Tivoli to Launch Fashion Website Offering Cabinet Housings as Accessories
Tivoli Audio turned to fashion and furniture stores as a way to sell its premium radio products, CEO Tom DeVesto said Wednesday at a news conference in New York where the company launched a line of fashion cabinets and a portable music system. The fashion cabinets are for the Albergo wireless music systems that Tivoli had developed for the hospitality market and adapted last year for the home.
On whether the move to a heavily fashion-based product signals an end to an innovation path in radio, DeVesto said: “There won’t be many advances in FM radio going forward,” and HD Radio has been an “uphill battle.” Tivoli has an HD Radio that’s ready to go if the market ever heats up stateside, “but we haven’t had much of a call for them,” DeVesto said. “We like it, and it can add a lot to the listening experience, but in the U.S., it’s a long way away from acceptance,” he said.
In Europe, by contrast, digital radio offers content that users can’t get any other way, making it a compelling purchase option, DeVesto said. Tivoli’s digital radio in Europe is a “very big seller.” He believes HD Radio will gain traction in the U.S. at some point for economic reasons, he said. “It’s unlikely that radio will be the last analog transmission on earth” because the bandwidth it occupies is too valuable, he said. “Sooner or later it will be more accepted here,” he said. Tivoli does 30 percent of its business in the U.S., he said.
Tivoli announced a customized radio fashion cabinet based for the Albergo system and has built a website set to launch this month with 16 cabinet styles that can be wrapped around the radio to “dress it up,” DeVesto said. The cabinets are made at a northern Italy furniture company that developed techniques to bond fabrics to medium-density fiberboard, DeVesto said. The custom cabinets, priced $60-$100, vary by color, texture and material, he said, and Tivoli hopes to have 200 versions on the website by Christmas. Dealers selling the radios will get a commission on the cabinets after consumers plug in a code given at time of purchase, he said. The company is looking to offer more expensive engraved cabinets in the future, he said.
Tivoli also launched a portable music system, Music System Three ($299), a Bluetooth-based stereo radio that can run for 20 hours on a full charge and streams music from a Bluetooth-enabled source. The radio has an auxiliary input, a stereo headphone output, volume knob and dual alarms, the company said. On whether Tivoli will introduce a radio with Pandora or Spotify in the future, DeVesto said it’s not necessary with the streaming capability of smartphones. The company also isn’t planning to develop a multiroom music system because “we already have one,” DeVesto said, noting that the radios are lightweight enough to carry from room to room and require no setup.
Lamenting the decline in specialty audio stores, DeVesto told us changes in retailing have led the company to extend distribution to stores including Amazon, CB2, Rooms to Go and boutique furniture stores. “There are no [audio] dealers left,” he said, an ironic statement from the man who began CE e-commerce via Cambridge SoundWorks a number of years ago.
Tivoli closed its Natick, Massachusetts, company store, DeVesto said, citing competition from Microsoft, which wanted Tivoli’s location “one door down from the Apple store.” Tivoli was “outbid for our own space,” he said.
Tivoli is looking to develop an app to control its radios -- for setting an alarm or volume control, for example -- and most Tivoli radios are now Bluetooth-enabled for music streaming, DeVesto said. Meantime, the portable radio comes with a remote control. Currently, Tivoli offers a content-based app for iOS and Android devices that links consumers to 100 of the most popular Internet radio stations worldwide that Tivoli has organized into 10 genres. DeVesto said 85,000 users have downloaded the app.