What made you stop?.....

There has always been a great price range for audio and TV equipment, from the very earliest days.

B&O has always been in, say, the top 25% when it comes to technical quality, and from the 1960's was able to add avant garde modern design for which customers were prepared to pay. Around the 1970's and up to the present day relatively low cost competitors products could produce good technical performance, if not, in most cases, the physical design and features of B&O.

Now we have moved completely away from physical media on disks etc  B&O has a problem in adding unique features. TV's on motorised stands or hinges still make B&O stand out, as do their top of the range speakers. As has been discussed in other earlier threads, the cheaper BeoPlay products may introduce new customers to the brand, and B&O might want to focus more on outstanding speakers at the top end, fed by streaming from other manufacturers devices. 

BeoPlay products are online and in department stores. Do they introduce new customers to the brand? Do those new customers then go to the specialist B&O stores at a later stage to upgrade their equipment.???

Graham

My answer to your question would be... No idea! (At current pace)

Not an easy question to answer. I think a re-focusing of the product line back specifically to high end audio and returning the product to being sold in HiFi shops besides the exclusive B&O stores would bring in new customers who at least in the U.S., don't even get to SEE B&O products without being near a B&O store and there are precious few.

BeoLab 14 in particular I think is a product that would get a great take rate at retailers outside of traditional B&O stores. But since B&O is set on trying to build an entire "lifestyle", they have to rely on the store personnel to sell that entire lifestyle which I think is why they didn't trust individual HiFi retailers to do the job well enough. And I think that lifestyle mindset is something that holds them back. BeoLab 14 is the first product where they have caved in and said "you know what, not everyone has a B&O TV, we need to cater to those individuals as well!". High end audio is one of the last niche markets where there are still plenty of new customers to convert or bring in. Television is now a race to the bottom.

Hi

What could make new costumers start buying b&o ? :

I would say, 3 main reasons :

- to give the opportunity to people to easily discover in the best condition how these product are good.

Most of people even don't know the name "Bang Olufsen".

It's a fact.

- the fact that people earn much more money than actually

B&o products will be always expensive and actually fewer and fewer people can afford them.

How many beoworlders are actually obliged to limit their purchases because of their financial capabilities ?

- b&o have to produce high end technical products, "future proof". Nobody will invest in old technology or in a dying brand.

I am sure that if they can afford it and they are well informed (demonstration, technical explanations...), they will choose b&o. Especially if the wife has its opinion.

1.) there should be the old and trusted sticker on the back of the products: "Made in Denmark"
I don't know any modern highend brand where you can read "Made in China" (we are not talking B..se etc.) and many customers simply don't want the china crap when they pay good amounts of money.
For Example: McIntosh Amplifiers etc., T+A, Accuphase...

2.) B&Os shop employees should know every possible detail and szenario or even have a source to look for it to explain to customers what is realy possible with B&O stuff! Personally I wasn't interested in a Beo 5/6 until I found out that it is possible to control 3rd party equipment directly from the remote itself!

3.) the software quality needs to be improved much much more! I have about 300 CDs on my Beosound 5 and scrolling through the albums or artists takes hours... and I still can't search inside a track or fast forward inside a track

4.) Customer service needs to be highend as well! It's not a good strategy to sell a product one time leavig the customer out in the rain when s.th. happened...

5.) go and get GREAT designers back!
Even if everything goes digital B&O could deliver the great scandinavian design sculptures we love. What about a Beosound 3xxx or 9xxx that can read DVDs/Blurays/CDs/MP3-CDs, receive Airplay, is DLNA-compatible, allows N.Music, N.Radio, WLAN, allows PUC control of 3rd party equipment, Bluetooth-Audiostreaming etc. pp.
Shouldn't be a problem.

Design...

peria wrote:

I keep reading in different threads about B&O going back to the days of selling through high end audio (a/v) stores. Are there any left? In the USA, I think the answer might be no. I mean, there are the sort of $300 per foot cable type stores, and then there's Best Buy. I can't see B&O being successful in either place. BTW, I personally think there's a place for all three. I'll visit the super high end places as sort of an entertainment excursion, and Best Buy is a good place to buy a Samsung refrigerator.

If you are inferring that B&O should be sold at Best Buy that I'm not so sure about. Perhaps at their Magnolia A/V stores (which are probably, in fact, the most numerous "high end" A/V store because they are in a lot of Best Buys), but even then, the B&W models sold in Magnolia in-store showrooms are only the lower end Bowers and Wilkins line up through the CM9 towers. Magnolia Design Centers have access to every B&W product up to and including Nautilus, and any standard Best Buy store can order from the Design Center and pick the product up to bring it back to their market.

TWG wrote:

1.) there should be the old and trusted sticker on the back of the products: "Made in Denmark"
I don't know any modern highend brand where you can read "Made in China" (we are not talking B..se etc.) and many customers simply don't want the china crap when they pay good amounts of money.
For Example: McIntosh Amplifiers etc., T+A, Accuphase...

Could not agree more. Perhaps for the BeoPlay products I can live with it, but there were rumors on Facebook that BeoLab 14 was also made in China and that is just an unacceptable direction. "China crap" is right when you are paying these amounts for something. It's also funny you mentioned Bose because *most* of their production is and has been in Mexico for years. Even they don't do a whole lot of Chinese manufacturing.

Bowers and Wilkins now manufactures everything except their highest end lines in China and IMO that's kind of been a black mark for them. Again, they've introduced several iPod and iPad based products and for that market Chinese manufacturing is fine if it brings prices down. But a Chinese BeoLab 14 is unacceptable.