AudioXperts Bows TV Speakers and Bluetooth Sound System at New York Debut
Nascent lifestyle audio brand AudioXperts, begun by audio industry veteran Eli Harary (CED July 17 p1), has pegged the pool of qualified U.S. specialty dealers for its product line at 70, said President Eli Harary at the company’s launch event in New York Tuesday evening. Only a limited number of specialty dealers, including both brick-and-mortar and e-tailers, have the sales staff and expertise necessary to sell a luxury lifestyle-based audio brand, he said.
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The brand will have a “limited” online presence, Harary said. AudioXperts will sell directly from its website, too, but dealers in those markets where sales are made will get all the profits from the sale, he said. “If they're the ones who support us, they're the ones who should get the sale and the margin.” The company plans no UPP program because Harary doesn’t believe it’s necessary. “If you choose your partners carefully, they're as interested in staying in business as we are,” he said.
AudioXperts will exhibit at CEDIA next month, where it will show its upcoming Korners speaker products for the custom installation market, and at CES in January, Harary said. The company will also venture “outside of our normal box” this October at Venice Design Week in Austria, where it will exhibit, at the urging of the local distributor, the company’s 4TV products at a luxury furniture show, he said. “I'm excited about trying something outside the box,” Harary said, where consumers “are not coming in looking for CE products” but instead for things “that enhance their lifestyle.” The company calls the 4TV products, which sit under a TV, “home entertainment consoles” rather than soundbars.
On the difference between the products he’s marketing now and products he sold in the past for high-end brand Infinity or Synthesis brands, Harary said legacy high-end audio speakers required complicated hook-up and positioning to maximize performance. The new products “are designed to enter a home environment more simply,” he said. Harary maintained that ultimate audio quality remains a factor in AudioXperts products but he wanted to take a fresh approach. “Legacy brands -- good, bad or indifferent -- carry baggage with them,” he said, referring to widely distributed high-end products that sell through “8,000 locations so it’s not really a luxury product.” It’s possible to make “a really wonderful speaker” that meets all the criteria of quality audio luxury product, he said, “but if that brand’s distribution doesn’t engage that consumer base, it doesn’t matter.” AudioXperts has a chance to “begin anew” and “step carefully” with those retailers who know how to “talk properly to that customer base,” he said.
Bjorn’s, Worldwide Stereo, Listen Up and Crutchfield are AudioXperts’s dealers at launch, and the company plans to announce additional distribution following CEDIA Expo next month, Harary said. Regarding working with buying groups, Harary said he didn’t want to commit to working with a group, although individual dealers can be members of buying groups. He has had discussions with certain larger buying groups, he said, “but their rules would preclude me from selling to their buying group,” he said. “We're going after a very specific type of customer.”