Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Will Meridian survive?

George

I agree to a point. Meridian need to find new customers to make the money that their investors are expecting. By moving in with big cash investors, Meridian have sealed their fate, and there is now an expectation of growth and better profit margins. It may be that they had no choice to survive, I don't know.

I'm not been disrespectful to the guys on here, but they are very demanding with little return. From a loyalty point of view great, but from a profit point of view, its not so good. There is no way that this forums members will maintain Meridian through these times. Maybe in years gone by when Meridian were a small cottage industry, then this type of loyalty was very important to them. But after the HH day I attended, their new marketing guy was talking in ways that maybe a TV manufacturer would, everyone wants a TV!
Meridian are not a run of the mill consumer product and will never be, and any attempt to get into that market with the F80 was a little short sighted in my opinion.
The F80 needs to sell by the hundreds of thousands to satisfy investors and Meridian have never sold products like that.
To think that they could was a joke, �1500 for a CD, radio which may be fantastic is just too much money. Maybe in the false market that has just burst, but not now.
Bankers and stock brokers with too much money may have purchased custom fit systems, but Meridian knew they could not survive on that alone if they wanted to expand. And I think it is that expansion that will hurt them now.
I remember walking out of the HH day and thinking that this is not the Meridian that I wanted any more.
Having spoken to many friends about the F80, none of them would buy one.
�500 or even �750 maybe, but at double that not one would buy it. They all agreed it sounded good, but everyone makes sacrifices in life, excepting less than what they would really want in the interests of value.
This is Meridian's problem, before they were hard core, cutting edge, Worlds best, whilst now they are behind the game in what matters to the real enthusiast, and too expensive to the Joe Soap.

You can not have your cake and eat it no matter what you new marketing genius tells you!

It's hard to say without seeing the individual product margins, but intuitively you'd have to think that retrenchment is coming and that it should be in this approximate order:

1. Drop the video. All of it. It's a distraction, the specs change too fast, and there are too many other people who do it better and cheaper.

2. Do one radio alarm and do it for less. Make an F81 which includes the iPod interface, scrap all the other small goods (Dunhill, F80, i80) and get it out for $999 retail but with the regular margin. Sell it direct. Sell it at Costco. Anything to get the volumes up. We're entering a period where selling 50 F81's will be way easier than selling a pair of DSP 8k.

3. No R+D into spinners. Disc spinnners are dead. (And yes I know about the catalogue but you can still get stuff on vinyl and we're not making a turntable any more).

4. R+D a digital streamer. Offer a version built in to a speaker. Stand out from the crowd in the only product segment with increasing volume growth.

5. Try and get the speaker retail down a little bit. Their fixed costs (tooling etc) are all done - reduce the price and shift some more units.

6. More people refurb in a downturn than move house, so counter-intuitively there may be more money in the installs business than you would expect.

Its all about perspective.

I was one of the first to buy a F80. I was not working at the time that I heard it at HH show, but when I got my first salary in a temp job, it went on an F80.

So far its cost me less than what a daily Starbucks and a newspaper would have. Yet I will get enjoyment daily from it and will do so for many years to come. And unlike alternatives, I can quite happily listen to it for hours on end - I helped a fellow garden designer for a while who had a Bose Wave Radio in her office and it was not something that I could have listened to all day. So even though under my circumstances it may have looked extravagant, I don't regret it one bit.

The danger that I see with the F80 is M having to expand to keep up with production, which is possibly what they have done and may well be where some of the redundancies will first hit.

It can't be easy trying to achieve 100% utilisation of a production line - and I personally think that making the F80 cheaper may well bring in more sales, but they would be more volatile and less easy to predict numbers.

I'm also not sure of the worth of putting a dock inside a F80 replacement. As well as probably having to compromise on placement (due to the composite construction of the unit), you are totally in the hands of a third party as to what you can do with the Fxx and a future change could make the Fxx useless - this is less of an issue with a separate dock unit. My iPod dock in the car is useless with my iPhone - but at least its only a �100 accessory and not a �20000 car.

Ian, you make great points there, you should be in F80 sales.
Its exactly that sort of perspective that sales people seem to miss out on and do not convey to clients. ALl they know is price. The price of everything and the value of nothing.
You will remember the quality long after you have forgotten the price.

You and I could sell F80's easily and the reason is simple; We own one, we live with one, we are enthusiastic and understand the benefits. we could do great demo's and on and on.....

Sales staff I have met do not have that perspective and just say"its great quality", but I dont feel any enthusiasm or knowledge based on personal experiance comming across.
This is the area Meridian should be concentrating on. Educate people that its not all about price. Aspiration. Cheap things aint good and good things aint cheap!!!!

Cheers, Chris

I see problems with Meridian when it can't do some of the simple things right. The people who say Meridian needs to engage with their customer base are pretty spot on. In my personal situation, I've recently called M USA twice and had to leave messages for someone to call me back. And in both circumstances, not one return phone call. These phone calls were spaced about a month apart so it wasn't like I was badgering them. When a company can't do simple things like return phone calls from their current customers then I find it very disturbing.

As an example of a not so upscale company doing customer service right is Emotiva. I was on the fence with buying from this company until a phone call I had with them. The rep on the other end of the line spent a lot of time talking to me about how their amps are built and how they compare with other competitors but never once bad mouth what they others did.

Chris

It is a great product and I purchased one, but then sold it again, as I did no feel it was worth the �1000 I paid for it. Not because it sounded bad, but just because I could get better for less, obviously not in a single unit, but in a seperate's set up. I did not need a single unit!

If you can not have anything other than an F80 sized unit then that is the best. As a Porsche GT3 is the best, but most people drive the Ford Mondeo-Bose Wave.
Porsche don't expect to sell their cars by the boat load, but Ford do!
We may consider the Bose as a Ford Mondeo, but most people think thats the Porsche, so what must they be thinking of the F80?

A Bose wave is �500, and when I sold it at 24 months old I still got �400 for it. No way did it sound as good as an F80!
I purchased the F80 1 month old for a �1000, and sold it 4 weeks later for the same price.

But the fact is it still lost 33% of its value which to me shows that people are not falling over themselves to buy it secondhand. This in turn tells me it is overpriced or there is a lack of demand.
Demand for the Bose Wave is strong on the secondhand market, but how can that be because it sounds no where near as good as the Meridian F80?

PRICE....

We all want the best and if you could sell it on sound alone, then yes you would sell them easily, as you would any Meridian system!
The problem comes when you say, "yes sir I'll get you a black one, �1500 please"!
That's the killing point.....

Meridian might have got some sales by getting in Stuff magazine and pulling out flash ads in gadget mags, but these are the fickle consumers who buy for the moment on a whim. But the price is not suited to that type of purchase decision, most people don't spend half that on a hifi system with surround sound! Even less so now they are losing their jobs and paying larger household bills.

People will spend �1500 on a TV and be happy about it, but thats because the average UK household watches 6hrs a day. The days are gone when music was an entertainment option to the majority of people. iPod docks are in bedrooms of children (because they don't want to watch mum and dads rubbish on the tv) not pride of place on the living room table because no one would ever listen to it! Why, because the bloo*y TV is on all the time!!

Regards Paul

I have to agree with Cash' regarding the F80. I had one on loan for a while and thought it sounded merely OK - but it most definitely didn't sound like �1,500 ought to.

IMHO my Apple HiFi (now discontinued) cost a paltry �249 by comparison and, whilst not having a DVD player or tuner, the sound from it was entirely fit-for-purpose and comparable to the F80 in its areas of use.

Why anyone would purchase an F80 and connect it to a display is quite beyond me.

At the risk of being branded a heretic, I would suggest the F80 is little more than a trinket.

I think that Bose's marketing has more to do with the re-sale value, than the actual price of the unit.
I have had a "lot" of people ask me (when talking of hifi) if the "Bose" model Xxxx is good or not and when i explain to them the cheap drivers used, the tricks employed to make the inferior drivers "sound good", it seems i am labelled just shy of a nutter with incredulous looks.
JOe public adores Bose marketing, they think it is high class/end, the like the price as they can justifiy the "expense", and the fact that you can get xx type of sound in 5 satellites speakers plus sub. I have had a lot of people ask me, as im into hifi, if i can lay my hands on the sat/sub setup acoustimass whatever, for cheap. Not a question that i relish. But this just goes to show the entrenched mind.
It does bother me that really these people are under the assumption that Bose are a high class/end company when obviously they are not. But, to give credit where it is due, Bose's marketing dept have done an excellent job at marketing their company. They have instilled core values to the masses to make their brand image into what joe public now loves, instilling a "need" and "aspirational values" - with a price that many Jee 6packs "could" buy with not much justification to the missus and re-inforcement of such values when showing their "kit" to other Joe's.

My neighbour has a Bose Wave radio
She leaves it on all day in the kitchen for her dogs..Radio one
The boomy rotten bass drives me bonkers when in the garden
Recently I was round there letting the dogs (who yap incessantly)out
I tried to tweak the bottom end, no user controls, just HONK HONK HONK
Would drive me insane
She a lovely lady and I just hint at turning it down or playing R3 and we joke about it.
If she had a F80 would it be any better
She can afford it ,Porsche and Merc 4x4
Meridian has not reached her yet and she is upmarket.

Roger

Cash, I am glad you liked the F80 and didnt lose any money on it. The F80 was not for you if you wanted separates, and thats an entirly differant issue.
The F80 is a quality portable CD/DVD/Radio.
From DVD I watch Music/concert DVD's on a 32" LCD. The picture is as good as it needs to be for that kind of second room use. The sound is startling especialy if you crank it up.
Selling these things, you have to qualify your buyer. If they want separates for a main system, perhaps they dont want an F80.

If they want a quality sytem for small rooms (and not so small) Portable, Holiday home, or live in a studio apartment. This thing is perfect.

@ �1500 it will never be mass market in the UK but that doesnt mean it shouldnt be on sale. I personaly want another one to save me moving mine about so much. SWMBO loves it, No wires, simple to use, looks funky, sounds great.

Horses for courses.
The problem is that the world has suddenly changed and this will be difficult for a lot of companies. I hope Meridian Ride it out well.

Cheers, Chris

I hate to say it but I not only agree with Paul's assessment, I think its going to cut very hard at M.

The bottom line is success in the retail/ consumer market place is never based on who has the best product. In this case we here argue it would be M and I think we have a convincing case on that one. But its about many other unrelated factors like what do people know about, what fits into a budget, what the installers like, etc and finally how good is one vs the competition. On those factors except on performance, M scores very low. And the edge in performance the regular person can understand or even hear is becoming smaller because other products are getting better.

When the average person decides they want some surround sound setup in their home and they also want good quality sound for music, are they going to spend the entire budget on a Gxx or on some Yamaha receiver, some nice speakers, a screen etc.... You already know the answer. Even if they can afford the Gxx, the euphoria is over and people are going to be much more reserved with purchases.

I really hope I am wrong but I would assume M expect to get a good return on high line products like the 810 and I think this is just not the time for that or an expensive clock radio in the F80 etc. Its a shame but I think they have made some strategic missteps that need fast correction and I don't know if they can do it now.

Sorry for the gloom and doom. I really do hope I am wrong and Meridian succeeds.

And is probably why it almost went bust twice before.