Hi Fi dealers, who were told last year that they had to invest thousands in a new “Blue” Bose merchandising system if they wanted to keep their Bose franchise, are now regretting their investment with one leading dealer claiming that his Bose business has declined and that consumers no longer walk into his store “asking for a Bose system”.
Adam Merlino, a director at Audio Connections in Sydney, said, “We invested in the system but it has done nothing to deliver additional business. Our Bose sales are down. Bose are not tracking well in the market”.
Joseph Riediger, the CEO of Audio Connections and Advance Audio Australia said, “The mistake Bose made was to take away from their dealers the rights to sell Bose products such as their Wave Radio or their iPod dock. This brought traffic into stores”.
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A Melbourne-based dealer who invested in the Blue Bose merchandising system said, “The system has done nothing to get me sales. I regret the investment. Bose is yesterday’s technology, today customers want Sonos gear or a receiver that has networking, wireless and the ability to deliver 2 channel and 7.1 channel sound. They want access to tablet applications that talk to their sound gear”.
When the Bose system was introduced to dealers, leading Sydney Hi Fi dealer Len Wallis refused to invest in the system. 12 months later he said that he has had no noticeable decline in business and that customers were today walking onto his store wanting products like Sonos.
“When Bose came to us with their merchandising system it was a case of all or nothing. We chose nothing and I am not regretting it. We were told that all dealers in the future would have to use their merchandising system but I notice that David Jones is not using the system in Sydney. They are still using the old system”.
Two finger salute by David Jones
A spokesperson for David Jones said, “We are still using the old Bose system as we did not want to invest in the cost of new merchandising across several stores as it did not add any value to the selling of a Bose system”.
Bose is refusing to comment.
