With the impending closure of Auralic I wonder about brands like HiFi Rose, Eversolo and the many other Asian streamers to hit the market recently. Mike I think you offered HiFi Rose for awhile but dropped them. You keep your finger well placed on the pulse of the hifi industry, what happened with you and HiFi Rose?
Honestly? The “new” rep got pissy I sold Aurender and Lumin and other streamers. Funny, the old rep didn’t have an issue, but then again, he’s a cool guy who understands business. The new guy wanted HiFi Rose to be our go to steamer. Not happening. We’ve sold hundreds of Aurender streamers and Lumin streamers over the years. We’ve sold several Aurender N50’s already and Lumin remains a steady seller and through my distribution company, Luxury HiFi Distribution, we are the number one Pink Faun distributor in the world. And second place isn’t even close. My team (now over 10 full time employees) have done a fabulous job. And with MSB and Pink Faun’s partnership (3 years developing the new fiber optic card which will be a direct fiber link between Pink Faun servers and all MSB DAC’s (including those made over the past 10+ years), it’s a wonderful synergy. Magico even purchased a Pink Faun Dual Ultra.
SuncoastAudioDirect.com sells out of EverSolo’s too often (I had a meeting yesterday with my team to put someone else in charge of stock ordering for Direct) and other streamers too. Competition in this lower priced streamer market is getting tight. We are looking a few others to add for Direct.
SuncoastAudioDirect is my e-commerce (online sale only website) for more cost effective, but value driven brands. It’s a separate team from the retail store as this team is focused on customer service, the website updates, marketing, accounting, warehouse, pick, pack and ship, etc. I hand pick the brands (“good cheap audio”, I say internally).
The retail store team continues to evaluate brands and fine tune our offerings in the store. We will be evaluating a new speaker line in the coming weeks. Our Powered By Pass program remains a big hit.
Our team continues to talk to brands for Distribution as well and evaluate the potential for success in the US market. We recently turned down one as their offerings have become too expensive for what they are.
Between retail, online, distribution, trade show, used gear, manufacturing, etc, I have 7 companies. I’ll be adding an 8th next year, as development with the team this year has been going well. I will also add additional staff in some key areas. This new offering will be a focused online play, related to audio. More to come.
Suncoast Audio has over 14,000 customers. Suncoast Audio Direct has over 6000 customers and growing rapidly. So, we can either sell for you to our 20k customers or sell against you. Their choice. So, again, HiFi Rose who? Their loss.
