SVI Magazine

Other than at shows or awards events it’s a rare occurrence in our industry for as many people to be gathered together in the same place as there were at the recent Project Grass meeting.
It is a very encouraging sign that so many of you felt strongly enough about the future of the industry to make the journey to London and sit in a cramped room with no air conditioning on a sweltering afternoon - that’s dedication. Or perhaps it’s a necessity? After all, the objective of the meeting was a very important one - the launch of the process that will create a brand new trade association designed to work for the good of the whole industry.

The overwhelmingly positive reaction to the Project Grass plans began the week before at the CEDIA Home Technology Event, where BADA had a stand that was proudly proclaiming the project with the now familiar field graphic. Many people stopped by to talk to us about it and voiced their support for the ideas being proposed. What’s more, some of them turned up at the meeting three days later to hear the presentation; such is the feeling that this is the right thing for the industry.

So what is Project Grass, why is it being talked about so much and what has it got to do with you? Well, to answer the last point first, it’s got everything to do with you if you believe that the members of the specialist Hi-Fi and home cinema industry should be working together to ensure its prosperity in the coming years. We are facing unprecedented challenges and our response is, we hope, timely and appropriate. Creating a new trade association, whose objective is to bring all the players together, can only be achieved if we all want it to happen.

We’re very pleased that an immediate request for volunteers to form a steering committee to oversee the process was met with an enthusiastic response. Ten of the industry’s leading and well known figures will be working over the next six months to form the new association’s constitution. It’s not an exclusive team though - your help would be very warmly welcomed. And even if you don’t want to sit on the committee, you can still contribute your ideas via the Project Grass Facebook page. Just go to http://www.facebook.com/projectgrass and post any suggestions for the make up of the new association on the wall.

Green, Green Grass

To give you more of an understanding of what the project is, we first have to look at what BADA has done over the years and what it hasn’t been able to do. Originally conceived to promote high standards throughout retail, it set up a code of practice that all its members agreed to conform to. Then to ease the burden of running a business on the member companies a range of benefits were negotiated to help bottom line performance. Membership originally consisted of retailers but, in more recent years, a growing number of manufacturers have joined as Associate members. For the consumer, BADA offers assurances to give them peace of mind: a bonding scheme for deposits, transferable and extended warranties and a grievance service. Latterly, the Association has progressed to become a standards-led organisation. Its award-winning training courses such as Demcraft have succeeded in bringing a set of common and industry agreed standards to the retail process. BADA has done a considerable amount of very valuable work for the industry and it can be very proud of its achievements. The problem is it cannot do the other things it knows need to be done given the current climate and its limited resources.

BADA’s board has met on many occasions over the past 18 months. It has agreed to transform the Association into something entirely new, with a shared responsibility and constitution among all the players in the industry. This has been done in response to the extensive research, discussion and consultation which took place with the wider industry and existing BADA members. Project Grass is the process by which this transformation will take place. It isn’t the new association itself, the creation of that is up to all the active elements (manufacturers, distributors, retailers, media, PRs and others) to participate in the process,

The proposal made at the London meeting was a set of ideas and options that the BADA board felt the new association could do. What it finally ends up doing is, as indicated, up to the people who form its constitution - i.e. you. The initial ideas focus on training, marketing, benefits, lobbying and youth. Here’s a brief look at three of these ideas in a bit more detail:

Training
The setting and implementation of standards throughout the industry is the single most important thing that the new association should do. In the face of the very real threat we face from an increasing number of alternative channels and purchases, the industry has to differentiate itself by being better at what it does. The new association’s training courses should be accredited and recognised qualifications - offering the first ‘proper’ qualification for members of the industry. They should be designed to: keep people abreast of technology; improve their business management skills; improve employees’ worth and self esteem; and be something to aspire to. Ultimately, they should aid us in selling more products and gaining customer loyalty.

Marketing
We need to reach out to the consumer. Our industry is fantastic: we make great products, we’re enthusiastic about what we do and our ultimate function is to improve people’s lives through good quality home entertainment. And yet most people don’t even know we exist. The new association needs a strong and coherent communications programme through a new website, social media, newsletters, in-store POS, shows, advertising and PR. It also needs to communicate internally to the industry, keeping it up to date with relevant happenings. It should become the hub of the industry.

Youth
Generalising here, our audience and our people are, by and large, getting older. We must address this as an issue if the industry is to have a prosperous future. We need to attract new people into the industry to work in it and to buy from it. Ours must become an industry that young people aspire to work in. The new association should form a youth committee or interest group. Its purposes: to engage with the existing younger members of the industry and make them feel part of the decision making processes. It must also try to find ways of encouraging new people in by, for example, running a nationwide work experience programme with education authorities to help place students into manufacturing and retail.

The plans are ambitious, but we can’t afford to shy away from the necessity to bring together all the players in the industry if it is to have a secure future. Whether you are a one man band making two valve amplifiers a year, or a multi-national well known brand selling hundreds of millions of pounds worth of product, your input and involvement with Project Grass is vital for all of us so jump on board, get involved and let’s make this happen. Wake up and smell the grass.