The latest in Touchless Lockers
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Modular Millwork Touchless Lockers
Touchless technology and our modular lockers. So I’m going to give a quick overview and intro to. The environment in general, we’re seeing right now with the rapidly changing market affected by technology, the pandemic and everything else, but what we’re seeing is a pretty massive move toward laughers, and it’s all coming from the continuing condensation of the workspace. The what I’m calling the emergence of the agile workers. Agile means people work anywhere, anytime, wherever they are. Work is no longer defined by a place like it was 40 years ago where you worked in the ivory tower or the factory. Work is now defined by what you do and what you do as a work item is done wherever you are. So you start seeing community space, collaborative space, all types of interactive spaces emerging.
Now that can work any time on a dime, virtually in person or however they want to. Just a couple quick overview of that. You know, we’ve always been in the male business since nineteen ninety four. When I started the company. We’ve done a lot of touchdown spaces now, areas where we’re always mixing supplies, male recycling rate rooms, which is what this was. We did fifty five rooms of these at Best Buy up in Minneapolis years ago and we continue to move into more collaborative, interactive workspace where people perform critical functions or where we provide support, typically maybe at a high tech firm in Phoenix where people walk in, sit down, had meetings with their purchasing agents or clients or whomever. This is an all mobile interactive technology lobby we built for this particular company, ECGs Electronics out of Phoenix. So we’ve always been in the midst of communication, interaction, creativity and work. And what we now call the agile workspace is what we are seeing as the as the emergence of our of our world. And so, you know, it’s all for modular casework solutions with a lot of laboratory and more and more lately, more lockers than ever before. And we even imagine that that is not something new, is something that is a a result of the increasing mood for hybrid, collaborative, agile workspaces. We’re going to talk a little bit about those and show you some examples of where we’re seeing that in the current day and time.
So, again, workspace is turning into any space in. The most important thing for work these days is that people are supported. They can avail themselves of technology and supplies of whatever type of interaction they need. So if they’re doing a public, if they’re doing team working like this environment and they need to take a phone call, they’re spending thousands of dollars on these private phone booths so you can stop your work, step into the booth, take a call, go right back and do whatever you’re working in your team work environment. What we’re also seeing is lockers are becoming furniture. They’re not just. Something stuck in in the hallway or on the wall, but a big driving function in today’s workspace is convenience. How easy it from our work, is it from our workers to do their job? How comfortable are they? How quickly can they lock up their computers or their shoes, whether they ride their bicycle to work? And what we’re what we’re seeing is the the planners and the office organizers are moving storage as a utility closer and closer to people all the time in the workspace. This is the monumental work advantage that we don’t just build lockers. We build furniture that can take the form of lockers. And they’re used as work islands, storage devices in a variety of different functions that just support the collaborative workspace.
Rather, it’s recycling or other activities of that sort. So again, workspace continues to evolve, but it keeps getting more comfortable, more spontaneous, more interactive and more creative. That’s the need for lockers. So what we’re seeing and I will take this one step back again, apologize. But we originally were doing a lot of package lockers because of our malfunction. All of our male clients were also responsible for supplies for package distribution and pick up. So it was just an adjunct to the business. We had carved a niche out in about twenty five years ago of processing and delivering mail across enterprises. So what we’re now seeing is those same people are responsible for lockers. And we thought we were in the package locker business, but we discovered we are in the agile locker or the the day locker or the office locker business. And our unique advantage is, again, we can do any color, we can do any size, we can do any lock that you want in here. We can do the keypads manual combination keys. We can do some touchless locks, which we’re going to touch on in just a minute. But the lockers are more about, again, the convenience and the support of that agile, spontaneous, collaborative workforce today. And there is no clear leader in the locker market that understands space and people and how we work.
But and our business is we’ve always analyzed workflow and space and what people need to do to be productive. We are the perfect candidates to come in and say, well, this is how you need to organize these lockers here. The options we can provide if you need touchdown spaces or if you need casual lobby lockers, if you need collaborative work lockers in the midst of work teams or Jones, or we just need hospitality lockers, come in, visit around the computer, go take a lunch break wherever they need to do all of these lockers for all in the same building. This is one orderly process for a and this is a technology company, but we’re doing it for every type of company now. But in this one building on three floors, we did five hundred and seventy six lockers in one order. So and that is becoming the norm there. Won’t lockers everywhere. This is just an example. About one floor you just saw and I had these highlighted for some reason didn’t come into my to my flight. But there’s lockers. If you look all around the work teams, there’s lockers here, the locker banks in the casual space and hospitality space. They’re all over the floor. I apologize for the slide in, but on this one floor, there are about 300 lockers distributed in 15 different locations and varieties.
And Equinix out in Santa Clara. So that college is a very high tech company, cutting edge, futuristic. And as I mentioned earlier, we’re seeing this in every type of company imaginable. This is a one hundred year old, one hundred plus year old utility service company in Phoenix, Arizona, called Arizona Power Service. Just again, they read it all, Air Force eight floors on this building. We built all these collaborative touchdown stations. And so we put all the day lockers inside with a variety of sizes so that if they were storing luggage or coming in there, a line technician coming in for a day for training or an engineer coming in for a meeting anywhere anyone works, they’ve got their their touchdown space. They can sit and plug in their computers. They’re at work either are remotely or virtually. And then as they turn around, they’ve got an area. They can have a very quick stand up meeting. They can secure their locker if they need to go to a meeting or excuse me, their their backpack, their shoes, their laptops, whatever they need here for security and for protection, they can just turn around and perform any one of these lockers in these thirteen different banks of lockers we did on these floors as well. What we try to do is we try to improve workspace or we try to help people work better.
So we don’t want to go in and just look at the locker opportunity, go in and talk to them about what they’re doing in these environments. What type of work format are they putting in here? Are they doing private work, collaborative work? Are they doing teamwork or. They’re doing. More consultative or conferencing, and what we’re finding these days is the answer to all those is yes, they want to be able to do all of that and all the space throughout their buildings. So in this in this bank, for example, we’re organizing all of our recycling our trash. We’ve got oversized and regular sized lockers. We’ve got on the other side cabinets with supplies that can come in and pick up batteries, USB drives, pens, pencils, paper, tech home for their home offices, whatever they need. So we’re trying to turn the office into an interactive support space that gives employees what they need, but also allows them to work the way they’re most comfortable together, no matter what that workflow is. So that’s where we’re finding lockers are really coming into the the mainstream these days is that people are improving space by putting lockers in there and integrating more utilities in there. They’re trying to make it in a community format so interactive that can be creative. So a lot of collaborative or spontaneous, what we call touchdown stations being built. We see a lot of things that indicate, you know, the way teams work together, how they identify with the culture of that particular group is these are these are the linemen they get together, all the engineers.
We can see the alignment, eye contact put on popular cabinets, their workspace to be fun and people to enjoy it and have the freedom of creativity and and be more productive. So again, and a lot of sustainable and responsible behaviors, as well as providing easy recycling, easy security, easy meeting space and other utilities that today’s agile office employees need as much as ever, if not more than ever. So again, it’s a lot about improving the workspace by providing the the storage utility and the security that is needed in today’s open or collaborative workspace environment. The workspace continues to change and evolve faster and faster every time we turn around. And what we’re seeing is that that’s not going to go away. And there’s not a remote worker or an agile worker or a work from home worker or an office worker. Everybody now is becoming that that combination worker. Or again, they work where they need to, when they need to, however they need to. And I would imagine many of you were probably in the same boat and that you find yourself working at customer sites. You find just working at the hotel and Starbucks at home in your office. If you have one wherever you need to sit down and work is where you find yourself working.
This this is also a another manifestation or outcropping of our original mail business, and what we’re finding now is because employees are so mobile, every time we sell lockers, we ask the question, how are you going to distribute mail? And as usual, they haven’t thought about that because nobody’s in that business anymore except for us for the main part. And what we’re finding is they’re saying, you know, that’s a great question. How do you suggest we do that? So in just in the last couple months, I’ve been in places like Amazon, Google, Elliot Davis, accounting firm servers, transport, trucking, and we put email in lockers and all of these companies. And what we’re finding is an increasing need with the email, unless you put your email distribution, your supplies, your paper, your storage, your lockers, your recycling, unless you organize all that in a very concise, collaborative format where a lot of work support can occur in a very small space for a move to the next slide. Just to give you an example, Amazon has put about four hundred thousand dollars in email stations in the last two months. They’re just starting to employ lockers. We put somewhere on a the magnitude of a million dollars worth of mail stations with three hundred thirty mail stations and they’re now doing seventy five building up bitch with their package offers.
And they’re setting up a day locker prototype program for the fourth quarter that they’re going to start collecting day lockers, put all over the one hundred and twenty six buildings. So it’s not just Google or Amazon, but it’s small accounting firm down the street in Greenville, South Carolina, the trucking firm across the street from us that has two hundred drivers that come in and check in every day and they need to touch down box of stuff for a minute, pick up all their mail and their driving manifest that they used to to jump in the truck, head to California or Washington or wherever. So, again, we’re seeing every interior now is beginning to realize we’ve got to organize better for our agile virtual workers. We’ve got to put it in the format that they can service themselves. We’ve got a compressed space and we really got to increase convenience. That’s the maximum priority for these self-support activities. This is just another example. This is Johnson Johnson in school in New Jersey. One hundred year old corporate headquarters. Again, they went in and turned their interior into a very collaborative hospitality style format, went into the four different force in 12 different departments. They install all their utility kiosk so we can do their email, their forms, their supplies. They put in a small bank, a package offers. But in each bank, a package offers.
We have 12 lockers. We have about 30 of the day lockers. And as you go around the building, everywhere you look, there’s no lockers all of a sudden stuck in the wall right here over in the Latin marketing division over the last Lagrimas or no more tears, as Johnson always says, with their baby shampoos. And so they’re all over the halls. They’re they’re everywhere where employees are working through integrating them into the structure or they’re making freestanding islands in units that will give their employees easy access to security and maximum convenience for that that asset storage need that they have. We we as I mentioned, we started in the partial locker business. So we haven’t left that business. But what I have discovered, it’s nice business when you have an opportunity at that, as we have done here, these universities. But for every packed locker that we sell out there, we’re going to realize there’s a hundred day lockers needed. And a lot of people are calling on that because we don’t sometimes identify ourselves as front office type support people. But what’s happened is all the space, all the activity, all the libraries to organized back in our warehouses and our industrial work rooms in the areas know the mail rooms that we forever were the very best that is now moving into the front office. So we need to move up there and say, let us help you organize your workspace for today’s Agio office format to give you the flexibility, security and the convenience that your employees need.
It’s all about how well can they work in that space. Moving back a little bit more on the specifics of the deadlock. We talked quite a bit about touchless technology recently. I was trying to get my my video link to come up on this, to show the touch of technology for the offices. But for some reason it would not embed in here. But this is one of the ideas that might have otherwise just how to continue. You are in the meeting now. There are 11. Hey, Gary, are are you guys there? I’m. OK, I just wanted to make sure I have to ask them to recordings in the background indicating that maybe I was or was not there no problem. So, as you say, a typical bank of lockers. This is one of the phone excuse me, one of the smart phone touchless locks where basically you download an app on your phone, you can choose your locker, open your locker or lock your locker. And then you got a lot of managerial controls over the issue. As far as who can use lockers, you can assign multiple codes or you can let multiple users access certain lockers. You can put that expiration MoJ in there so it’ll turn the locker off and notify them that their time’s expired and get their junk out the locker.
So it gives you dynamic space management for your or your lockers, and it lets everyone who has a smartphone all of a sudden use that as their key. This company will be back up tomorrow with. So this company has been in the the business, they started RFID bracelets since bars and sports clubs across Europe and pretty much dominate that market. They’re now here. I don’t know how many of you know, we’ve gotten to call Oxmoor, but we’ve been using them, among others, for about six years now. And we’ve done lots of different Oxmoor for different clients. They’ve got a very robust and very reliable, smart technology lock or smart lock. Now, again, they let you have that purchase lock capability where you use your smartphone as your key and it can be the same smartphone you use to open the door, access the building and gain access to various areas of those buildings. They’re one of the companies we use. There are a lot of. Texas companies coming out with locks down, vigilance come out with theirs, there’s a number of different Bluetooth enabled lock operating companies out there. One of the things we want to be aware of right now and conscious of is that this chip shortage in everyone’s hearing about preventing automobile production and backing up washing machines and refrigerators and everything else that has a chip in, this is a looming development as well in the touchless lock or the smart lock technology that all of these locks have to have those embedded chips in order to communicate via Bluetooth, primarily back and forth with the telephones that we are using is the key or the smart phones we’re using for the key.
So before you go out and tell a big build a thousand locks, give us a call, we’ll get your quote, we’ll give you a timeline and availability. I haven’t seen it yet, but I was speaking with a couple of manufacturers yesterday in anticipation of today’s talk, and they’re all telling me the same thing, that they’re they’re concerned about the availability of chips two or three months down the road. They’re already starting to see some some headwinds there. So just be aware there’s a wide variety of other lock styles out there. And the important thing for you is, is as always, when you’re going into one of these interiors, ask the question, do you have any lockers? How many placements? What types of activities do we want to support? What’s your budget? You know, what access control do you want? What type of managerial oversight do you need? And you get a lot of information that can very quickly tell us what what is the right lock in locker them.
Many of our clients have different sizes of blockers. They have very specific needs, very strong keyboards or backpacks, or they have a lot of mobile workers riding motorcycles. They have to stick shoes in bike helmets and backpacks and laptops, everything else in there. So let’s figure out, you know, it’s not just a locker, but what do you want to do with that locker? Just like your shelving, we have hundreds of different types of showing in a thousand accessories we put in there. Based on our understanding of the user’s objective. The needs is the exact same situation with the lockers. Do you need a USB charge board? Do you need a mirror in there or do you need an interior secure compartment so you can put your valuables inside of your locker? So just ask the questions. Let your clients tell you what they want. We can do any type of a. Laminate or finish, we are doing a lot of phenolic lately, we’re doing a lot of HDP for good weather, facing or exposed outdoor lockers. We still do an awful lot of premium laminate, sustainable damage for most interior. So the real question is just don’t decline by how they’re organizing their space. Look at what they’re trying to organize, how they’re trying to work and get into discussion with them about their locker needs. Well, you will find is you’ve got an excellent solution to offer them.
And what we’re trying to do again is we’re not trying so much to sell lockers, although that’s what it ends up being is the of lockers or female. We’re trying to help them improve their workflow and their productivity. We’re trying to let them adapt to change and leverage, change and introduce innovation in their workspace. And so they stay at the front of their industry, whether they’re a power company or a consumer power distributor or a high tech company like a Equinix or Google, they want something that’s durable that they have the assurance is going to last a long time. They want something that’s sustainable. Today’s world is all about change. Sustainability is about enduring change. You know, products that are just simply sourced made or products that are able to adapt and change and continue to be productive in your office, regardless of the amount of change in the running into obsolescence. And again, back to the ownership cost. It’s more about value and contribution today than ever. So we talk to people about how we can leverage that, the change we can deliver support to employees. We can empower those employees so they can do a better job and the productivity company comes up. That’s really what we’re there for, is to improve their workspace so they can work better. And that pretty much concludes my presentation today. I will be more than happy to take any questions if if anyone has those.
When you to go ahead. I was also going to say a fantastic presentation, thanks, Arnie.
Thank you. And we have a lot of resources guys as well. Just email me or Loren Summers in the office. Just let him know you’d like some more information on Blocher’s. We have case studies, we have the brochures and we have more experience in. Just evidence than ever about how people are using these lockers and improving their workspace.
Party, who do you usually target when you go into a building to talk about this, is it Phillies management or operations? Like who do you usually look for
Is the way I use most commonly? There’s a number of ways, but I will go and talk to the guy in the mailroom who already knows us, Fermat from forever. I said, Who’s in charge of your office furniture? You guys put lockers in over there and most of the time, if he doesn’t know, he’ll know who I need to talk to. He’ll send me over there. So, yeah, I just know Jason sent you from the mailroom and we go over there and talk to them about how to improve their productivity in their workspace. But it is facilities managers we we are commonly working with. But whoever is really in charge of that, that office support space is usually most knowledgeable about what they need and is is at least involved in upgrading interior space for lockers. We also call on a lot of architects. They do not know there are people out there who have this degree of flexibility and this breadth of experience and locker market and Latimers struggling, trying to figure out what to do, what they can do and how to do it. And we’re able to come in and show them this is what makes sense for your your touchdown space, your workspace, your collaboration space, your creative spaces, your casual spaces. Here’s where you this is where you need lockers and how we should set them up. So call on your architects, talk to your designers and a lot you guys still research companies go and talk to those designers in their Spurger companies as well.