Paul W wrote:

To me they are the most uneducated car an idiot could drive - they show the driver couldn't give a damn about the environment, pedestrians and reek of drug dealer - but strangely some fool sees it as a status symbol for their wag wannabes - again perception.

Wow, that's some perception. I used to have a Range Rover and  I can assure you I am not uneducated, nor am I a drug dealer (although I did once give a work colleague some Paracetamol when he had a headache, so maybe that's open to interpretation!). I do care about the environment, which is why mine was petrol-powered and not diesel and I bought it not for its status or to show off, but because I genuinely think it is one of the best cars ever made and i had wanted one since I was about 12 years old. It suited the muddy country lanes where we live and it rescued many people during the bad snow we had a few years back.

Unfortunately, mine was an older one and it eventually started to succumb to the good old tin-worm, so I sold it. I've now been a year without it, I have missed it every day and i am currently contemplating buying another.

As to B&O, I really am at a loss as to see where they go. In audio terms, thirty years ago, they made turntables, cassette decks and compact disc players that rivalled the best. Yes, they have moved with the times and embraced streaming and digital music, but the drive for style and convenience seems to have lost the simultaneous drive for sound quality, in my eyes. To all those people who have said B&O were "all style and no substance" I have always been easily able to argue robustly that this was not the case, and beneath their stylish exteriors was some truly impressive engineering giving great sound quality. To be honest, I am finding it more and more difficult to defend this position now. Where is that high end digital music player that even an audiophile would be proud to own and would easily integrate with a non B&O system? Heck, there are now more BeoPlay sound systems than 'proper' B&O ones!

Equally, some of our friends were amazed when we paid thousands for an original Avant television around 12 years ago, but we bought it because nothing came anywhere near it in terms of sound or picture quality. Last year, our quest for a new television ended with us buying a Samsung rather than a new Avant, because nether my wife nor I felt that its sound quality was especially stunning and it gave a picture that was maybe just a tiny bit better than the Samsung but for over £5000 more! Finally, my futile experiences in trying to have an item repaired that had only been discontinued fairly recently (a Beo 5 remote) annoyed me greatly and I ended up giving up on it and selling it.

I really want B&O to survive. They are an icon to me - always have been and always will be but I genuinely feel that they have lost their way a little. I truly hope they find it again.

Common Michael, you Aussies know what makes to get when reliability counts!

Quote

A Kia or hyundai?

People taint brands due to their past,the all new range rover has numerous awards and is very reliable and well made ,it looks better,drives better,residuals are better than any nissan patrol,landrover only make 4wd the heritage and expertise counts.

Look at skoda now since they are part of VAG great investment by the right comapny can achieve wonders for a brand JLR sales figures are through the roof,the cars are better made and more reliable since TATA cashflow,and still built in uk.

I hope someone like TATA invest into B&O and push the heritage,move production back to struer and keep designing individual goods that look and perform well.People still choose landrover when their is loads of competition with better warranties and spec,and cheaper.B&o should follow suit.

When a brand concentrates on one segment great things can be achieved be it cars,audio etc.

B&O has done a very bad job of telling their brand story to the world. Failing to get this right has resulted in almost non-existent recruitment of new customers to the brand together with a loss of the added value that good brand communication provides.

For decades, and with very few exceptions, brand communication has consisted of new-product info, consisting of a photo of the product and a logo. Thus actually adding fuel to the fire of those who claim B&O is style over substance. It was a complete mystery to me why the brand seemed to be allergic to its history in telling its brand story - a mystery until I actually got "on the inside" at Struer, and I found out that Lewis wanted to disappear Jensen's contributions. That dissonance is something that a strong and focused brand leadership would have dismissed as nonsense.

A non-adept to the brand, passing by a store and looking inside, would see a couple of men in suits surrounded by new hardware, but would get absolutely no idea of where the brand was coming from, what it had achieved or where it was headed. Those components contribute strongly to value perceptions. Look at LVMH communication, across all its brands -- you won't find a single instance where the brand history isn't proudly displayed. (Sometimes they even make some of it up, something B&O wouldn't have had to do.)

At some point, probably in the mid-1990s, B&O management lost confidence in its own brand, and became product focused instead of brand story inspired. And that showed in everything B&O subsequently did. Management is on record as stating B&O survived because enough people were locked in to Masterlink to make them unable to jump to another setup - but relying on that locked-in group of customers to maintain the company was a dead end.

At one point in the early 2000s, there were over 800 B1 stores, in excellent locations around the world. Why those stores saw very little store traffic speaks to what I'm writing above. If you don't believe in your own brand story, you won't create any brand energy. Ten years ago, when I got approval from B&O to land some collaborators for the brand, in order to try and do something about this, everybody I got in touch with were pleased to hear from B&O and wanted to collaborate: world class musicians, concert halls, symphony orchestras, film producers, etc. They all wanted to be associated with the brand and work with it for mutual benefit. I wonder whether that's still the case?

It really comes down to a lot of missed opportunities, and a mistaken assumption that shallow appeals to the uninformed conspicuous consumption luxury segment would provide a solution. But the conspicuous consumption focus only added more fuel to the style over substance fire. Over 800 B1 stores represented an enormous communication opportunity, one-on-one interaction with existing and prospective buyers. Instead you got the impression, both from the actual stores and the photography of same by B&O, that they were dead zones, where nothing happened.

Maybe B&O was too set in its ways to change course, but it truly is mystifying, given how willing the company was to lead the way in earlier periods of its development. The strange thing is that it wasn't for lack of R&D - some great work was being carried out in both audio and video. But there was no product coherence, and product interaction became more complicated over time, instead of simpler. Simplicity of interaction was what made B&O attractive in the first place - just look at the threads here about programming remotes to understand where that went out the window.

It's easy to criticize in hindsight, but there were those at Struer who wanted to make the leap to the next generation of interaction, over WiFi and easily integrated with 3rd party hardware. There are 1.3 million Android apps now, and 1.2 million iOS apps. Failing to understand that you couldn't "in-house" develop software that could compete with what outsiders were doing for Android and Apple for "free," must count as a major strategic blunder.

In the end, being the guy with the AV-setup that was almost impossible to use with ease (BeoMedia 1), wasn't that much fun, was it? Particularly not when your kids seemed to be able to do wonders with their non-B&O hardware, in comparison. 

Thus - B&O didn't believe in its own performance, which was excellent; it didn't continue its heritage of easy interaction; and it no longer gave owners the impression that they were in the vanguard of what was possible in using playback sources (both hard media and web-media).
The fact that the brand as a result finds itself struggling was a given. 

If you don't believe in your own brand story, then you won't take pride in it. Why should consumers then feel any different about B&O than you do?
Imagine Porsche never referring to its iconic models throughout its history, or not showing to the brand lineage these exemplify. Why aren't the B&O stores (and communication) proudly displaying the same, either through physical iconic products or posters/stories of the same?

Soundproof, thank you for providing history and insights into why B&O is in the position that it currently finds itself in. I find myself with many many questions about a myriad of topics you've brought up, but one really sticks out to my geeky bent:

soundproof wrote:

It's easy to criticize in hindsight, but there were those at Struer who wanted to make the leap to the next generation of interaction, over WiFi and easily integrated with 3rd party hardware. There are 1.3 million Android apps now, and 1.2 million iOS apps. Failing to understand that you couldn't "in-house" develop software that could compete with what outsiders were doing for Android and Apple for "free," must count as a major strategic blunder.

What was the rationale that silenced those individuals you mention, or even justified the direction B&O took? (If you know, or care to hypothesize). I'm sure [I hope] these conversations are going on in B&O boardrooms at this very moment, as they try to navigate into smoother waters.

Thank you again for a most, engaging post. 

Sal wrote:

Thank you again for a most, engaging post. 

Ditto.

Another question, one might ask:

What pile of sh#t this discussion.

When B&o is down and out, this negativity stops also.

One may and can have criticts on B&o and their products, but for the moment one would expect they would, in general, have some support or at least some compassion, esspesial on this forum!

We should not discount what has happened, there are valuable lessons there, still to be learned.

Many among this community have watched over the last 10 years and commented here upon the steady decline, sadly for most of those, it hasn't come as a surprise!

There have been several new CEO's and new starts, and still the decline.

During all that time, there have been people telling us "it's not a problem that the product prices increase year on year", "of course the BV7 is worth 5x the price of competitors", "the companies business isn't in the little people, it's in $100,000 installations" and a multitude of other platitudes. And there's always been the great promise of the next new product (which was due in xxx but is delayed by xx months) to save the day and revive the companies fortunes and yet here we are!

The products they could sell and the people they could sell to have both faded into the ether, you now have to start from ground zero persuading a lot of people who have never heard of you to part with 4500 Euro for a pair of BL18's etc.

It's a very steep uphill challenge, and should be recognised as such.

@Puncher

True words

But it is one's choice

And it is one's money

But if B&o is not the choice (anymore), choose something different.......... simple as that 

Carolpa wrote:

But if B&o is not the choice (anymore), choose something different.......... simple as that 

But that's exactly the point, that's what everyone else is doing, there are nowhere near enough people wanting and willing to buy what they have to offer!