Meet the Man Who Will Sell You the Tesla Powerwall
07.11.2016
For now, at least, TreeHouse CEO, president and co-founder Jason Ballard heads the only retail outlet in the United States that can sell you the new Tesla Powerwall (whenever more are in stock). What is TreeHouse? And why did Elon Musk turn to them to sell his home battery system?
For now, at least, TreeHouse CEO, president and co-founder Jason Ballard heads the only retail outlet in the United States that can sell you the new Tesla Powerwall (whenever more are in stock). What is TreeHouse? And why did Elon Musk turn to them to sell his home battery system?
When Elon Musk introduced the Tesla Powerwall home battery system late last month, he invited a small audience of several hundred friends, colleagues and media members to an old Los Angeles factory. Among them was Jason Ballard, a quiet and increasingly powerful figure in the home energy market.
Ballard helped found TreeHouse, a sustainable home improvement store with one location in Austin, Texas, three years ago. Today, he works as its CEO and president, and is preparing for another round of capital investment aimed at expansion, in large thanks to Musk and the Powerwall.
Musk selected TreeHouse as the lone retail outlet in the country to sell the Powerwall at its launch later this summer. The home battery system is neither cheap — though at $3,500, its base price is about a quarter of what was initially projected — nor small — mount it on the wall like a really big painting — but it could start to change how we consume energy.
Ballard talked with IndustryWeek from the road, not long after the big announcement.
IndustryWeek: How in the world did a relatively small home improvement store with one location land this new product from Tesla?
Jason Ballard: During the three years we’ve been open, we’ve sort of built a reputation for helping new products in the home improvement space come to fruition — we’re one of the top-selling locations in the country for Nest smart home products — and we hire a really high-caliber employee and then train the junk out of them. That enables us to sell these new and sometimes complex products. I’ve been watching the battery evolution for a while, because we’re already big into home solar systems, and when I started catching rumors that Tesla might enter into that space, I tried immediately to get in contact.
A contact at Nest had some contacts over at Tesla and connected me, and we started negotiations with Tesla. They sort of had the same questions you do: Why would we even bother selling to you? But once they started to get the idea of our bigger vision, even though they’re a much bigger company than we are, they saw we might be kindred spirits, and they could at least remember what it was like to be the little guy sort of up against a lot of established industry players. I think with that sort of mission synergy and brand alignment, they sort of took a bet on us, to be perfectly honest, and we’re really excited and we’re going to sell the junk out of those batteries.
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