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New Home Depot concept coming to Audio?

Home Depot just opened a new store in town with a different name - it's called Expo and it's a mega-store for home remodelling and decorating. It has high-end appliances, oriental rugs, etc. My wife, who has been reading about kitchen upgrades for the past year and has tried in vain through different venues to see all the products she has read about can now see most of them in one stop locally. I don't know how the prices are, but if the concept catches on I would think the prices would come down somewhat based on competition and increased sales in this market segment.

I've always wondered if high-end audio manufacturers will ever see benefit in this approach and support it as well. I don't think you'll see a mega-store with only products that you see in boutiques, but the ability to go see a lot of different manufacturers' products in one place, many more than you see in any given high-end shop today, would be an interesting concept to consumers. I suppose the market for $3K ovens is bigger than the one for $3K amps but does it have to be?

I know a lot of high-end shops are falling on hard times, but there are some where business is just booming and it would seem to me that one of the big-time retailers could open a new chain that services the high-end audio / video market and designs stores with display capabilities that go well beyond what we have to choose from today and gain a critical mass of manufacturers. Any opinions? -Kirk

kthomas
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
In Great Britain there is Richer Sounds. The have locations all over the UK and many in London. The owner Julian Richer is also the general partner of Cambridge Audio. Mostly mid-fi and budget audiophile equipment (like Cambridge Audio and Arcam, Mordant Short, NAD, Marantz, Wharfedale), but the only chain I am aware of that has a really huge selection and sells better stuff than Best Buy and Circuit City. The closest thing to an audio chain in the US that I know of is Tweeter, but their salespeople are clueless. Has a large web presence also, but only ships to Europe, probably because of the voltage. You can browse their stuff at www.richersounds.com
argent
245 posts
 
Home Depot Expo has been around for a while, expecially here in the southern U.S. But if you think about it, Home Depot is doing with stores what audio companies are doing with their R&D. Harmon International now owns Madrigal. Klipsch (god help us) has just purhchased Mondial Designs. High-End makers don't have the cash to continue designing the high-dollar, low-quantity items that we love. Can anyone say Wadia?--and dare I say it? Hales Design Group. I was in tears over that one. These companies need an assembly line monster like Harmon to buy them and support them. Home Depot sells everything, affordable building materials; Expo sells high-end.
pdaneluzzif57e
3 posts
 
What we need is more people buying from the Value for $ MFG.
Waida and hales are gone because little value for $.
Good stuff but way overpriced.
artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5
1,927 posts
 
It seems that you are trying to mass market a specialty item. I don't think the concept will work. Specialty items such as high end stereo requires passion. This is where mass marketing falls short. Their passion is to make a profit by selling a high volume. In order to sell at high volume you must have name recognition, something high end audio lacks. Surarbrie has alluded to the lack of knowledge of the staff at Tweeters. I can assure you that Home Depot suffers from the same cluelessness as the Tweeter staff. This seems to be a byproduct of the superstore mentality where the staff are not sales people who are knowledgeable about their product, but are responsible for the logistics of the operations, answering questions about where to find a certain product. Ask them anything about the product and they are lost.
Mass marketers may have the capitol to do it but they lack the passion for the product. Even if they did such a thing as you are proposing, I think it would soon become another Circuit City type operation. Mass marketing is about selling to the masses. High end audio is not something that appeals to the masses.
kthomas OP
911 posts
 
I think you're correct about the true high-end of the market - having a mega-store sell $15K tube amps isn't probably a concept that will work. But I guess I'm wondering about a slightly different concept which would be the mass-marketing / mass-retailing of "quality" gear (to stay away from the term "high-end"). Just take speakers for a minute - if somebody put together a retail concept where they had many many major brands of speakers priced from $2-10k and flexible, quality auditioning capabilities and put the store in a high-traffic area, I would think that the concept of $2-10k speakers becoming more commonplace is quite likely. It would require (or cause) speaker manufacturers to at least slightly change their approach which, while quite possibly not being a good thing for already-avid people in audio, would probably result in lower prices based on higher volumes and more competition. I don't think this would work for $25K speakers, but it seems odd that you can spend $5k on an outdoor grill, on a watch, on an oven and, without blinking an eye, on a TV and get all these things through "normal" channels, but $5k on a pair of speakers, while admittedly a major expense, is still viewed as exotic by "the masses".

In the end, I guess I am talking about mass marketing / retailing and that is decidedly different than pursuing the true high-end market. It just seems like there is a significant market out there that could be serviced by a bigger retail influence that would provide (much) higher quality than Best Buy even if it didn't tap the very high-end. -Kirk

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