I'm always amazed how a niche brand has so many stores to begin with and how close they are to each other.

If they really want to make themselves special surely they should make it harder to buy their stuff rather than easier ?

Give the product a bit of magic.

Otherwise they'll end up like any other hum drum hi fi company and they'll be selling bno at sainsbury's.

And yet Bose stores are everywhere and they do very nicely thank you. Dreadful news to those affected.

Although awful news for those in line for closure, most of the dealers who are performing badly only have themselves to blame. Far too many are more concerned with their own profile, trying harder to emulate the lifestyle of their clients rather than concentrate on their jobs. 

The brand once set the standards for quality, not only in the build of it's products, but in the service offered by it's staff. In the majority of stores that ethos has gone out of the window in recent years. 

Maybe if Bang & Olufsen are shown to be a little harder in their management style then the dealers in question might buck their ideas up....

Chris Townsend wrote:

And yet Bose stores are everywhere and they do very nicely thank you. Dreadful news to those affected.

The Bose stores locator shows 10 stores for the whole of the UK!

Until relatively recently you could only buy direct from Bose by mail order or go to their factory outlet at Cheshire Oaks where the returns were sold at a discount. Their main seller was the Wave radio, which I have owned for many years. Very reliable,  nice acoustics, but overpriced and made from materials almost bordering on  cheap and nasty!

Graham

Edit

Bose have kept the same basic Wave radio design since 1984 with CD and DAB updates. There's a lesson for B&O!

Tonker wrote:

And yet Bose stores are everywhere and they do very nicely thank you. Dreadful news to those affected.

Beovision 10-46, Belab 11, Beosound 8, Beocom 2, Beotime and a shed load of A8's and Form 2's. Oh and a Beo4 and 6.

I thought it was more than 10 but there you go. When i go into their stores they tend to market surround sound systems from about £800-2,500 so i wouldn't say their stuffs exactly cheap either. Bose comfort 2's are nearly £300.

What they do well is market some pretty average stuff very well, whereas B&O have some excellent kit that is virtually not marketed at all. Look at hastle Puncher has trying to find what inputs this new Beolab15/16 system has. Most audiophiles smirk at me for merely mentioning the B word in front of them, as they see the brand as rebadged Phillips etc.

Well, over here I can have about 20 B&O stores at max. 100 km away, but the area has the highest population in Germany.

Bose is sold at most electronics stores over here, so will be available at >100 shops for sure...

Ralf

ironic as a lot of audiophile gear has been proven to have less than esoteric guts , the emperor's new clothes etc

look at the oppo debacle a few years ago where a jurno opened up a high end blu ray player costing a fortune and it was IDENTICAL to an oppo costing a tenth - identical

Tonker wrote:

I thought it was more than 10 but there you go. When i go into their stores they tend to market surround sound systems from about £800-2,500 so i wouldn't say their stuffs exactly cheap either.