they don't things the way we used to...
Posted by: ken c on 23 May 2001
if i were to open a specialist hifi shop that (a) allows customers to compare turntables, tone arms, cartridges, and (b) allows customers to compare equipment supports (c) sells good vinyl, including used.. (NO CD)
(d) sells some high quality stereo from you know who, definitely NO CINEMA, NO TV, NO B&O.
would i generate enough sales to stay afloat?? (probably consider buying off some cartridge re-tipping outfit??)
or would my shop just end up being used as a demo base for people buying elsewhere...
just curious...
oh, yeah, almost forgot, (e) offer exceptional quality customer service
enjoy
ken
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by Joe Petrik
Tony,
quote:
If you have seen the film High Fidelity, it was like a smaller, dingier version of that, and with more sarcasm. This was the best job I have ever had from a job satisfaction perspective - basically you sit around all day playing music and taking the piss out of other peoples musical taste, plus get first refusal on any vinyl coming into the shop. The pay is absolute crap, but its great fun socially.
Which character were you?
* John Cusack (Rob) -- music-addicted shop owner
* Jack Black (Barry)-- sacrastic employee
* Todd Louiso (Dick) -- nice but nerdy employee
Joe... feeling left out because no one has made a movie about his miserable job
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by Nigel Cavendish
It would last aslong as a pub that sold only real ale, did no food, had no jukebox or fruit machine, no dart board or pool table, banned cards and dominoes, and had no tables or chairs - jeez, could be a winner.
cheers
Nigel
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by ken c
quote:
It would last aslong as a pub that sold only real ale, did no food, had no jukebox or fruit machine, no dart board or pool table, banned cards and dominoes, and had no tables or chairs - jeez, could be a winner.
interesting you should mention this. i attended a CAMRA event a few years ago and the venue fits your description almost exactly.
and hey, some really serious drinking was done that day and fun was had by all !!!!
enjoy
ken
enjoy
ken
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by Tony L
quote:
Which character were you?
* John Cusack (Rob) -- music-addicted shop owner
* Jack Black (Barry)-- sacrastic employee
* Todd Louiso (Dick) -- nice but nerdy employee
Probably a mixture of them all, though I am sure I played bass in Barrytown st some point.
I was amazed as to how well the film worked, when I first heard that they were setting the book in the US rather than a dingy back street UK shop I really was expecting a disaster. The attention to detail in both book and film is what makes it so good, they are exactly right - we took the piss out of customers, had our lists, made compilation tapes for people etc.
Another couple of classic books:
Lost in music by Giles Smith: Brilliantly observed ramblings of a total music obsessive. Really funny.
Powder by Kevin Sampson: This is a painfully accurate novel based on a less than successful rock band. It is set in Liverpool, the locations are all real and very, very well observed. The book is set in all the places I frequent, and the venues are the ones I played when I was doing all this nonsense years ago. Like High Fidelity, it felt just like reading about my own past. Its very sharply written, and incredibly funny at times. A truly excellent book, written by someone with insider knowledge - the author used to manage The Farm.
Tony.
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by Frank Abela
She-who-must-be-obeyed and I have long had (about 6 years) the self-same dream of combined Hi-Fi shop and Cafe. She would run the cafe and I would run the HiFi shop. The Cafe would have various good systems dotted around the place for people to listen to as background. The HiFi shop would benefit from free coffee and biccies.
We figured it would be possible, but for us to live a relatively easy life, we'd ned to win the lottery first to make two poor managers run around like blue-arsed flies running the place/s.
Regards,
Frank.
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by ken c
"Life of Brian" -- my daughter's favourite python. i probably have it somewhere (on vinyl though, i think). will play it again when my t/t is back.
enjoy
ken
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by John Channing
My feeling on this is that if you are going to do something, then do something that is really new and really different. I think we have established that a hifi shop in the conventional sense, selling only the products that you want to sell isn't going to work and you don't want to sell out by funding your dream with sales of home cinema and lofi rubbish. I think that a cafe-bar type set up is a good idea, especially since this would mean that it would be open well outside the normal 9 to 5 hours of a conventional shop. It is hard to get a demo at places like Grahams because they are always fully booked at weekends and they close too early during the week. Also I find the often arrogant attitude you meet in places like that rather off putting and would not step foot in there unless I had a sizeable pile of cash to spend. In any case I would not have a system of booking formal dems, it would be much more relaxed than that, the kind of place where you could just come in, plonk yourself on a settee with a beer or a coffee and listen to whatever system was set up. Ideally the in house system would change regularly and the current system on demonstration could be advertised on a forum like this. I think any business venture like this would need a strong presence on the web and in fact would be a perfect compliment to a forum like this and would make a great place to meet up with friends that you have made. I would also attempt to get various different manufacturers to hold demonstration evening where they showed off their best or newest kit. How you would then leverage money out these situations would depend on what deal you could do with the various manufacturers.
Essentially what I have in mind is a cafe-bar that operates at a working profit with a hifi/record shop business grafted on the side. It would be a bit like a sports bar, but for hifi, you would go there to drink and chat but with the added benefit of listening to some hifi equipment or picking up some great new music.
John
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by woodface
I think the type of businesses outlined would prove to be very intimidating places to visit! As a result they would go under quickly. I think HT and Hi-Fi can and must co-exist. My dealer does high end HT (Lexicon, Lowe etc) and is also an ATC, Linn, naim dealer. They probably do most business on HT and installations but this means that they don't have to jump on each person who walks in the shop! Let the moneybags customers subsidise the rest of us! Thay know an awful lot about quality vinyl reproduction, even though it is a minute part of their business. They recently serviced my LP12 for £30 and it is one of the best 'upgrades' I have ever done. This is how a business survives - by being inclusive rather than exclusive!
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by Phil Sparks
I love the concept of my own HiFi shop, and having renently done a Barista course thought it was a great idea to have a pucka coffes shop attached/nextdoor. A friend and I had similar "want to set up a HiFi shop" yearning at the end of college. However we also decided that it's hard to see how you could make it work, and certainly the chance of making even reasonable cash out of it (let alone good, central London type salaries) is pretty slim.
The problem is either you need to sell quite a lot ob big margin stuff or absolutely loads of smaller margin stuff.
If you think about it you want to pay yourself and a chum say £30k pa. that works out at a profit on your products of £1200 per week (including NIC). By the time you pay for rent, electricity etc. that's probably £2000 per week. That probably means sales of around £10k per week. Now if your flogging 2nd hand LPs for £15 including VAT and buying for £5 (no VAT) that's only £7.70 per album so you'd need to sell 250 LPs per week - that's actually a pretty serious turnover. I'm not sure you'd have time to do the cleaning and re-sleeving. Alternatively you could flog one NAP500 per week!!
The one other thing that you've got to bear in mind is the cash you'd have to put into it in the 1st place - even to buy say 10 great systems (people would always want to to A-B dems, even if it was just a 112 compared to a more expensive 102 - let alone the L*NN equivalent or whatever) you'd be looking at say £50k+ which is another few thousand a year of bank interest you've got to fund. And what about the cost of sprucing up the place in the first place ...... etc.
I can see why most dealers have a sideline in expensive TVs. Must be much lower 'maintenance' and a nice earner too.
Phil
Posted on: 24 May 2001 by Eric Barry
As long as you have good stock, well organized, and put all the crap in the $1 bin, multiple genres can coexist in a store. There are some shops where I go through rock and jazz with equal likelihood of scoring.
--Eric
Posted on: 25 May 2001 by David Stewart
My local dealer is Infidelity in Kingston. They are doing very nicely selling a combination of high-end audio plus HT and multi-room systems. The two markets really tailor together well and I see no reason to be disparaging about the latter - it's what some people want and who's to say they're wrong.
From the dealer's point of view there's a large amount of added value in HT & multi-room systems, mainly in installation etc., so he can make his margins there and subsidise what in this case is the first love - the audiophile market. Sounds like a very effective business plan to me !!
- pity I didn't think of it.
David
Posted on: 25 May 2001 by Frank Abela
What the heck does HT stand for?
Regards,
Frank.
Posted on: 25 May 2001 by Andrew L. Weekes
Home Theatre ?
Just a guess.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned making it fun?
Many Hi-Fi shops are dull, uninteresting places, with employees who take themselves too seriously or are obviously 'sucking up' to make a sale. Product knowledge is often far worse than it should be too for a specialist.
Making it fun, yet still professional, would make a big difference, I'm sure. Do something unexpected and surprise the customers.
So-called High-end shops often have an intimidating appearance to the general public, they could be made more inviting, without sacrificing core values.
I like Franks idea of a coffee + Hi-Fi shop, it sounds very inviting (I can smell it now!). You may gain some business if customers have suitably visible reading material whilst they're drinking.
A company brochure extolling the virtues of real Hi-Fi and the shop's values free with every coffee could work wonders, especially if the customer takes it home and keeps it.
The coffee and cakes would have to be good though, otherwise it could have a negative impact on the Hi-Fi business 
Andy.
Andrew L. Weekes
alweekes@audiophile.com
Posted on: 25 May 2001 by Andrew L. Weekes
quote:
Richard, who saved more tax by doing this than my entire Naim system costs.
That the old IT contractor trick!
Unfortunately the Inland Revenue have stopped allowing this for IT contractors (IR35) as they class them as "disguised employees".
Andy.
Andrew L. Weekes
alweekes@audiophile.com
Posted on: 27 May 2001 by ken c
hi, many thanks for responses to this thread. i had intended that the shop be rather restricted in its activities so that it could offer the best concentrated expertise available anywhere. where one draws the line is somewhat arbitrary initially, but equipment on offer would include no more than 3 (plus or minus) of each of amp, turntable, speaker, arm and cartridge makes -- plus perhaps 4 equipment rack products.
i like the idea of non-dedicate dems, where there would be a theme (or themes) of the week or something, and the equipment would be continuous play. playing records that we recommend -- every now and then, we would also play customers own records. a lively discussion on music would always be positively encouraged.
i would probably hire at least 2 of the most highly respected turntable setup experts i could find, by offering them more money. same with people to do the dems and handle record/cd sales (these have to be very knowledgeable about music - i have bumped into one or two like this in hmv and tower -- again offer them a little bit more money). we would stock all sorts of records.
there would be good coffee on sale.
i would feel uncomfortable about diversifying too much as this would then make me the same as other existing dealers. and in any case, diversifying wouldnt be any guarantee since there is this believe that even we flat earthers put more weight on price than service -- and in any case, what is service??
i will keep chewing over this... and perhaps play with a few numbers to assess viability.
many thanks for your input guys
enjoy
ken
Posted on: 28 May 2001 by Martin Payne
Initially the idea of a coffee shop where piqued customers can wander across and hear good hifi sounds great.
What happens, though, when your spur-of-the-moment customer wants to hear how loud the thrash metal from his walkman will go?
Exit all coffee drinkers, never to return??
Martin
Posted on: 28 May 2001 by ken c
quote:
What happens, though, when your spur-of-the-moment customer wants to hear how loud the thrash metal from his walkman will go?
care. the model i have in mind is stereo shop first, but while you are at, you can also buy good coffee. very little would be "free" as this shop --- but i would aim to wipe all the other dealers anywhere off the face of this earth -- and i am looking for the "secret" formula.
thanks for your thoughts martin. perhaps you will not be allowed to play that load??
enjoy
ken
