B&W to Boost Luxury-Car Market Efforts, Seeks ‘Serious Customer’

"The biggest challenge to premium consumer products is the survival of the brick and mortar retail channel,” Joe Atkins, chairman of Bowers & Wilkins Group, told Consumer Electronics Daily at the New York stop on the Maserati Quattroporte Seven Notes World Tour Thursday. Premium retail locations provide a “wonderful sales experience if done correctly,” Atkins said.

B&W executives were on hand to demo the 15-speaker Bowers & Wilkins speaker system offered as a $5,100 option on the sixth-generation $102,500 Quattroporte S Q4 and $140,500 Quattroporte GTS. At the event at an industrial showcase space in New York’s West Village, B&W also showed its 805 Maserati Edition of the company’s 805 Diamond series loudspeaker. The Maserati-branded version incorporates elements of the “luxurious interior of a Maserati car” including bird’s eye maple wood veneer and black Maserati leather, B&W said. Later in the year, B&W will bow the P5 Maserati Edition headphones. Prices haven’t been set for the speakers or the headphones, which will be sold through “select” distribution later this year.

That’s the kind of distribution the company has relied on throughout the years for its premium loudspeaker line, but as e-commerce and consumer tastes for digital music have changed, the number of specialty audio dealers has shrunk, leading B&W to explore broader options for retail. Those include Best Buy’s Magnolia Design Centers and more recently, Chicago-area Abt Electronics. Several dealers and Azione Unlimited President Richard Glikes took exception to the decision to sell through Abt in a heated Facebook debate (CED May 6 p3), viewing the move as a betrayal of specialty AV dealers. At the time, Doug Henderson, president of Bowers & Wilkins North America, said “B&W doesn’t make distribution decisions ‘casually’ or in a way that risks its brand reputation.” In the information age, he said, “people want to buy the right products and the old model of selling only ‘exclusive’ brands is over,” he said. Henderson noted that Abt would not be selling B&W speakers through its price-focused online store.

Atkins told us Thursday that the biggest challenge to the B&W model is the changing shopping approach of consumers in the Internet era. AV specialty dealers -- whether it’s one store in Baltimore or a nationwide chain like Magnolia -- have to “find a way to stop people from coming into stores and then buying products online,” he said. On how dealers can do that, he said, “through service.” Dealers have to “restructure their business model and recognize that the Internet is a powerful presence in the way people shop,” he said. “The world has changed dramatically in the last 10 years and successful businesses will have to learn to adapt or go out of business,” he said.

The luxury automotive market is an area where B&W can further leverage its premium brand with “the serious customer,” Atkins said. The deal with Maserati, announced late last year, is B&W’s first relationship with a car maker. It’s the type of partnership B&W hopes to expand on in the luxury vehicle market, which Atkins called “an efficient way to build brand awareness with customers.” B&W will continue to “invest heavily” in the car market and will announce additional partnerships over the next few months, he said.

B&W snatched the speaker deal from Bose, which previously supplied speakers for Maserati. The partnership officially runs for a three-year cycle but Danny Haikin, director of brand management for Bowers & Wilkins, expects the partnership to extend further. The electronics are supplied by Harman, which also builds the speakers for B&W, Haikin said. Haikin cited the cost advantages of having the largest automotive speaker company in the world manufacture the speakers to B&W’s design specs that were three years in the making. The 15-speaker system is configured in two-channel stereo “finely tuned” to each of four listening positions in the car, Haikin said, and passengers can choose one of three listening modes: on stage, audience or stereo. Haikin demoed the 15-speaker system using the Beatles’ “Mother Nature’s Son,” noting the song was mixed at Abbey Road Studios using, of course, B&W speakers.