well on their web site. But they have an even better solution to raising the money to build it. Take a look at their web site they have pre-sold more than 14,000 of the systems. I assume they used these commitments to borrow money to finish the design, tool up and begin production. Brilliant! Crowd sourcing through pre-selling.
There is still time for enterprising companies and people to get into this field. It will be huge. How big? Based on the price that Lockitron is getting for a promised product if they install a million locks, only about one percent of homes in the USA, it will be a two hundred million dollar sales company. It is reasonable to expect that the convenience of eLocks will be so compelling that this will be a five billion dollar market in five years.
Why aren’t Schlage and Quickset the big names in locks going after this market. They probably are but they have legacy distribution that doesn’t want product sold on the internet or through Best Buy. Unfortunately these are the channels where people on the smart phone cutting edge will buy. This is exactly what happened to Kodak at the digital divide and to Xerox when copiers became reliable and inexpensive.
It will be exciting to watch this one develop. There are opportunities for local start-up who will do the installation and set-up of these systems as well as for the manufacturers.
Yes I have ordered one. I don’t want to have to fumble for keys when I come up to the back door with grocery bags.