Ten years is long enough that the firm we are today looks significantly different from the one we started. It is also long enough to have developed genuine perspective on this industry: what makes a project succeed, what makes it fail, where the market is going, and what we have had to build or rebuild along the way. This is not a victory lap. It is an honest account of the decisions that got us here.
The Early Years: Pure Residential
Restrepo Innovations launched as a residential AV integration firm focused on Bergen County and the broader NJ, NY, and CT luxury market. The early work was a mix of whole-home automation, home theater builds, and distributed audio. the core offerings that define the residential segment. The team was small. The projects were serious. We were building a reputation one installation at a time, which is the only way it actually gets built.
The early years also established a pattern that has held throughout: we turned down work that did not fit. Projects where the budget was misaligned with the client’s expectations. Projects where the timeline was structurally impossible. Projects where we could see that the end result would not meet our standard, regardless of how hard the team worked. Saying no to the wrong work is how you protect your reputation for the right work.
Achieving Crestron Elite Pro Status
Reaching Crestron’s Elite Pro tier was not an accident. It required building a programming team with genuine certifications, maintaining the documentation and project management standards the program requires, and demonstrating consistent performance at the volume and complexity levels Crestron uses to evaluate tier eligibility. It took several years of deliberate investment in the team and the process before the designation was achievable.
Elite Pro status changed what we could offer clients in meaningful ways: priority support access, the full Crestron product line, and a manufacturer relationship that gives us a direct line to engineering teams when complex problems arise. The credential is worth what the investment required to achieve it.
HTA Luxury Certification
The HTA certification process is a thorough external audit of how a firm actually operates. not how it presents itself. Going through that process was useful precisely because it forced an honest evaluation of our own documentation, project management, and post-installation support practices. We passed on the first audit. We have maintained the certification in every subsequent review.
“The HTA audit is the closest thing the residential AV industry has to a genuine third-party evaluation. Being one of fewer than 200 firms nationally that holds the certification is something we take seriously.” __EMDASH_PROTECT_0__
Expanding to Four Divisions
The addition of Commercial, Hospitality, and Government divisions was a response to the work that was already coming to us. We had been completing commercial conference room installations and small hospitality projects as one-off engagements. Formalizing those as distinct divisions. with dedicated project management, appropriate insurance and compliance structures, and specialized product knowledge for each sector. made us more capable and more credible in each market.
The Government division is the most recent addition, launched to formalize the federal and military work we had been doing on a project-by-project basis. The division handles AV engineering, Crestron programming, and field execution for federal offices and military facilities. For any classified-area scope that requires cleared-prime defense IT environment, classified-area scope, FIPS, or cleared-prime facility scope compliance, we work under a cleared prime that carries those approvals. Past performance at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst was paid directly by the installation.
What Has Not Changed
Through all of it, the fundamental approach has been constant: design the system correctly before building it, build it to the documented specification, commission it thoroughly before handing it over, and be available after the project closes. Those four commitments are not complicated. Maintaining them over ten years of growth, across four divisions and a geography that now extends well beyond Bergen County, is where the actual work has been.
The next ten years will bring different products, different platforms, and different client expectations. The approach will be the same. Learn more about our history and team on our About page.