Re-Tales #4: Bring service back

June 27, 2023 / By mobanmarket

Walter Swanbon has had a lot on his mind lately. Like many dealers, he’s been busy adapting to changes, but the pandemic has also offered time for reflection.

Swanbon is founder and president of Fidelis Premium Audio, a longstanding audio dealership in “tax-free” New Hampshire that serves a broad swath of New England, from Greater Boston to Maine. He also handles US distribution for several lines and sells records at his Nashua showroom, a 35–40-minute drive from Boston. During a conversation via Skype, Swanbon expressed concerns and even a few grievances about the state of our industry.

In the 1970s and ’80s, hi-fi culture was deeply embedded in the New England college scene. There was a point in the early ’70s, Swanbon told me, when seven or eight stores in the Boston/Cambridge area represented some 25%–30% of hi-fi sales nationwide. “Back then, music was king, and every dorm room had a system,” he said. Swanbon attended Boston College on scholarship in the 1970s. He became a campus sales representative for K&L Sound, selling hi-fi systems to students and others. The company also had a pro-audio division, which supplied microphones, PAs, and amplifiers to rock bands and discos. Armed with a ReVox tape deck and AKG mikes, he and a friend started a business recording classical and jazz recitals at Berklee College of Music and the Longy School of Music at Bard College. “We’d charge, like, 50 bucks,” he said. “It was a lot of fun, and we learned a lot about recording, about how to place microphones. We were into all kinds of music back then: rock, jazz, blues, classical.”

Swanbon (middle)

In time, he began doing studio work for pop and rock bands—probably the most fun he’s had in the audio world, he told me. He and his friend put together a PA system and traveled with rock bands, including a group with an Aerosmith alumnus. Steven Tyler came to some of the concerts and invited them to his practice studios in Waltham, Massachusetts. “So, we got to experience the debauchery of the ’70s rock’n’roll scene,” Swanbon said with a laugh.

Swanbon gained hands-on experience building loudspeakers for a company called Davis-Moore Laboratories. He then worked for another Boston dealer, where, he says, he learned how not to treat people. “I’m a survivor of the hi-fi wars of the ’70s and ’80s,” Swanbon joked.

Several months back, he lost his longtime friend and colleague, Bill Henk. Swanbon first met Henk in the late 1980s when he was a sales representative for AudioQuest, Paradigm, Sumo, etc. Swanbon described him as a soft-spoken salesman and extolled his extensive musical knowledge and his influence on Swanbon and Fidelis.

The pandemic pushed Swanbon to invest in his company’s online presence—but he is not an unqualified Internet fan, calling it “a double-edged sword.” It’s good for getting product information out, he said, but it makes it harder to do what dealerships are best at: determining the needs of individual customers. People are buying expensive gear online, often impulsively, because they know they can send it back, he told me, but many high-end companies aren’t set up for those kinds of transactions. Swanbon believes the Internet’s biggest failures revolve around interfaces—between the room, amplification, and loudspeakers and between the salesperson and the customer.

“The customers need that service and expertise. They need someone to guide them,” he says. He compares an audio consultancy to a good lawyer or travel agent, able to provide advice based on deep expertise and experience. “Instead of chasing the amp of the month or the speaker of the year, they should be chasing better synergies that work for their specific needs.

“It’s fine to have all these reviews of wonderful gear,” he explains. “But when it comes to putting it all together and making sense of it, and having a consumer really clue in to whether it’s the right choice in the context of what they already own…that’s the purpose of dealers.”

Lately, like many dealers, he’s had more time to spend with customers, but interacting with them personally and usefully isn’t as easy. Due to COVID-19 concerns, it’s harder to go into people’s homes to help fine-tune their audio setups.

Providing attentive, knowledgeable service may sound like an obvious formula for success, but Swanbon says it’s becoming a lost art. In the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, professional organizations provided training, testing, and certification for audio dealers, including the Society of Audio Consultants, the Professional Audio Retailers Association, and the British Audio Dealers Association, which provided a “seal of approval” akin to the Good Housekeeping Seal to trustworthy dealers that met certain standards. Nothing like that exists anymore. Even manufacturers are missing the boat, he says: They need to educate dealers, then make sure those dealers are presenting the products well.

“There needs to be a solid industry organization that professionalizes the process, that puts the gear into the right hands with the right skill sets,” he said. “Good dealers are hard to come by.”

Swanbon is also concerned about the younger generation’s lack of appreciation for jazz and classical music, which, he told me, is now less than 5% of all music sold: “And that has an effect on high-end audio, because these forms of music were the backbone of the passion for good sound and trying to establish that concert sound in a home environment.”

Swanbon remains hopeful about hi-fi’s future. When people are able to attend concerts again, hopefully that will reinforce their interest in music—and in experiencing music at home, too. At the end of the day, he’s here for the music, he says, and for making sure customers are happy.

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