Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems A Meeting for Hikers in Huntingdon: Interest Check

I thoroughly enjoyed the meeting, thank you Nick for making it happen. Admittedly most of the feel good factor came from mixing with like minded sensible people who were passionate about Meridian and had extensive knowledge about the M product range, be it old or new.

When the meeting was originally proposed, perhaps we were naïve with our expectations on what might be achieved if M themselves were to participate. To their credit M did appear and I am very thankful for this. A lot of other similarly sized companies would likely have chickened out. Perhaps in recognition of this, there was a sense within the room that we shouldn’t put the boot in, by asking embarrassing questions. Nick had also set the scene right at the start that we shouldn’t expect any product announcements, secrets etc.

It is fair to say that the HH’s present were probably not your typical NEW M user. For one thing I could see that (of those who have declared it on the forum), the average number of different M products owned by each member was a staggeringly high SEVEN. This reflects the fact that we are all exceptionally loyal to the M brand for many years. Most of us still have a fair amount of legacy equipment that we cannot bear to sell and often re-distrubute in other rooms around the house. However we still on average each owned FOUR current day M products and 50% of us own the not in-expensive SE speakers.

At the meeting I had wondered whether M had a mission statement. Well, John B’s first slide showed exactly that (at least I think it was, as I couldn’t find it on their web site?). I find these statements useful because are they are unambiguous and often will allow both staff and customers alike to understand what the company is really about, what is important and what is not – i.e. where their focus resides.

Not unusually for a company that has a technical bias, the M mission statement was largely about technical expertise and audio quality. To be fair that’s why we probably all purchased M equipment in the first instance. We didn’t buy because we thought we would get great customer support, although we may well have felt we are owed it because we paid out top dollar.

As I recall, the mission statement mentioned the word ‘customer’ pretty much in isolation, almost added because someone felt any mission statement worth it’s salt had to include the ‘C’ word. Consequently my take was that customer support is probably not high up in the list of things M aspire to. I personally don’t have a problem with this, my main interest is to see new quality product releases. In that regard, despite the frequent moaning on this forum, I truly believe M are punching above their weight with the frequency of new product releases. Forget the fact that many releases run late, in to-day’s modern world where software is king, lateness is an unfortunate fact of life.

I felt John B let himself down trying make such a big thing about M having 110 ‘dealers’ in the UK. From the M side of the fence it is indeed great that there might be over 100 UK companies out there capable of selling their equipment. We all knew however that the vast majority of that number comprised CI type companies. I would imagine that a mere handful of the CI’s in particular would have any knowledge whatsoever about configuring an 861 or G95, running room correction etc. Many of the meeting participants probably own more M equipment than some of these companies have actually themselves sold.

Despite our misgivings about the true size of ‘dealership’ network, the fact is that in the UK we are very fortunate to even have multiple dealers. Many countries have just one dealer and in some cases there might just be a dealer covering a whole region.

In today’s modern world, unless you are a large multi-national, it is exceptionally difficult to get a particular brand name into the public domain. When we tell friends we have ‘M’ equipment, the norm is that they openly admit they have never heard the name Meridian. The real worldly M knowledge largely resides with users like ourselves and a few dealers. As others have suggested, it’s a shame there can’t be some way of harnessing that knowledge and allowing NEW M users to access it. For example it would be great if M on their own website were brave enough to promote or make reference to the forum, where 'a wealth of technical information could be obtained'. There might be an understandable reluctance to do so, because it could potentially lose ‘M’ sales (?) However M could wait until the point when users register their equipment online, to make them aware of the forum. Dealers could likewise also be encouraged to mention the forum after they have finished installation – i.e. when the M sale has safely been concluded. Neither of these two strategies would cost anything, and for the new users could be a big positive.

For me the really big positive that came out of M’s presence at Huntingdon was that I feel much happier that M now have a more solid financial base. We all knew that they have openly been targeting CI's, who might well selling in droves to footballers etc. and for whom money is no object. Although that might not appear benefit mere mortal users like ourselves, it does have the potential to strengthen M’s longevity as a company, so that surely is a big plus. ‘M’s not inconsiderable investment in MQA could easily have killed the company.

I have been interested in all the discussion around boxes like the 218 that ‘could look better’. That box retails at £750. If you take away the dealers margin, shipping costs and VAT, you are perhaps looking an income to M of less than £450 per unit. Imho it would be financial suicide these days to be focused on making such boxes ‘look good’, probably paying extra tens of thousands of pounds that would have to be amortised over very small volume sales. Yesterday's M might well have spent that money without questioning it. But to-day's M under John B clearly attributes more importance to profitability and I for one think that is a good thing.