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AV Pro

L.A. STORY
By Daniel Frankel

Residential AV integrators establish booming high-end market in the birthplace of the home theater. By Daniel Frankel

Brett Ranter calls his kaleidescape "the coolest thing in the world." In fact, the filmmaker behind the "Rush Hour" franchise recently  told the showbiz trade paper Daily Variety that he uploaded each of his 10,000 DVDs to his home media server- a device he says he's become so enamored with that he rarely leaves his Beverly Hills, Calif., home.

In Fact , this high-end market is more lucrative than ever, with price points for complete system installations falling to where those without studio boss coin can afford a robust home entertainment system - but not descending so far as to put AV integrators into low-margin, high-volume competition with so-called "trunk slammers" and the home theater installation arms of the major electronics stores.

"Technology the last three of four years has changed dramatically," notes Keith Willis, who along with partner Jon Heberling, as operated West Hollywood Calif.-based Innovative Theaters since 1997. "projectors are brighter, their resolution is considerably higher, and the cost has come down significantly."

Willis says his company has experienced consistent 40 percent growth in each  of the last three years, serving a client base hat's largely made up of those working in the entertainment field.

Specializing in the highest-end spectrum of projects, Innovative Theaters- the partners of which have serviced the L.A. home theater market going back two decades- also sports a client roster rich in celebrities and studio execs, with a Los Angeles Lakers Hall-of-famer and several other local sports stars thrown into the mix. Building 20 to 25 home theaters a year, on average, the company's growth, partner Heberling says, hasn't come so much from increased celebrity traffic, but the increasingly accessibility of its work to upper-middle-class consumers.

"if you go back to the early and mid-1990's, almost all of our clients were in the [entertainment] industry  or of similar means," Heberling explains. "They'd spend $150,000 to $200,00 just on the electronics alone."

In recent years, however, Innovative Theaters has been able to offer clients less expensive projection  systems based on DLP echnology. Meanwhile, the company has created standard, mostly pre-fabricated design templates that have aided its pricing
model- recently added to those templates has been a set drafts specifically designed to cater to the burgeoning downtown L.A. residential lofts market.

Heberling says his company's price point can now go as low as $50,000, "Which is in the line with what a kitchen remodel would cost."

Having recently relocated from Santa Monica to West Hollywood, Innovative theaters is now a stone's throw from the Pacific Design Center, a hub for the  city's cutting-edge residential architecture. Heberling and Willis now get much of their business through connections with architects overseeing home renovations or new construction for an affluent client base.

Last year, they opened up a showroom, complete with a Moroccan-style demonstration theater that features 14 custom-built leather chairs (one of the company's more stylish offerings).The demo facility - which can toggle between three separate AV systems of varying quality at the push of a button- allows innovative theaters' clients "to hear the difference between a 10,000 home theater system and a $70,000 system," Willis says.

For Innovative Theaters, however, demonstrating its high-end home theater technology is key, but showing how it can hide these gadgets within an elegant design is equally important to its clients.

It is in this demo theater that Willis and Heberling shows off their company's ability to hide speakers seamlessly within walls, while using stretchy fabrics to obfuscate just about anything else. "Within the interior of a room, it's very important to many of our clients that you don't see any of the technology," Willis explains. "Many of them don't want to be overwhelmed by the technology until they turn on their system."