Legacy of Amar Bose—Going His Own Way Amid Detractors, Taking Consumers With Him

AudioXperts President Eli Harary, a onetime retailer of Bose products and a longtime competitor to Bose when he joined Harman International, has “very fond memories of the man” despite trying, as specialty retailers did, to sell against Bose products, he said. Bose visited Harary’s Paris Audio retail store in the Los Angeles area and impressed Harary with his “determination and passion and his belief in what he thought was the right way to approach audio,” he said. Like many specialty audio dealers in the 1970s and 1980s, Harary had his own opinion about musical reproduction that was at odds with the Bose approach, he said. “It wasn’t as much as what some people consider an adversarial relationship,” Harary said, “because it’s one of those brands that you may not want to sell, but you really don’t have a choice.”

Harary outlined the dilemma that selling widely marketed Bose speakers presents to specialty dealers who are successful largely based on the exclusive lines they carry. “Whether you regard [Bose speakers] as the very best of what audio can be, it’s great if you as a retailer can turn somebody on to an alternative that you think is better,” he said, and if in the end customers also think the alternative brand is better, “that’s great,” he said. At the same time, “It’s a really good thing to make products that customers want to buy,” and Bose did that through strong marketing, appeal to lifestyle rather than technology and simplicity, Harary said. Ultimately, Bose enabled sales that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, he said. “There are so many people who would have bought nothing if it wasn’t for what Amar had accomplished,” he said. Bose’s philosophy and products “brought a lot of people into the industry,” he said.

Robert Heiblim, former Denon executive and now principal of BlueSalve Professional Consulting, cut his audio teeth at onetime national retail chain Pacific Stereo in the late 1960s and 1970s. It was a “golden age” of audio where “elitist” salesman encouraged customers “who bought a stereo before their first bed frame and just slept on a mattress on the floor” to purchase components instead of rack systems and towering speakers that took up more than their share of room real estate, he said. “We were developing the conventional wisdom of how you were supposed to have hi-fi,” Heiblim said, and when Bose brought the 901s to Pacific Stereo in 1973 for a demo, “what he was showing us challenged that,” he said. “We said, ‘where’s the woofer and why are all the speakers pointed toward the back?” The salesmen were skeptical “and spent all our time looking for what was wrong rather than what was right,” he said, calling it in retrospect “the disease of audiophilia.”

Heiblim was impressed by Bose’s demonstration of how listeners could get a stereo image all around the room rather than just in a sweet spot as with most speakers, although “we didn’t want to accept that,” he said. Still, he took on the line and “it was a good product for us,” he said. Looking back now, Heiblim said, “No wonder he was successful. This is how people really listen."

Brad Meyer, a former columnist for audio enthusiast magazines and ex-president of the Boston Audio Society, was “always fascinated” by Bose the company “because it was so unlike any other audio company in what it did,” he said. Bose “always wanted to confound people’s expectations,” Meyer said. Bose did more with reflected sound than most companies for a long time, he said, but what stood out the most for Meyer was Bose’s standard M.O. when it came to demonstrations. “More sound than you expected came out of a small package,” he said. That has been true for Bose products from the 901s to the Wave Radio to the Acoustimass speaker systems and now in the Bose Solo TV sound system. In news conferences and store demos, there are typically drapes that appear to cover loudspeakers located throughout a room, when in reality all the sound comes from a more centralized or far smaller source than the volume would lead one to believe, he said. “It’s very convincing and it’s a lot for the size of the box,” he said.

Meyer, like other audio purists, stops well short of crediting Bose speakers with high-performance audio. Of the Solo TV system, he said, “it has the usual slightly boomy but nevertheless effective -- if you don’t know too much about flat bass -- low-end,” he said. “It’s not a real sub; it doesn’t go down below 30 Hz or anything like that and has a big boom at 50 Hz.” But the sound is “very convincing and a lot for the size of the box,” he said. “They love to do that,” he said of Bose marketers. “I think Amar must've had a keen personal appreciation of doing that kind of demo because it happened over and over.”

Executives we canvassed cited Bose Corp.’s patience and consistency when it came to allowing a product to develop a market and then sticking with what worked. Bose “made believers” out of customers, said Peter Tribeman, president, Atlantic Technology. “The company has a profound sense of what the consumer really wants,” Tribeman said. There’s a page out of the Bose playbook for simple operation in Apple’s approach to consumer electronics, although Bose products lack the elegant design of Apple products, according to Meyer. Bose’s simple ergonomics and connections have stood out in an industry inundated with complexity, observers noted. “Within limits, there’s no such thing as a complicated Bose product and that can’t be said for most other companies,” Tribeman said. “Dr. Bose had his finger on the pulse of the consumer while the rest of us had our fingers on the pulse of reviewers."

Heiblim recalled a tour of a factory led by Bose and commented on his patience in letting a product develop. “By not compromising on product and being patient over time, that allows you to do things like cost engineering,” he said. On the tour, Bose pointed out speaker drivers that started out at $3 apiece and fell to 32 cents each, he said. Despite the cost efficiencies, “he never lowered the price because he didn’t have to,” Heiblim said. “And then he plowed that money back into marketing and advertising,” he noted. Heiblim contrasted that to other companies in the industry that continue to compete by lowering prices.

Bose was ahead of the industry in applying principles of psychoacoustics to audio reproduction, several executives said. “What he was saying didn’t align with anyone else,” said Heiblim, noting that Bose’s approach was challenged by audio industry pioneers including Saul Marantz and Sidney Harman. “They thought their way was better and agreed that what Bose was doing was wrong,” Heiblim said. A domino effect of criticism kicked in and manufacturers and salespeople jumped in, creating biting phrases that stuck, he said. One critics’ favorite, Heiblim recalled: “No highs, no lows, it must be Bose."

"Yet, we still saw that people liked Bose speakers and bought them,” Heiblim said. When Heiblim moved from retail to Denon, his perspective changed, he said. “I began to say to salespeople, ‘who cares whether you like it; people like it,'” he said of products that didn’t fit with what salesmen thought customers should buy. Bose, through advertising, “was being smart and we're not,” he said. “One of the geniuses of Bose and his team is that he was really good at focusing on things that mattered to consumers,” Heiblim said. Consumers don’t care about specs, he said. “They're looking for an experience and we're looking for performance,” he said. That lack of understanding among Bose detractors “allowed Bose to trump other people,” he said.

Joe Atkins, chairman of high-end speaker company Bowers & Wilkins, told us that while he never personally met Amar Bose, “he will certainly be remembered for building an iconic brand and creating a new and unique way to deliver consumer electronics to the consumer. Only a very few individuals in any industry deserve special recognition for their lifetime achievements and for sure Dr. Bose has earned the honor of being on that very short list,” he said.