Use Your Knowledge, Save A Small Town!!! (1 Viewer)

[Ryan Libby]

Time to use your expertise to help improve many peoples lives!

I live in a city of 93,000 people and we have had only two real AV retailers for many years. The two retailers carry many of the same products, and the nearest third retailer is 1 1/2 hrs away. Needless to say this whole area has been hurting for another AV store for a long, long time.

Today a nice guy and long time owner of a very good car audio shop revealed to me that he is going do his part for our city and open a new AV shop. He has been asking everyone as to which manufacturers they would like him to carry.

Here's where you come in...

please offer any suggestions you might have about which manufacturers that this store should carry.

Personal favorites, good service, good value, for whatever reason.

A town this small can't really support a place that has too nice of stuff like $4K amps, and $5K speakers and he needs to sell stuff so receivers and smaller speaker packages he will surely need. However, this place needs some of the good stuff so any suggestions are welcome.

My city thanks you.

 

[kevitra]

What brands do the other two dealers carry?

This is a pretty easy question that you can answer yourself. Lets see.. Rotel, B&W, Paradigm, Deftech, PSB, Mirage, Polk LSI, NAD, Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo, Parasound, Jolida, Antique sound labs. I'll stop here for now.

 

[Jason Wilcox]

how bout Energy for the cheaper speaker packages

 

[Frank Carter]

Klipsch has nice array of products for many types of people.

 

[Rory Buszka]

Onkyo, Denon, and Sony are good reciever makers to sell. They generally have good reputations, with Sony being available for people who don't have money out the wazoo and need a fairly reasonable product. Some of the new HTiB systems are also of reasonable quality and could be carried to round out the selection.

Try to dissuade him from carrying any Bose, and tell him about the really bad things they do such as having terrible frequency response and poor power handling (as well as just being plain overpriced).

Rather, ask him to carry Energy, Paradigm, and Definitive Tech. Energy and Paradigm are canadian and are known for their uniformly high quality. Energy has their Take 5.2 sets and their S8.2 and S10.2 subs which go good with even the smaller Connoiseur (sp?) bookshelf and towers. Paradigm offers a wide range of systems that are very nice and come in at a good price point. Definitive Tech systems have some very interesting designs that I'm sure will appeal to many people. They make some nice small subwoofers that sound fairly decent and then some of their bookshelf speakers have passive radiators in them for lower enclosure tunings and thus deeper bass. They also make some (fairly large) bookshelf speakers that actually integrate powered subwoofers. Definitive Tech has lots of interesting ideas about speaker design which they have been very successful at integrating, and their products are very reasonable in price, quality of sound, and quality of construction, from what I hear. I unfortunately have no cool Hi-Fi shops around here in stupid Indianapolis so the only chance I have had to hear really good speakers was recently at a shop in Orillia, Ontario.

 

[Valerie Brown]

Harman Kardon/JBL.

 

[Dan Lindley]

I'm no business expert, but I am a skeptic, and I wonder if a town of under 100k can support even 2 such AV shops. Your friend should compare similar locales and see how many AV stores they support (varying results perhaps if university towns drive up demand; dying farming towns drive down demand; etc.). Your friend should see how well the owners of the other 2 stores are doing: driving decent cars, living in decent houses (of course, they may have 'hidden' excellent systems), etc.

Note that Rory above said there were no cool shops even in Indianapolis. One can debate the meaning of cool (and your opening remark implies that an ultra highend definition of cool is out), but still, the comment sure implies market research should precede the effort (or that your friend should move to Indy!).

On the other hand, maybe the other two stores are flawed and should be exposed to Darwinism.

Dan

 

[Ryan Libby]

Thanks for your thoughts. My friend certainly has a bigger pair than I for trying this. I really hope it works out for him. If you think I'm mistaken on any of the below please point out.

Here are some brands I think I'll suggest:
Rotel, Adcom, JBL, Polk, Definitive Technology, Parasound, Sherbourne, PIONEER, M&K, Hsu, SVS, LG, NHT, Totem, B&W, Tannoy, Monitor, Velodyne, SONY, KEF, Acoustics energy, Arcam, Mirage, B&K, Axiom, JVC, Audio research, Mission

...will suggest but are in other stores:
Marantz, Onkyo, Denon, Harmon Kardon, Paradigm, Klipsch, Energy, NAD,

Many of the following I believe aren't what I'm looking for.

Brands I am still trying to look at,(hard to find prices off the net.):
Aragon, ACI, Aronov, Ayre, Audire, Audio Note, Audio Illusions, Atma-sphere, Air Tight, Accuphase, Acurus, Adire Audio, Avalon Acoustics, Ariel, Audio Physic, Avantgarde, Audio Matiere,

Bel canto, Balanced Audio, B&O, Blue circle, Burmester,

CR developments, Cinepro, California Labs, Clayton, Copland, Cary Audio, Chiro, Counterpoint, Creek, Convergent AT, Chord, Cello, Conrad-Johnson,

David Burning, Decware, Don Jose,

Essence, Electrocompaniet, Epos, Entec,

FM acoustics,

Graaf, Granite Audio, Gallo, Goldmund, Genesis Technologies, German Physiks,

Hovland, Hales, Hercules,

Janis, Joule Electra, Jeff Rowland, Jadis, Jean-Marie Reynaud,

Linar Audio, Lamm, Legacy, Linn,

Mesa, MBL, Mlab, Manley, Meridian, Matisse, Mackie, Mark Levinson, Meadowlark, Meridian, Mcintosh,

Nagra, Naim, Nearfield Acoustics,

Odyssey, Optimus,

Pathos, Plinius, Prarian Acoustics, ProAc,

Quad,

Rel Acoustics, red rose, Revel, Rowland,

Soundstream, Siemel, Sansui, Sim audio, Silverline, Snell, Sonus Faber, Sonic Frontiers, Soundlab, spectral,

Talon, TAC, Transcendecent Sound, Threshold, Thiel, Triangle,

Unison Research,

Vienna, Vandersteen, Verity, VTL

Wilson Audio, Waveform

 

[Camp]

Bose. Anyone who can't figure this out for themselves needs to sell Bose.
OK...I'm an asshole...I'll explain.
One town, 96k people, 2 existing HT retailers. Why is this so hard?
You obviously need to sell something other than what's being sold at the other stores. Chances are the new store won't be able to obtain dealership rights to many brands because the existing stores already have deals with them. Even if there aren't any local dealers for a brand you select you still might not get certified to sell them. Many companies (most quality brands) demand a certain degree of experience in audio retail before they'll even begin to talk about your store selling their product. Not only do they expect expertise, they look for a sound business. If you go out of business due to poor management that reflects upon the brands you sell. Many of the big names won't even talk to you until you've been around for a while.
You can't just call up Denon, for example, and say "ship me a bunch of receivers, I'm open for business". You need to show them credentials that prove you will represent the Denon brand as Denon demands.
Do that homework and then come back.
Yea, I'm probably still an asshole.

 

[Ludwig Crumb]

Most of the brands I feel are sensibly priced but still high end, are using the direct to consumer business model.
These include Outlaw, Ascend, SVS, HSU, Onix, Acoustic Reality, etc.

 

[Ryan Libby]

Camp,
A real asshole would keep the truth that this isn't going to be to himself. But as I've said, he already owns a very successful car audio business and doesn't need a chump like me telling him about that aspect.

I completely agree with what you said about unique brands as does he, and you can see that there are some promising brands that aren't already in the area like Pioneer, upper end Sony, Def Tech, and more.

When you say "do the homework", what exactly do you mean? There are a lot of defferent types of homework that my guy has to do.

Thanks for the thoughts.

May my near by auditioning options forever increase...or at least until I run out of $$$.

 

[AaronMg]

Dynaudio, JMlab, Lexicon

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Ok guys, let's not use the a**h*** word even to describe yourself.

Your friend will want to find DIFFERENT brands than what is carried by the other stores. He may also need/want to offer things the others dont, like installation help.

He should also carry a low/medium/high end line.

The Consumer Electronics Show is THE place to talk to the manufacturers and see what type of commitment they require. For example: one brand of speakers will sell the dealer equipment at 50% off the SRP. But the dealer must purchase about $3,000 worth of demo equipment up front. Then he can pass on any orders to the company, or sell what he has in stock.

The CES is where people go to sign up to be dealers. Since this is coming up in January, now is the time to book tickets and hotel reservations.

Good Luck.

 

[Chris Tsutsui]

Here's what would be a good all around store IMO:

low end: JBL, infinity, Klipsch, Energy, Polk, Bose
mid-hi: Paradigm, Martin Logan, B&W, Dynaudio

other: Denon, Sony, Panasonic, HK, pioneer, rotel, parasound

I think the ideal store would allow people to demo the most amount of equiptment in a similar to home environment.

 

[Bill Polley]

Sound World and Hi-Fi Heaven are the competition?

 

[Camp]

Ok guys, let's not use the a**h*** word even to describe yourself.

You don't hang out in the video game forums much, do you?

 

[Bob McElfresh]

You don't hang out in the video game forums much, do you?

Actually I do. But the tone of our members is different over here and this kind of language stands out. So I'm asking for a bit of moderation - which is kind of my job. No, really! It is!