David Ackery General Manager of Electrical at Harvey Norman said "Yes we are going to sell the Denon brand. We use to sell it back in 1996 to 1997 and we look forward to selling this brand as it is doing extremely well in the USA".
Ken Dwyer the Managing Director of Audio Products Australia was reluctant to talk about the move however he did say that APA had not yet received their first order from Harvey Norman. A staunch supporter of the specialist channel APA has been reluctant to sell the Denon brand through mass market retailers. However ChannelNews has been told by senior executives of Denon in Asia that APA had no option or they faced losing the Denon brand. We have also been told that two other distributors had already spoken with Denon about taking the Denon brand into mass retailers if APA did not want to support the mass channel.
In the USA Denon is the #1 selling AV brand in mass retail stores such as Circuit City and Best Buys. Len Wallis of Len Wallis Audio said "I don't sell the Denon brand but you have to give it to Ken Dwyer and APA in the support they have shown for the specialist channel. I am surprised that they have held out for so long. They are a Company that are very supportive of the installer and specialist channel markets".
Josef Riediger of Audio Connections "I don't like to see the brand going into the mass channel but APA had no option. It is a good brand and will do well".
Internationally Denon is targeting a minimum 10 percent sales gain in the 2008 fiscal year ending in March 2009 which is the end of the Japanese financial year. To achieve this Denon is set to roll out several new products as well as new AV technology.
