The History of Inovelli
March 2016
An MBA Project That Paid Off
Balancing the excitement of my third daughter being born and the stress of an MBA project due the same day came the origin of Inovelli. The project revolved around analyzing the smart home industry and the players within it.
It became clear quickly that many companies chose to rely on their big corporate brand names to sell high priced, basic products that all looked the same.
The idea of Inovelli came from the fact that I simply wanted to develop cool products for my house and I figured others would to. In fact, this would lead to the community driven brand Inovelli is today.
Jan 2019
Finding Our Stride
As a young startup, we had to compete against some of the largest companies who had what seemed like an unlimited marketing budget and stock.
However, we had a secret weapon which was the 1,000's of passionate smart home owners who rallied behind us and helped sculpt some of the most innovative firmware on the market. In fact, we found our CTO (Eric M) in the SmartThings forum, but that's a story for another day.
It wasn't long before we caught the eyes of investors and realizing our ultimate dream, which was to design our own hardware.
Feb 2019
Hello Red Series
One of the first major milestones was receiving an investment from local Angel Investors. We went from a sole-proprietorship to an S-Corp and now had the means to innovate our hardware and hire on some full time help.
Our goal was to create switches that were aesthetically pleasing, modern, and offered full customization regardless of your setup. Something you'd be excited to show your friends, while keeping the spousal acceptance factor high.
We launched our Red Series switches that quickly became an instant success and won the, "Most Popular Smart Switch" as well as the, "Product of the Year" via the Hubitat community.
Aug 2022
Hello Blue Series
With the success of the Red Series came the ambition to go after the mass market. Couple that with the announcement of Matter and we decided the best path forward would be to pursue a Zigbee switch.
This allowed us to reach the same customer base as our Red Series, but also reach people who do not have a hub (Amazon Echo) and set us up for the eventual transition to Matter.
As of 2024, the Blue Series has become our top-selling product line and our flag-ship products.
December 2023
Hello White Series
With the growing popularity of Matter, we decided it was time to create a dedicated Matter switch that runs on Thread.
This allows us to reach the remaining smart home owners out there who are using Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.
It's truly amazing what the White Series has accomplished in such a short period of time. In fact, it's on par with our Red Series products in terms of sales.
2024+
The Future
It's been a wild ride since we started in 2016, but we've learned a lot along the way. We've met so many amazing people who have the same passion as us (smart homes and building cool products) and continue to move forward in creating the best smart home products on the market.
We will continue to sell three distinctive lines: Red Series (Z-Wave), White Series (Thread/Matter), and Blue Series (Zigbee)
Most of all, we look forward to working with you -- join us in our community and help us bring the best of smart lighting to the market (and your homes)!
