Case Studies As the AV EMEA business is focussed on developing new customers, markets and sales for our brand partners, this is where you will find case studies of the work we do in order to find, hire and build business for our brand partners.
The development of the StormAudio business in the UAE GCC markets.
StormAudio’s business in Dubai and the Gulf markets was previously small and inconsistent, so we agreed with the StormAudio management for AV EMEA to focus on this region to build a new go-to-market strategy.
Our efforts have firstly led to a significant increase in sales, but also to the improved exposure and reputation of StormAudio to home theater installers, distributors and integrators in the region as being a product line and company that can be a valuable and trusted asset.
In order to make this happen, our team initiated much more regular contacts with potential customers in the region, including three monthly, two week visits by our expert on this region to meet all the viable business partners in the region to analyse and understand the dynamics of the markets and identify the requirements to grow the business there with the right partners – and to see for ourselves who are truly experienced, trustworthy and reliable and who are, putting it politely, just fishing for named brands to add to their list.
These regular quarterly visits and weekly contacts in the meantime enabled us to see who has what infrastructure, skills and technical resources that StormAudio requires to become a long term customer
These professional yet courteous and confidential contacts (especially important in the Middle East where personal trust and integrity is very valued) has enables us to build strong long term relationships, sometimes with companies who are direct competitors in a physically small region.
This experience and professionalism has assured the customers successfully that AV EMEA will support, regulate and protect the market to the benefit of all Integrators who are specifying StormAudio and has led to significantly larger sales.
Quite a common situation is that for various reasons a brands sales drop to a low level in a particular market and we are tasked by our brand partner (in this case Primare) with turning that around.
The reasons for this drop in sales varies of course – sometimes its financial problems with the distributor, the loss of a key member of their team, or that the distributor loses another key brand – or perhaps has taken on a competitive line to ours for example. Because we have a detailed overview of each market (as we do business with multiple brands in multiple countries) we can see at a glance if we are seeing problems with other brands sales in other distributors or not – and if it’s just one company and brand that is not performing, we know that we have an opportunity to make an improvement.
Obviously our first job is to do research to discover what the problem is, and whether the situation can be salvaged with our existing partner or not, by contacting them to discuss the matter frankly and honestly. If we do not feel there is an ability to turn around the results with that company, once we have established that ‘we can indeed do better elsewhere’ then we start to look through all our multiple industry contacts, companies we work with on other lines, other brands partners and industry trade associations etcetera, in order to make a shortlist of companies that we feel might be qualified, suitable and interested.
We then contact the ‘shortlist’ we have highlighted via phone or email to see if there is any interest. In this case, we were recommended a significant distributor who was looking for a line like Primare to promote along with their well-known speaker line. After several phone calls, Q+A on both sides, a Teams training call, a sample order was ordered, paid for and shipped. Both parties then decided that they wanted to work together – and since then several stock orders have been paid and shipped, and we are heading over to Jakarta next month to do a product training session and launch event. By coincidence, the distributor (who is a small HiFi Division of a much larger distribution business ) also needed a cable line to add to their brand portfolio – so Wireworld proved to be an ideal brand to join the party too. Two new customers in one project!
