Komnik & Franck opens a new experience room in Windhoek

Komnik & Franck has a new interactive experience room in Windhoek. When the company extended its warehouse in 2024, a new space opened up between the old building and the new one, and owner Jürgen Cronjé chose to turn it into one room that does four jobs: private tastings, barista and staff training, Teams calls with suppliers and partners, and corporate events and social evenings. Our team in Windhoek fitted it out.

Komnik & Franck has been part of Namibian business since 1954, when Anton Komnik and George Franck started it as a manufacturing representative business. Today it supplies more than 2,000 customers with more than 5,000 products, from coffee, tea and coffee machines to amenities and spices, to hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, lodges, guest farms, corporate companies and major retailers. Its Barista Training Centre teaches the skills behind modern coffee.

Wood-paneled bar counter with backlit shelves and a white stone top, holding an espresso machine, a black automatic coffee machine, cups, and a Leopard's Leap wine barrel tap.

Simple enough for anyone

The room had to be simple: anyone on the team had to be able to walk in and start a meeting without calling a technician. The project started with a visit to our showroom, where Jürgen could see what the room might do. We then worked through the brief with him and set out every device in a visual quotation, answering his questions until the plan was clear.

A Crestron Microsoft Teams Room runs the calls. One touch on the table panel joins a meeting, and the same panel books new ones. An AVer 4K camera frames the group and zooms in on whoever is speaking, and a Sennheiser TeamConnect Ceiling Medium microphone picks up every voice from the ceiling, so the people online feel part of what happens in the room. Audac speakers carry the call to every seat.

Close-up of the lower edge of a Crestron touch panel on a wooden surface, showing a perforated speaker grille, a small central button, and a blurred blue interface with app icons.

Black AVer PTZ camera with a 12X Zoom 4K lens mounted on a dark wall-mounted bracket above a blue-glowing display screen, with a blue status light on the camera base.

Tastings, training and evenings

For tastings, training and presentations, a 98 inch Samsung 4K professional display gives every presentation room to breathe. Crestron AirMedia lets anyone share their screen from anywhere in the room, through a wireless dongle or over the Wi-Fi, so there are no cables across the table.

Walnut WoodUpp Akupanels finish the room, so the technology sits with the coffee machines and the custom wood around it. Adjustable shelves on the panels display the awards Komnik & Franck has received from the brands it represents. A motion sensor powers the video conferencing system down when the room is empty and up again when someone walks in.

Interior of a meeting room with a long wooden table and black mesh office chairs, a white bar counter with tan bar stools, and white cabinets with a wooden wine display shelf.

Today the room seats 12 to 14 for meetings and hosts larger groups at events. Our team stayed with Jürgen and his staff from installation day onwards, explaining the system until everyone was comfortable using it.

Stage Audio Works are the sound and visual experts in this country. And if they are the sound and visual experts then Komnik & Franck is probably the wine and coffee experts. So I think it was a good match.

Jürgen Cronjé, Managing Member, Komnik & Franck