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It’s all part of the passion of living
everyday as much as I can because you never know what’s happening tomorrow.
MARC VINCENT PRESIDENT OF SENNHEISER CHINA
What first attracted you to Sennheiser? I’ve accumulated 18 years with Sennheiser. I had my first stint between 1980 and 1987, with the distribution of Sennheiser in Canada, where I built its professional division. I had my own company designing and building recording studios for 13 years, before going back to Sennheiser in 2000. Sennheiser is quite a special and rare company in that it is still very family orientated and has a long- term vision. It believes in evolving and innovation, and that is very important. I like to work with someone who has a vision into the future and who is contributing to advancing technology. We have a great heritage today of super technology and very high quality products so there’s a great sense of pride.
What attributes do you think helped you to secure the role at Sennheiser China? During the year of 2006, Sennheiser was looking to move directly into emerging markets and that included Russia, India, Japan and of course China. I thought China was very attractive because I had a gut feeling that China was going to boom. I came for an assessment trip in November of 2006 for four days, I went back home to Toronto, I told my wife I think it would be cool to do this, and we were here in February 2007. We sold everything we had in two months and we moved with two suitcases each. It’s a big commitment but I was ready for something new. Culturally I was ready to be thrown into something completely different and it was a very happy moment. And I’ve absolutely no regrets.
What are your career highlights? It’s about building something. When I joined Sennheiser Canada in 2000, I was VP of Sales & Marketing. I was there to structure a new team and
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build a business unit for every type of product. I segmented the team into business units and built a solid autonomous team. My work paid off and by the time I left we had more than tripled the business. To me, what’s important is the learning process. What I did at Sennheiser Canada has been extremely useful here and I’m more or less creating a similar structure but the challenge was a million times bigger. I started here in 2007 and there were four people to cover Greater China. Today, we have four offices and a little more than 55 people in the team. We have offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei, and all them are growing very fast. I feel a sense of achievement for making an infrastructure, building something for the Sennheiser family who trusted me, sent me here and gave me the opportunity to prove we could make this work.
Where would you like to see Sennheiser China in 10 years time? China by numbers, and at the speed it is growing, has the potential to be the largest market for Sennheiser. At the moment the largest market is probably the USA. If we keep the vision, keep building the right team, keep picking up the right people and having the right dealers, then we’re on the right path.
Can you sum up the market to a newcomer? You have to be very open-minded. You have to listen a lot and observe a lot. I think it’s an advantage to come here and not have a long history. Certain things are a lot more obvious for me than for Chinese people who grew up here. Very often I have discussions with our dealers and distributors, they come to me to kick around ideas because they know I have a completely different vision of where the market is, or where the market is going than what they have. The rest is mechanical, learning about products, technology, and
politics, this happens in every country.
What is the best thing about working in China? There are a lot of good things about working in China. The people - I’ve made a lot of friends - and the food. Actually, in China a lot happens around food. With food comes a lot of talk, laughs and ideas and the enjoyment of sharing something in common. It’s a big part of Chinese life. Chinese people are very hard workers, when they have a mission, they accomplish it. I really like that about the culture here.
What do you predict for the future of the Chinese audio industry? I talk to people from Europe, Canada and the US and most people have no idea what is happening here. What’s happened here has never happened anywhere else in the world. Everything here is on turbo, what’s taken 50 - 60 years to develop in America has developed in 5 - 10 years here.
How would you describe yourself in five words? I’ll just use one word; passionate. Everything in my life is about passion.
When you’re not working, what do you enjoy doing in your free time? Although I spend much of my life on the road for work, my favourite thing to do is travel. I share this with speakers as I’m an absolute music maniac. It’s all part of the passion of living everyday as much as I can because you never know what’s happening tomorrow.
What is the most valuable lesson you’ve ever learned? Listen to your gut feeling. This is not only relative to work but to every aspect of your life.
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