Dealer Spotlight: Hifi Centre
US speaker manufacturer, Wilson Audio Specialties, recently appointed Vancouver’s Hifi Centre as one of their dealers. They used this occassion to host the official Canadian launch of the latest iteration of their entry-level speaker, the Sophia 3.
After Wilson Audio’s Peter McGrath had completed his presentation, I took the opportunity to have a conversation with the Hifi Centre’s General Manager, Igor Kivritsky.
What’s your background? Tell us a bit about yourself.
My family came to Canada in 1980 from the Ukraine, and my father, who was an engineer by trade, needed a job. He had a wife and a small me to feed, so he went out looking for a job and he found himself one in a stereo store. Stereo was a hobby for him when he was growing up in the old country, and so he figured, “Well, my English is not yet great, I don’t know much about this country, but I do know a thing or two about stereos, so that’s a good place to find a job”. So he went looking, got hired, and realised that he liked it, and worked his way up at various places. He opened up Hifi Centre in 1984.
In 1984 I was 12, so I started hanging out at the store on weekends: you know, I wanted to hang out with my dad. I enjoyed music very much and started to become interested in the gear and how everything works, and why this is better than that and so on. Literally throughout my teens I would spend evenings sometimes when we were open late and many weekends at the store just absorbing what was here, and then after high school I kinda tried a few various jobs, had a few crazy ideas that didn’t really pan out, and then one day Alex and I had a conversation and he said, “Well son, if you want it, this is what’s available to you. This is what you have to do, this is what you have to learn. It’s not overly complicated. It’s a fun business, it can provide a nice lifestyle for you and the family you’ll have someday, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know”. That was in 1991 I think, so I said, “Sounds like a good plan”, and I’ve been here ever since.
Cool, and presumably this is where you got your love of hifi from as well?
Yeah, totally.
Has the Centre always been at its current location?
Yep, we’ve always had this store. We tried opening other satellite locations which had a medium level of success, but we wound up closing them after a few years because they weren’t really adding much to the bottom line. Yes, we could have kept them open for the sake of being open, but really, at the end of the day, what we’re really about is quality and not quantity. The other locations could add to the quantity but not really to the quality, so we decided to shut them down. This store has always been here, since day one.
How important is it to have a great relationship with the manufacturers of the products you represent?
It is monumentally important. I can’t stress enough how important it is. It’s something that we’re very proud of, to have very solid relationships with vendors, some of which we’ve been dealing with since the 1980s. It’s very important, especially when you deal with high-end audio and a high-end clientele, because often there are circumstances, there are requests, and there are needs. When you’re charging this type of money, when you’re offering this type of performance, and this type of service, you need a vendor and a manufacturer who can back you up. For example, a client who has bought a new pair of speakers has a driver failure after a few months. They’re not expecting overnight service, but they would certainly be very upset if they had to wait four to six weeks to get a spare part. Because of our relationships with our vendors, we can often have spare parts delivered within 48 hours. So when you have that level of support, you can—with confidence—go to a perspective client and say, “When you buy a high-end system at Hifi Centre, it’s not just a bunch of boxes we’re going to deliver. It is a very high level of support”. We make that promise because that’s what we feel is right, and it’s very important to have our manufacturer partners be able to back us up with a similar level of service as well.
Do you sell used gear in addition to new, and if so, roughly what percentage of your business comes from buyers of used gear?
We do sell used gear, but it’s a very, very small percentage. We will occasionally take a trade in if it’s a good one, if someone has a piece of gear that we can sell reasonably quick. I know some stores have a huge used section and that’s a massive part of their business, but it’s not for us. We do have a small room which has a little bit of used equipment in there.
Would you say that most of your used gear is from trade ins, or would you accept gear from someone who isn’t necessarily looking to upgrade?
No, it’s only for trade ins; it’s a service that we reserve only for our clients.
How has the global economic slowdown affected your business? Are more people buying used gear than before?
I don’t think more people are buying used. Everyone’s slowed down. Everything over the past year and a half or so, the entire world basically put the brakes on. It didn’t matter what business you were in, there was pain to be had, because everything just trickles down. Take a guy who owns a restaurant: if less customers are going to his place to eat then he has less spare cash to spend in my store, for example, and consequently I’m spending less money with someone else. It’s a big domino effect that affected everyone. I don’t think people necessarily gravitated to the used market just to buy something cheaper, I think people slowed down a lot of their purchases in general, but we’re noticing a lot of them come back.
We weren’t expecting that all of a sudden someone would just turn the tap off and turn it back on with the same amount of pressure, but we’re definitely seeing a lot of jobs that were put on hold last year are starting up again, and people who were contemplating buying some high-end gear but were like, “Oh gee, I’m not sure what my stocks’ll do” or “I don’t know what will happen”, we see them coming through the doors and buying the thing that they wanted.
What are the benefits of buying from the Hifi Centre?
Well, to begin with, we’ve put together an unbeatable mix of brands. If you take a look at the audio industry right now, and you look at who are the A list brands, pretty well all of them are here. We have a 10,000 square foot facility, with a ton of stuff on display. This gives us the ability to do a proper demonstration and gives clients the opportunity to compare products if they like.
Another advantage is the level of experience of our staff. A lot of the guys here have 20 to 30 years experience in the business, so they’ve been around the block and seen everything. Also, the level of service that we provide: without our customers, we have no business, so it is very important for us to make sure that people are taken care of properly. We try and fix any issues right away. Anything we can’t fix ourselves we lean heavily on our vendor partners to make sure that our customers are taken care of quickly. We have an excellent support staff in the form of installers, programmers, and service people that can take care of issues very well.
The best way I can sum it up is this: the thing that we try to do is to make sure that the client has an excellent experience, and that’s right from when they walk in the door to being able to give them a good demo, delivery and set up of their system, and after sales service. That whole experience is very important to us, and any time we look at what can we improve or what didn’t we do right, how can we better ourselves, the bottom line is always “How does that affect the customer experience?”.
You mentioned some of the brands that you represent. Can you name some others?
Ahh, I can tell you all of them! It’s actually not that many. For electronics we have Naim, Linn, McIntosh, Classé, Rotel, and Denon. For speakers, we have B&W, Wilson, Totem, Fidelity Acoustics, and of course Linn and Naim have their speakers. I think that’s it from an audio standpoint. For video, we have Sharp TVs, Digital Projection projectors, and Stewart screens. And then of course there’s the more specialised product, like we sell the Sooloos media storage system, which is unique. Yeah, I think that’s about it. Oh, I forgot Transparent cable! Very important! [Laughs]
What turntable brands do you sell?
We represent Linn and Rega.
How would you describe your average customer, and roughly what proportion of your customers are new (as opposed to repeat business)?
We have a lot of repeat business. When a client becomes a fan of what we do, a fan of hifi, they’re sort of hooked, and the good thing is that the brands that we offer have a very good upgrade path, and we work with our clients to make it easy for them to upgrade. We don’t really track every single customer and ask them how they found out about the store. I think if we ran it more as a traditional business we might sell a few more boxes in the short term, but in the long term I don’t think it would work out well for us. Because we like this industry so much and we’re so passionate about music and creating great sound for our clients, we sometimes let the metrics of business slip by the wayside, so I don’t have any hard data on new customers vs repeat. I do know that I know a lot of faces when they come in the door, we know them by their first name, and that’s common. In a day, if 20 people walk through the door, we’ll know who eight to ten of them are.
Roughly what proportion of your clients have analogue sources, and how has that trend changed over the past few years?
With analogue sources, I would say there’s been a trend up. It’s still a niche but there are still quite a few dedicated clients who have large record collections and buy some very well equipped turntables. Over the course of a year we’d sell a number of fully loaded LP12s at over $20,000 and a rather large quantity of lesser priced decks. I don’t have a number, however we do sell a surprising quantity of turntables. Compared to what it was in the 1980s, of course it’s not a lot, but we’re very happy with our analogue business.
Do you host any after-hours events, and if so, what impact do they have on your business, especially from new customers?
We don’t do them religiously every year or every two years. We sorta do it when we feel like it. We did one two years ago this coming November, it was a huge one and had about 500 people show up. We had great catering here, a lot of our manufacturers brought things that we might not normally have on display or things that were new. We’ve done this a few times over the years with great success. We do quite a large marketing push on the radio, in print, and on the web obviously, and a lot of people bring their friends. We don’t do any sales those nights, but it introduces a lot of people to the store, and it gives old customers an excuse to come back and see all the new things we have, so I think it’s very good for business.
Also, the smaller events are fantatsic. In fact, they’re actually better for business than the big events. The big events become one big party but the small events are when you get down to the nuts and bolts of really interacting with the equipment and the presenter, who isn’t limited to a 20 minute presentation: he’s there for two or three hours. So when people come to the small event, again it comes down to quality over quantity. They see fewer things, but they get to spend more time with the presenter and the components.
How do you decide whether to take on a new line?
It doesn’t happen very often, for us. We move very slowly, and there are very few lines that we want to begin with. Right now, for example, if you said, “Are there any brands out there that you don’t have today that you would really, really love to have?”, the answer would be no. We’re in a unique position in Vancouver where there aren’t any brands that we can’t have, whereas a number of years ago the landscape in the city was very different. There were more good quality high-end dealers and brands were tied up. You could stand on your head if you wanted certain brands, but you couldn’t have them. Now, other dealers can stand on their heads and they won’t get the brands that we have.
If we are going to bring on a brand, there’s a lot of discussion done in the store. If it’s a brand that we don’t know enough about we definitely take the time to learn as much as possible about it. We have samples sent to us, and we usually do a few sessions with the factory representative. Sometimes we even go down to the factory. We became a Wilson Audio dealer this year, but before becoming a dealer we went down to the factory and visited with them and were very impressed with what we saw.
In fact, Wilson Audio is a good example of our process. Taking on Wilson Audio was a decision that was about a year in the making, even though they’re one of the best brands in the business. It took a long time because of what we wanted to do, and it has worked out exactly as we had hoped. When we first started talking with the Wilson folks, I said, “If we bring on your brand, I don’t want to bring it on for the sake of selling a couple of boxes a year, I want to do so to make a power house brand in the store”. And that’s exactly what’s happened. We knew how we were going to do it, we planned it, we were prepared for it with the right demonstration products, we prepared rooms for it, we had proper training with the staff, and as a result we’ve had tremendous success. If we hadn’t done that we would probably have one third of the success we have right now.
What’s the best demo session you can remember? And the worst?
Oh dear! How am I gonna remember that? [Laughs] OK, I can remember my best one was many, many years ago. There was a lady who was referred by a colleague to buy a stereo. First I took her for a tour of the store and said that we were capable of doing everything from a very good modest system up to a system that costs more than the average Canadian home, so we need to figure out where we’re going to be because if I demonstrate to you everything we have in the store, you’ll be here for two weeks. So we discussed a comfort zone and found a speaker at $3,000 which seemed to make a lot of sense. They were the right product for her, based on the size of room that she had, the type of music she liked, and the budget that fit into the comfort zone. I took her into a room and in it was a speaker from the same manufacturer which cost $15,000. I was playing her the $3,000 model and she said, “Can you hook up those other ones for me?” and I said no. She said, “What do you mean no?!”. I said, “Well, if I do, you’re going to buy them”. She said, “No, what are you talking about?”. I said, “No, seriously. You gave me a comfort zone and these speakers here fit into that comfort zone. These other speakers eclipse your entire budget for the system, but if I play them you’re going to buy them”. She said, “Oh come on, humour me”, so I played them and of course she got this huge grin on her face and I said, “You’re getting these ones, aren’t you?” and she’s like, “Yep!”.
The worst demos are those that you do and fail to check before demonstrating to your clients. Sometimes you don’t have time, it’s been a busy day, or another person has done a demo and forgot to put something back. You talk about a product, you’re excited about it, you hit play on the CD player, and nothing happens or something comes out that isn’t what you intended. Things like that happen, they’re accidental, we can fix it, it’s not a big deal. It’s definitely something we try to avoid by doing checks in the rooms. One thing I often do before a demo is take the client upstairs and make them a cappuccino and say “Give me three minutes, I’ve just got to get this setup” in order to do a proper demo.
As a specialist audio dealer, you presumably have access to pretty much whatever gear you want. What’s currently in your home system?
Well, I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t own any permanent speakers in my hifi system right now, I’m in between, I’m literally shopping. The preamp and mono amps are from the top range of a brand we used to sell many years ago, YBA. My source is a Naim DAC connected to an iMac wirelessly through an Airport Express. The Airport Express costs $99 but the cable that hooks it up to the DAC costs $1,000.
I haven’t decided whether the speakers will be Wilson Sashas or B&W 800s. My wife is contemplating which ones she likes the looks of better! [Laughs] One thing I will say is that I cannot believe how fortunate I am with respect to my wife and speakers. I had previously asked her about some speakers I was considering. A pair of really nice compact, beautiful speakers, she said to me, “Those puny things? Forget it; let’s get something serious!”. So she’s the driving force behind the large speakers we usually have in our house. In my AV room, I have a Vienna Acoustics system: large speakers, she loves it.
How much time to you get to spend listening to music at home, and what are your favourite records?
The stereo’s always on when we’re at home, but funnily enough, I’m a bit of a hypocrite as in I adore Internet radio! Here I am, preaching the virtues of great sound, and I have this set of amazing electronics, and I’m gonna buy a pair of great speakers to go with it, but I’m a huge sucker for Internet radio. That’s because I get a chance to hear music that I would never think of buying and I get a kick out of it.
I’m into electronic music, so no particular artist, it’s more sort of genre based: a lot of ambient, house, tech house, etc., music that’s not normally associated with a good hifi system. I don’t own a lot of jazz records, and Earl, whom you met here, always gives me a hard time about it, claiming I don’t listen to real music, but any music to me is music: if you like it, that’s great.
So as far as the stereo system is concerned, it’s always on in the house playing something. If we’re making dinner, or hanging out, doing what have you, either iTunes is on random or I’m on an Internet radio station. All kidding aside, I do listen seriously once in a while and what I’m able to do—through the use of proper equipment—is make these lower quality sources sound really, really good. One thing I will not tolerate is bad sound, so I couldn’t ever have a little boom box or something just making noise. I do like a good, big, full sound.
I have a lot of clients who are in exactly the same position that I am. In fact I am working with clients who bought a pair of Wilson Sashas and they’re exactly the same as us. They do not sit there and listen seriously, but they always have their stereo on when they’re doing things throughout their house, and they have a huge, eclectic music collection. Every single time I’ve been to their house I don’t recall a moment when there wasn’t music playing.
In my house it’s the same thing: it’ll be a rare moment when you walk in and you don’t hear the music playing, and it’s usually on at a fairly decent level. I’m not a believer in having ceiling speakers throughout your house. I figure just turn the volume knob from two to four on your big hifi, and there’s distributed audio!
Presumably, you’ve become friends with many of your clients over the years?
Yes, definitely!
What’s next for the Hifi Centre?
Well, we’ve established ourselves as the hifi shop in Vancouver and we’re going to continue to solidify that. What I always say to people whenever I’m asked are you going to do this or are you going to do that is this: the sign on the door says “Hifi Centre”, and that stands for something. So anything that we do, I’m going to see how that will reflect the name of the company. We’re not going to sell clock radios, we’re not going to sell entry level, cheap boom boxes, because they’re not high fidelity. Everything that we do, whether it be a compact music system, a large hifi, or a surround theatre system, it has to perform because high fidelity is an approach that describes everything that we do. I don’t know what this industry is going to make five or ten years from now but I do know that we’re still going to be listening to music, and I know there are going to be people who enjoy listening to music, we’re still going to enjoy music reproduced well by a good system, and that Hifi Centre will be here to provide the right products and services for our clients. At the end of the day, the sign on the door says it all.
Contact Information
Hifi Centre
578 Seymour Street
Vancouver
BC V6B 3J6
(604) 688-5502
www.hificentre.com