“Alternately you could pay a certified installer to do it for you. These days, installation is often cheap and sometimes free.”
As if you don’t have enough trouble remembering to create for your consumer what he wants and knows, the quote above comes from yet another reasonably well respected technology source called CNET telling your consumers what to think and want. As indicated in the first sentence quote, it is clear that CNET (600,000 plus Twitter followers) does not have your best interest at heart.
The article titled What should you look for when choosing a car stereo?, dated January 24, 2014 written by one Antuan Goodwin, seven pages long (in font size 10) went on to explain to readers and their friends (your consumers) about which head unit to buy depending on reader category; mechless heads, DVD, APPs, Navigation and budget car stereos. It mentioned a number of brands, all of which are available to your consumers at lots of low margin places. It also noted a number of features to look for, large color display, USB port, playback of MP3, AAC or WMA (compressed formats) and a 3.5mm jack.
In all seven pages the concept of audio quality was mentioned once and it was in conjunction with the onboard 50x4 deck power. That concept was summed up by this statement, “I find that for most stock and reasonably priced aftermarket speakers will perform well with about 25 watts RMS or about 50 watts max per channel...”. Go now and read a car stereo brochure or any of the bazillions of websites that teach your consumer that an in-dash powered head meets those needs very nicely.
Then of course the coupe-de-grass ending statement about the only thing you as an installing specialty retailer have as a significant differentiator from most of your competition, your installation skills... “Alternately you could pay a certified installer to do it for you. These days, installation is often cheap and sometimes free.”
I contend that this kind of statement does not support the notion that an installing brick & mortar specialty retailer should, will or even can add value to a consumer’s purchase decision.
NOW take a look at your web site. Ask yourself the following questions...
-
Does my website focus on educating my target consumers about my store and the unique value that we deliver to the consumer that is not available elsewhere?
-
Does my website come up near or at the top of the list when someone in my market searches for car stereo or the like? Or is Crutchfield or Sonic at the top of the list?
-
Does my site offer the consumer an education about what we do?
-
Is there a compelling message for a visitor to my site to actually visit my store?
If you can honestly answer HELL YES to these questions, take the rest of the day off. You are one of the very few.
- If your answer is more like, well not really, you gotta go to work. Get somebody to help you improve your site in order to attract consumers as opposed to driving them elsewhere. Mitch Schaffer at Mobile Edge in Lehighton PA 610-377-2730, has done a terrific job and is worth talking to for help.
Rich DeSclafani and Rep-Corps Inc. join to represent the German Maestro brand
January 27, 2023 – Pompano Beach, Fla. – Rich DeSclafani has over 25 years of experience in all aspects of the 12-Volt Industry, starting his career as an installer, specializing in wiring and circuitry. He has been a retail manager and expediter manager. On the supply side, he has held posts as a test engineer, sales manager, technical support manager, and product trainer.
Rich is a long-time fan of classic German audio, being a retail salesperson for MB Quart when it was still manufactured in Obrigheim, Germany and says that he is excited at the prospect of bringing the acoustical magic only comes from that region back to the U.S. Market in full force.
Rich will assist Rep-Corps in outreach to the entirety of the continental United States, leveraging his existing network of contacts through his high-end integration product line RDVFL to get German Maestro in the hands of capable Hi-End Dealers, and will be performing outreach and representation of German Maestro and future Rep-Corps brands.
Rich De Sclafani stated, "I am ecstatic to partner with Rep-Corps and to be part of the German Maestro brand! Retailers are going to be blown away by how good the whole line of speakers sound and the exquisite build quality. The whole speaker line of products are manufactured in Germany, even the entry level products are not farmed out. The best sound and highest quality is the core goal of the German Maestro brand. We offer $500 free freight at an average of 3 days to your door and a 3 year warranty on their products when installed by our authorized dealers to show we stand behind the quality of the products and our dealers. The German Maestro brand will be a niche, high end line for any retailer who brings them in. We will be VERY selective in who can carry the line to ensure not only territory protection but also no internet sales and proper representation of the products."
Here at the German MAESTRO headquarters, it is our aim to take in account all those small details every day anew. We take this challenge for our customers to provide products which honestly deserve the seal “Quality Product” and therefore represent a rewarding investment. We see ourselves as a combination of a manufacture and a production plant with the goal to transfer the highest quality possible into a series production. Of course such a structure cannot be developed overnight, but our factory here in Obrigheim, Germany continues a long tradition in loudspeaker manufacturing which dates back several decades and has started with the production of the brand MB-Quart. Since that time we produce high quality Car-HiFi components, Home speakers, Headphones & Headsets and Marine speakers at our factory.
To preserve our ideals, we created ourselves a guideline which represents the foundation of all our acting and therefore represents the foundation of our whole company as well.
Quality before profit
The first moment a decision about the quality of a product has to be made always comes up at the early stage of development. Unfortunately, things like trade-off (cost and quality), outsourcing or planned obsolescence are terms that are more and more often used by development departments in the modern industry. Ever since we started, we successfully defend the philosophy that costs always just can be optimized to the degree, where the quality does not start suffering from it and that an in-house production wherever possible is to prefer to outsourcing. This strategy of course leads to increased production costs and less profit, however, a constant and over average high product quality will be granted - and that´s want counts in the long run.
Everything from a single source
If there is the aim to engineer and produce technically sophisticated but therefore benchmark setting products, an enormous amount of technological potential and well-founded knowledge is necessary. For this reason we run our own development department here at German MAESTRO, which is equipped with technical facilities that just a handful of other European audio manufacturers have access to: the so called “anechoic chamber” (also known as “dead room”). Due to its huge dimensions and its quite rare version as a full anechoic room without a solid floor, acoustical measurements of loudspeakers can be conducted without any disturbing interference of reflections, standing waves and echoes. Further, all headphones and headsets are acoustically measured and optimized by means of an artificial ear. Our operations management keeps this philosophy as well and continuously trusts in the granted high quality of an in-house production. As a result, our vertical range of manufacture is significantly higher than the sectoral average and even reaches down to the processing of raw materials, for example at our in-house plastics injection molding department.
Handcraft and automation
As common for manufactures, we strongly rely on handcraft at our production, because it often still is the key to a reliable production of technically sophisticated components. The high rate of handcraft at the production allows us to achieve a series production of loudspeakers with extremely narrow build tolerances, what significantly increases the performance and the accuracy of the products. We choose handcraft for all those complicated steps in the production that require human sense and feel for the product. Thereby, each small detail of a filigree high-tech product can be handled individually and with great care for every single piece we build. On the other hand, there are also steps in the production where the critical factor is not the interaction of human and product, but the necessity to repeat a task absolutely precise and in exactly the same way. Such processes are identified during the preproduction run and will be automated then. Hereby we always use machines which have been engineered by ourselves, to match them to our individual requirements. As a result, this intelligent mix of handcraft and automation is increasing our production outcome and the efficiency, whereas quality and flexibility stay on a high level.
This policy will be kept for future developments and productions. We are proud to be a local employer which is regionally linked to many suppliers in the direct environment and globally connected with a good number of wholesale customers who appreciate the solid “Made in Germany” quality and spread it all over the world
SOCIAL:
FACEBOOK / TIKTOK / YOUTUBE – RDVFL
INSTAGRAM – RDV_AUTOMOTIVE_TECHNOLOGY
WEBSITE: WWW.RDVFL.COM
PHONE: 561-922-7747
EMAIL: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Magazine
Magazine Quick Links
