Shopfloor PROFILE: WHO?


Q: What was it like to win? Alex Scott-Simons: It’s been fantastic because in this sector of the industry there aren’t that many awards to receive so it was great to get that recognition for the business. My staff aside, our showroom is one of our greatest assets here and every time a customer walks through the door we always get a ‘wow’. I’ve always struggled to truly reflect the premises that we have here in our marketing, but winning this award really helps to showcase that we’re so passionate at what we do. It was great to get such an endorsement from such a big industry event. We’ve got the award itself on


permanent display in the showroom and we are looking to sign-write our vehicles with the award logos. Wherever possible we try to shout out about it. Having received the winner article


in ERT I thought it a shame that it was only trade facing and our customers would never get to read about it so I tried to make it more outward facing by placing it on all out social media channels. It was great to get so much recognition and comments from our customers.


Q: What is it about your showroom that you think stands out? AS: Inside, you walk into this big atrium space which has multiple clearly thought out systems on demonstration at any one time. Everything must be connected, sounding great and ready to go at the touch of a button, because you never know who’s going to walk through the door and you’ve only got one opportunity to make a good impression and most importantly an amazing sound. If the music system


isn’t setup and ready to go, it could be a missed opportunity. The basics! Our main showroom area is


full of systems that are designed to inspire, thought provoke and stimulate customers as to what they could do in their own homes. In addition to this we have dedicated cinema areas a high-end cinema room and music demonstration rooms. It’s very different to what you see in other retail shops, but the design of our building is very different too and we showcase an awful lot of products.


February 2 Live!


time. For our customers I think that’s important and it’s reflective of what they expect in their own homes.


Q: What’s the history of your store here? AS: I still feel that I’m a fairly new retailer compared to a lot of established businesses in this industry. We’ve been going for nearly 20 years but it really doesn’t feel that long! The business started online from my bedroom when I finished university, and I organically grew things from there.


home. Do you have ceiling tiles in your living room? Instead we chose to try to imitate a high-end environment that’s similar to the interior of someone’s home, rather than just the interior of a shop.


Q: And what’s next? AS: We’re just in the process of building a new high-end music demo room. Our current main listening room is on the first floor, which was challenging because the product that we’re now selling is getting bigger and heavier, so with


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Our main showroom area is full of systems that are designed to inspire and give people ideas as to what they could do in their own homes, we have cinema rooms and demo rooms.


We have always tried to give


people an experience here and everyone now talks about retail experience. We have a lovely garden here too, and at this time of year it’s a popular seller as more people are heading outside and thinking about outdoor music systems. When you can show a customer a TV or a turntable playing on a system indoors but then group it to the rock speakers in the garden, it’s impressive and not something they’ve normally seen before. They tend to turn around and say ‘I want that in my home’. A lot of what we’ve done here


is embedded in the fabric of the building, even the skirting around the inside hides all the unsightly power sockets and allows cabling to be concealed and exit cleanly so everything looks at its best all the


There was blood, sweat and tears


getting this new showroom to where it is now; we spent £1.5 million on it, which was crippling at the time and it was a huge undertaking. And this was in 2008 when everything went south! But I was determined not to go backwards. Everyone told me I was mad, but I kept moving forward, I had invested too much to allow anything else! It was hard work setting everything up but I’m so pleased we got there in the end.


Q: What were your key decisions when designing and opening the showroom? AS: When we built the property, I was determined that I didn’t want suspended ceiling tiles like you see in most other shops as despite their practicality, they sound terrible and are not reflective of a customer’s


the new room being on the ground floor it’s a lot easier for us to wheel in the larger speakers straight from our warehouse. We’re super proud of the space


we have created here and are continuously trying to keep the showroom looking at its best for our customers. We have a mind-blowing world-class cinema room, and that’s been increasingly popular and a big part of the solutions we can offer here. 4K Projection and ATMOS content


is really exciting customers at the moment, and we’ve fine-tuned our cinema room in recent months to bring the technology bang up-to- date. We can build cinema systems in a customer’s home from as little as £10k. The room reinforces what we do, because people walk in and just go ‘wow’.


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