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Outdoor Living RETAILER PROFILE


June 2019 ertonline.co.uk


The great outdoors


D


orset-based independent hi-fi and AV retailer, Stone Audio, won the Consumer Electronics Showroom of the Year award


at last year’s ERT Awards, but it is not just the interior space that is impressive. The company boasts a large, purposely-designed patio and outdoor area that showcases a huge variety of music and speaker systems. Managing Director, Alex Scott-Simons, says there is no doubt that this space encourages customers to further explore what the business has to offer, especially in the Spring and Summer months. And with homes becoming increasingly connected, and open-plan living a more popular interior choice, more people are looking at the outside as an extension of their ground floor space.


saw a demonstration of an outdoor portable product and it sounded phenomenal. It’s called the Escape P9. It’s got an enormous battery in the bottom and a handle on the top – it’s very modern looking. You can charge it up indoors and it lasts eight hours; it’s got Bluetooth and 360-degree sound.


Q: What do your customers look for mostly? AS: Well, we get a lot of customers who’ve got multiple areas of their gardens, so instead of kitting out each area differently, this P9 is designed to move around the garden wherever necessary, it’s very practical. However, for a more permanent solution we


Q: What sort of outdoor products do you do? Alex Scott-Simons: We do all sorts really – lots of different shapes – rock style speakers, spike- in-the-ground speakers, in-wall speakers, garden uplighters and speaker cabinets for under the eaves of the house. We do planters as well, which are designed to sit on the patio or decking – the bottom third is a speaker with 360-degree sound and the remaining two thirds at the top is filled with soil and plants. These really wow people and they sound immense!


All the speakers and the associated cabling are marine-grade and very safe to use outdoors. Or we do a direct burial loudspeaker cable, which has an armoured sheath around it for protection when it’s in the ground – about a spade-length down so it’s never really touched.


Q: What’s new in this product sector? AS: When I was at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show this year, I


mostly encourage customers to go for a wired solution, which can be easily retro fitted. It’s just more reliable. We had a customer recently where they had a garage wall facing their decking, so we mounted a pair of speakers on the side of the garage and they had a Sonos amp powered in the garage, so they can sit in the garden controlling the music wirelessly from their phone.


In today’s age of integrated systems, there are so many options, but hidden wiring is the best solution - especially with an amp on the other end inside the house, thi s really helps boost the sound! A lot of customers will talk about the speakers they’ve got at home and they trail them outside with extension cables and things like that, so we try and provide alternative solutions that are much more elegant.


When you show customers these kind of solutions you can see their minds whirring at all the possibilities! For example, I always like to demonstrate how the TV can connect to the garden speakers, like if there’s a big sporting event on you can play the sound via a soundbar out to the speakers in the garden. It’s very clever and the customers love it – they really have to see this sort


of stuff to experience it and they’re normally sold at this point!


Q: How do you help your customers achieve what they want? AS: I think these days with so many properties it’s all about extending the kitchen and living spaces out into the garden. Music and entertainment outside can be so easy to achieve and speakers are simple to set up. We offer the same installation service to our customers whether they’re having something indoors or outdoors; I don’t think we’ve ever just handed a customer a set of rock speakers and the cable and sent them on their way! Fitting is all part of the service.


Q: How long have you offered these outdoor solutions? AS: Ever since we built this place we’ve had this outdoor offering with all these various speaker solutions. At this time of year especially we can have our doors open and customers flowing inside and out. It’s such a fun space to have a bit of music going to entice people outside. We find that in the Spring people really think about heading outdoors and getting something like this set up.


Q: And what about retailers that have no or little outside space? AS: I don’t think all of this stuff even needs to be outside. If you’ve got a decent size shop window and the space to do it, you can display solutions there. Maybe put down some astroturf in the window and you could quite easily replicate an outdoor area with some rock speakers, for example; simply having the products on display gets the concept across and helps customers visualise things.


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