EXCLUSIVE: Several major vendors are moving to open their own demonstration stores in Australia with Samsung set to lead the charge with up to 12 demonstration stores scheduled for 2013 according to sources at CES.

Robert Lackey the Product Marketing Manager for the Sennheiser range of headphones in Australia has also confirmed that Syntec the distributor of the German headphone brand are currently looking at opening a display store in Sydney.

During an exclusive interview with ChannelNews Andreas Sennheiser from Sennheiser German said that when his Company invested in corporate stores they witnessed a significant lift in sales.

“We currently have stores in China Indonesia and several other Countries and what we have experienced is that retailers get a significant lift in sales where we have a demonstration store”.

According to Lackey Syntec is currently looking at several options for a store. He also confirmed that Sennheiser has been chosen as the exclusive provider of headphones to Samsung in Australia.

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At the same time Samsung who mid 2012 opened a demonstration and retail store in Sydney is now looking to dramatically expand their retail street front presence as Apple who was among the first vendors to invest in retail stores in Australia falter.

Samsung has not denied that they are moving to open addition shopfront stores with many seasoned CES analysts now tipping that Samsung is the new Apple and the vendor to watch.

A Samsung source said “We are now looking at larger stores where can demonstrate our full range of products, we need to show TV’s communicating with our tablets, PC’s, smartphones and our home theatre kits. We need to demonstrate our cameras and appliances”.

ChannelNews understands that Samsung Australia who are set to launch the first of the new stores will use a store design developed by the same team that developed the Nike sores worldwide, some of the key stores will also have a display area for intelligent appliances.