SIX BRANDS
Alpine, ARC Audio, CompuStar, German Maestro, JL Audio, Wet Sounds Extreme Audio owner Mike Bartells is
proud of the long-term relationships he has developed with his key vendors in the past decade and a half. Te business is an Alpine Flagship retailer that has supported the full line for eight years. It has sold Wet Sounds for six years and JL Audio for four, and last year it brought in ARC Audio and German Maestro due to their distribution policies and product quality. In addition, CompuStar has been Extreme Audio’s main remote start line for the past four years. “I feel we have a great group of reps,” said Bartells. “Te vast majority of the vendors we deal with show up in force to events like KnowledgeFest. Tey are all there, willing and wanting to hear the good, the bad and the ugly. Tey are just as interested in what they can do better as we are.”
He added that all of the shop’s ven-
dors are very accessible, and they are on a first-name basis with him and his staff, so it usually takes just one call or e-mail to get things done. Bartells pinpointed a couple of new
products he and his guys consider hot. “Alpine’s new 9-inch in-dash navigation is definitely something we’re looking forward to,” he said. “ARC Audio’s new line of XDi amplifiers is starting to trickle in, and looks very promising.”
» Openly displaying local and national press that the store has been featured in draws the attention of its customers, which helps boost sales.
he said. “It was a complete transformation … something much more up to the dealer- ship level cosmetically. We’re downright proud to walk someone back to the garage … and we’ve had quite the reaction from customers.” The remodel took nearly two months because they did it themselves—it was mainly
“We need customers to have
faith in us to set them up with what they need so they want to come back to us over and over … We don’t want it to be a transaction—we want it to be a relationship.”
— Mike Bartells, owner of Extreme Audio
Bartells and his teenage son. Bartells recalled it was “extremely busy” for weeks because the technicians had to keep working on cars while the two of them were sand- ing floors, doing prep work and moving everything around. “It was quite the stressful time because it was also the exact same time we had to turn in Retailer of the Year stuff. I was desperately trying to get the garage done so I could show what it was going to look like instead of having to describe what it was going to look like,” he said.
Continuous Improvement Bares Steady Rewards Despite the ME award and rave reviews on his remodel, Bartells emphasized Extreme Audio will never be perfect, so they will never stop trying to improve them- selves and their business. From the newly remade showroom to the install bays, he said, they are proud of how they represent themselves and their partner manufactur- ers. They also have a good-sized wood shop and fabrication area with ventilation to the outside of the building as well as a vacuum system. “With the showroom and garage having been overhauled recently, the fab room is
a likely next step,” he said. “We’ve always had the mentality of wanting to be better in one way, shape or form.”
48 Mobile Electronics May 2014
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