SVI Magazine

Any park sporting a Currys, Comet, or other electrical retailer resembled the M25 on a bad day! (I did actually make the mistake of visiting the local Currys in between Christmas and New Year myself - never before have I witnessed car park rage in an electrical retailer’s car park!)

I can only assume that the then impending rise in VAT was the reason why everyone and their dog decided on a day out to buy a washing machine or new TV. What an amazing reaction to what is really only a small rise in the price to be paid for the average television. Even a £500 TV (that’s the average price of Comet’s five most popular models) has only risen in price by £10 - it probably cost more than that in petrol driving through gridlocked traffic to get to the store!

It’s great news for the retailers though, so let’s give thanks to the fact that the average consumer probably doesn’t bother to work out the actual rise in price. There was a palpable air of pre-VAT rise panic amongst consumers in the run up to 4th January, and that might partly account for the good business that some of the major retailers reported recently. Sainsbury’s and Waitrose both had their best ever Christmas, and my local John Lewis was making sales of over £1m per day on the busiest Christmas shopping days. That’s more in one day than the average hi-fi shop does in a year!

be prepared
Of course, what we don’t know is how the impending government cuts are going to impact on our core customer base. Logically, one might assume that purchasers of high-end Hi-Fi and home theatre systems aren’t going to be affected by the loss of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, but that might be a dangerous assumption to make. If the papers are to be believed, the country is in for a battering over the next year as the cuts bite, so we need to put as much preparation in place as we can. Obviously we can’t make people spend their money if they don’t want to, but there are things we can do to maximise the chances of the money that is being spent coming in our direction.

Firstly, we need to make sure that our proposition in terms of products stocked is right for the current market, and importantly, right for our businesses. There’s no point stocking up with a vast array of flatpanels and trying to compete with the sheds, just because that is what’s selling to the masses. Better, if the flatpanel is the identified weapon of choice, to concentrate on 3D or connected TV whilst these technologies are still relatively young and offer a modicum of margin. Perhaps better still would be to concentrate our efforts on projectors and show how a modest increase in expenditure can really open up the world of home theatre for people. Or maybe we want to concentrate on products that get the best out of MP3-players? Whichever product route each individual business decides to go down, it is essential that it is used to differentiate the shop and position it as the local expert.

Getting the product right, pricing it and promoting it to potential customers comes down to marketing, and this is where BADA can help. Its Marketing for Retailers course has been designed specifically to help independent retailers get the most out of their marketing activity and dispels many myths, such as the assumption that marketing is the same as advertising. It explains what it really is, and shows how it can be applied to an independent retail business in the ‘real world’. Its overriding objective is to show how, with a little effort, marketing will provide a return on investment and will help the business’ bottom line.

ask the experts
Secondly, once the product is right and the promotional activity is in place, the business has to live up to its promise of being the local expert. Again, BADA can help you here with its product demonstration-focused courses such as Visioncraft. Working on the premise that knowledgeable staff have a greater chance of making a sale, Visioncraft has been designed as a hands-on, practical grounding in the art of system planning, wiring, set-up and demonstration of home theatre systems. It covers such subjects as the various HD audio formats, demystifying HDMI, speaker types and positioning, display technologies, screen and projector calibration, 3DTV formats, audio calibration and system specifying.

The third area of focus needs to be on maximising the sales opportunity. There’s little point in getting all the other things right if the customer is allowed to walk out of the store without the sales staff having explored every option for making a sale. BADA’s Salescraft course has been designed specifically to help retailers make the most of each opportunity. Full of common sense and real world ideas, it dispenses with the usual sales course necessities of graphs, acronyms and highbrow management speak. It is a one-day course that takes the salesperson through the customer’s journey, from their initial contact with the business, to walking into the shop, sitting through a demonstration and walking out with their product of choice.

Finally, there is the idea of strength in numbers. Working together as a specialist industry, to face the many competitive forces that are standing in our way, has to be a sensible thing. BADA exists to bring together all interested parties within the specialist Hi-Fi and home cinema industry to work for a common goal: the survival and prosperity of our industry. As the only trade body for manufacturers, retailers, distributors and the media, BADA is working hard for the Hi-Fi industry in the face of an uncertain economic future. Don’t you owe it to your business to take a closer look at what it offers, in terms of training, member benefits and a unified voice?

Phil Hansen is Operations and Marketing Manager for BADA, the British Audio-Visual Dealers Association, and also runs Red Sheep, a successful marketing and PR consultancy operating within and outside the Hi-Fi industry.

Contact: +44 (0)20 8150 6741
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