The global Smart Home industry totaled $158 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow to $262.6 billion by 2025. However, RYSE’s segment of the smart home industry is actually still in its infancy. The smart shade market totaled $162 million in 2019 but is projected to grow to nearly $1.5 billion by 2024.
Yet as it stands today, smart shades are only in about 2% of homes. There are a handful of reasons that make that true, however, there is truly only 1 main reason for this: a general misconception around smart shades.
Due to the stranglehold that traditional motorized blind companies like Somfy and Lutron have had on the market, there is a common belief that motorized blinds are expensive, require you to throw out your perfectly good window shades, and generally are a luxury product that is reserved for the top 1%.
And that was true, of course, until we at RYSE decided to enter the market with our revolutionary take on smart shades. Our take stemmed from a simple place: what if motorized blinds were just an upgrade to the blinds that home and building owners already had installed?
…and what if that upgrade came at only a fraction of the price of traditional solutions?
Enter The AXIS Gear
In 2015, we launched our very first product on Indiegogo: AXIS Gear.
The concept was incredibly simple: place the window shade’s beaded chain inside of a device that could automate the manual operation of the window shade.
What started with a modest crowdfunding campaign launch of $160,000 CAD, grew to over 30,000 units shipped and $4,500,000 USD in sales over the next few years.
AXIS Gear is where our journey to turn an industry like the window shade industry that had lacked any serious innovation in years, on it’s head.
However, Gear was just the first step…
RYSE SmartShade
The team behind RYSE is the same team that brought AXIS Gear to market in 2016. SmartShade is simply the 2nd generation device in our line of smart shades devices, with the first generation version being AXIS Gear.
When deciding how we could improve upon Gear, we started by taking everything we’ve learned from the last 5 years and put it all into RYSE SmartShade. 5 years of engineering, design, and manufacturing experience that we bring to the table. 5 years of listening, learning, and evolving.
More specifically, we decided to focus our efforts in 6 core areas:
- The Motor
- Design
- The Battery
- IP / Integration
- Compatibility
- Automatic Updates
For more detailed look into this, read our article titled: How Is SmartShade Different From AXIS Gear?
We took everything we learned about that first product launch and got to work on a 2nd generation product. However, as the product evolved, we felt like there had been enough progress to warrant a complete name and branding change.
Once again looking to crowdfunding to launch our new product, the RYSE SmartShade campaign surpassed 1,000% of our goal, raising over $175,000 USD.
We chose to launch SmartShade on Kickstarter, because we loved the idea of our groundbreaking solution being supported by enthusiastic early adopters who want to help us see this product succeed in its early stages. In fact, this idea connected with us so much that we ended up taking it one step further with the exciting equity crowdfunding campaign that we now in the middle of right now.
This perfectly sums up where we are today. However, where we are headed is even more exciting.
How Will RYSE Revolutionize The Market?
AXIS Gear and RYSE SmartShade are just the humble beginnings as we work towards or vision of having smart shades in every home and building.
Currently, the RYSE SmartShade is designed to work with any shades with a looped beaded chain. As mentioned earlier in this article, these are generally roller shades and roman shades. Though our second-generation is functional, beautiful, and will transform millions of existing shades, we’re not content stopping here.
Our ethos is to continue to innovate and disrupt the smart home industry with forward-thinking products that will make life at home, the office, and hotels comfortable. Each of these different spaces has different types, styles, and sizes of window coverings.
For the next few years, we intend to continue to develop multiple iterations of the RYSE SmartShade so it can adapt to multiple shade, blind, and curtain types.
Here is exactly what we have planned over the next few years:
Our vision is to OWN the “Smart Shades” space. And to do this, we need to develop a product for every type of window covering out there.
We want RYSE to be synonymous with smart shades — just like what Nest is to the thermostat, Ring is to the doorbell, or Dyson is to the vacuum, we want consumers to think of RYSE when they think of smart shades!
My team and I are committed to our vision and have tons of ideas to help us realize it in the near future.
Investors, join our movement and get involved by investing in RYSE today:
