We are not shade dealers but a potential customer needs shades. Is it possible to hire a shade guy to come install Lutron shades, set the limits, etc. without radio ra2 being installed in the house and giving the customer a pico or something and then when they're ready for lighting for us to come in and decouple the pico and add it to a radio ra2 system? What's the best practice here...besides us being shade dealers lol.
Absolutely. the shades (any type) need to be ordered as wireless. They have the tools to set limits either manually, or via a Pico. whe you add RR2/RA2S/Caseta, you will factory default the shades and the Picos will be forgotten. Limits will remain. Add to your flavor of repeater or bridge, add in the Picos, and you're done. An experienced Lutron shades dealer should not have an issue with this, and if they don't like to do the other side of the controls- great opportunity to partner on future jobs.
The "where to buy" tool at Lutron.com will list shades-only dealers in your area. Shades-only dealers are good at the pretty stuff but would rather not deal with the controls. Since you don't sell shades you would not be a competitor and they would likely jump at the opportunity to have a partner than can make the shades work.
That's what we're hoping for. I'm kind of "old school" now and remember when everybody was great at doing something and we used to partner up with AV companies and we'd handle the lighting/electrical side and they'd do the AV stuff and the shade guy would do the shade stuff but a lot of AV guys are doing lighting now (I have my opinions about why that's a bad idea but I digress) but it seems like shade people are really good at what they do and most I've met don't want to go beyond that so it's a great opportunity for partnering up. I've mostly dealt with Somfy motors in the past with another system I used to work with and it was nice to just let them deal with all the measurements, fabric choices, etc. and just hand me the remote once they were done. We've found one shade dealer who is no longer dealing with their electrician so hopefully something good will come of it.