Crutchfield Opens ‘Lab’ Store to Test Retail Concepts

Crutchfield opened a sub-10,000-square-foot “lab” store in Charlottesville, Va., to be a test bed for future retail concepts that include allowing customers to try out speaker systems based on the listening environment, Rick Souder, executive vice president of merchandising, told us.

Whether the “lab” will be a blueprint for future Crutchfield locations hasn’t been determined and for the time being it will be used to test concepts with local customers, Souder said. In addition to its online business, Crutchfield has 14,000- and 20,000-square-foot retail stores in Charlottesville and Harrisonburg, Va. Crutchfield opened the new facility (CED May 7 p2) earlier this year and will invite customers to it this fall, Souder said. Crutchfield carries a range of speakers including from Bose, Boston Acoustics, Definitive Technology, Polk, Klipsch and others. In addition to the home, Crutchfield customers also could compare car speakers, Souder said.

The new location is “just to get feed back from customers on the concept as far as what works and what doesn’t,” Souder said. “It’s a proof of concept and we have to see if it’s believable for customers, matters to them and how we talk to them about it."

While the smaller format would be “relatively easy to roll out, we're a long way from that,” Souder said. “The thought would be if it works, it would be a good way to open retail stores because they wouldn’t take up much space."

The format is based on Crutchfield founder Bill Crutchfield’s belief that 20,000 to 30,000-square-foot CE stores “aren’t a viable retail format long term” something “a lot of people are grappling with as we speak,” Souder said. “This would be a way to get an even better listening experience in front of people with much less investment,” he said.

The concept also would enable customers to test drive speakers in their homes under Crutchfield’s 30-day trial program, Souder said. Customers would have 30 days to “audition” in their homes the speakers they sampled in the store, he said. If customers didn’t like the speakers after trying them out, they would “already know what this other pair of speakers sounds like so we could switch them out,” he said.

TVs initially won’t be part of the lab store’s focus, Souder said. Sets would be used to show movies, but “we haven’t really done anything with televisions yet,” he said. “It’s mainly a sound experience at this point,” Souder said. But long term, “the goal would be to make it a credible video store” as well, he said. - Mark Seavy