‘There’s an opportunity out there, and the hi-fi and home cinema retail industry is choosing to ignore a way of helping customers – as well as making some money’ says Andrew Everard

There’s a chill wind blowing through the hi-fi and home cinema retailing landscape: footfall – the number of people visiting shops – is down, and many specialist retailers are struggling.

Yes, at the very top end of the market the business is still there, whether it’s big-ticket system components selling better than their manufacturers may have hoped in their wildest dreams, or complete systems, carrying five- or six-figure price-tags, being sold to, and installed for, the wealthy.

When I visited a training session for custom installers not so long ago, I was amazed to discover that their business was still pretty good, and to hear that whereas the wealthy once went for homes with the maximum number of bedrooms their budget would allow, now they’re downsizing on sleeping accommodation, and instead spending money on leisure facilities such as home cinemas.

Which of course is where those enterprising custom installation specialists come in.

However, in the mass market, or what’s left of the lower end of the enthusiast sector, things are a bit grim. The economic situation has made customers more cautious about their spending, and those who have money to spend are much more savvy about prices, and what a product can be bought for if one goes to an online retailer without the overheads of a high street ‘bricks and mortar’ operation.

The 'showrooming' trend
As a result, traditional style retailers will tell you that ‘showrooming’ – consumers examining or trying the goods in a shop, then going off in search of a better price online – is becoming a major problem: some say they’re being forced to slash prices to compete, despite those greater overheads, or even drop some products more commonly bought online.

In such circumstances, you’d expect retailers to be looking for any opportunity to win customers back by offering better service, or indeed additional services. After all, if all you pay a shop extra for is the convenience of being able to have the item within minutes of deciding to buy, rather than within a day or two, the extra cost, plus the expense of getting to and from the shop – fares, fuel, parking or whatever – will likely swing the consumer back into the arms of the online operations.

But I believe there’s one major opportunity out there, and the hi-fi and home cinema retail industry is choosing to ignore a way of helping customers – as well as making some money for itself.

A conversation with a reader about setting up network attached storage (or NAS) to hold his music and feed it to a streaming music player – you may have noticed they’re becoming rather popular! – left me a little dumbfounded: as he put it, ‘I've recently asked two respectable audio stores in my city if they will provide a NAS drive as part of a package. And in both cases the answer was the same - "No".

‘What on earth is wrong with them? This is a critical part of a digital system which needs much more expertise than a CD player, amp or speakers. It's a very poor reflection on these shops that they can't provide a complete digital upgrade package - I think they are too busy selling Sonos kit, which doesn't really suit me.’

It’s not a lone complaint: I seem to spend increasing amounts of time in email exchanges with those struggling to set up such systems, and I think I’ve told the story in these pages before of the frustrations of one major manufacturer of streaming hardware at the reluctance of its retailers to have a functioning network in their shops, let alone offer the supply and installation of the same to their customers.

That’s one of the beauties of the Linn Kiko system. for example: not only is it designed to be used by those with no knowledge of NAS drives, DLNA servers and network protocols, but it also comes complete with installation by the supplying retailer (even though it’s not exactly hard to set up should you decide to ‘go it alone’).

Whether retailers aren’t supplying and offering to install NAS drives and the like because they can’t be bothered, don’t feel confident about the technology or simply feel online pricing for such devices will always beat what they would want to charge, I think they’re missing a trick – not just to sell some extra equipment, but also sway customers over to buying streaming audio systems in the first place.

Adding a ‘digital plumbing’ service to the offering is going to instill confidence in the consumer, and as another correspondent said to me recently, ‘I know I can buy it cheaper at Amazon, but I’d gladly pay over the odds if someone set it up, connected it and showed me how to use the damn thing.’

I suspect there are many consumers out there thinking just the same, or even avoiding the whole subject of music streaming simply because they fear it’s far too complicated. And if that isn’t an opportunity for some enterprising retailers, I don’t know what is…