Which helps explain the expansive premises now occupied by HiFi Linzbach, one of Germany’s oldest and best-established high-end audio dealers. But the HiFi Linzbach story starts much earlier. It’s both long and, in many ways, treads an oft-repeated path, except that HiFi Linzbach’s course is long enough to make it a genuine pioneer. Dieter Linzbach, a technology and audio enthusiast, established the company back in 1950, starting out by importing mono equipment from the US. By the 1960s, he was selling B&W loudspeakers, and he became the first Sony dealer in Germany. By the 1970s, he had started importing the legendary Beveridge electrostatics, thus setting an ultra-high-end agenda for the store that continues to this day. In what has become an increasingly familiar pattern, Linzbach found many of his staff from amongst his customers, and 1978 saw the start of employing Benno Salgert. Three years later, he invited Salgert to take over the business. Despite the necessary qualifications and the very real prospect of a safe career in public administration, Salgert followed his heart rather than his head, and the rest is, as they say, history. Dieter Linzbach stayed on initially as a partner and later as a consultant, right up to his death in 2001.
But it was that mass diplomatic exodus at the dawn of the 1990s that saw HiFi Linzbach take up its current residence in the 9000-square-foot brick mansion that had, until recently, served as the Korean embassy. It’s quite a pile, housing not just the store but apartments for several of the Salgert family, including two of Benno’s sons who work in the store. However, to truly get the measure of the HiFi Linzbach premises (and their business model), let’s take a look at the event that had me traveling all the way to Bonn in the first place. Back in March, you might have noticed the news story in these very pages announcing the opportunity to experience the Living Voice Vox Palladian/Vox Basso speaker system, slightly more affordable brethren of the legendary Vox Olympians. Of course, such events are not that unusual, with high-profile products cropping up from time to time. However, what made this particular event special was that it wasn’t a simple one-off presentation but a launch -- not of the speakers (they were launched at the High End show in Munich last year), but of the room and the system in it, which is a permanent installation. That’s right -- HiFi Linzbach is flooring the Vox Palladians, along with a suite of matching Kondo electronics to drive them. As you might imagine, this system is not in a small room, a fact that, equipment aside, makes this a significant investment -- an investment I’ll return to in due course.
But what was really telling to me was that the room next door, one of almost identical dimensions that most store owners would sell their first born to access, was being used as a store room! That comes as slightly less of a shock once you appreciate that not only is there a third similarly sized room on the other side of the hall, but that upstairs you’ll find six more demonstration spaces of various sizes, along with the coffee bar (shown above) and record bins.
Benno Salgert (right) with partner Christian Breil (center). Benno's son Michael (left) works at HiFi Linzbach. HiFi Linzbach is quite a setup, and is it not devoted to the kind of safe, high-profile, high-turnover bread-and-butter items that such large enterprises normally seem to gravitate towards. For every B&W or Dynaudio loudspeaker there’s a Boenicke or Living Voice, a Sugden or Accuphase amplifier. Benno Salgert might have followed his heart when he took on the Linzbach business; together with current partner, Christian Breil, he definitely follows it when it comes to establishing the store’s stock profile. But there’s sound business sense at work too, a strategy that points toward one possible future for high-end hi-fi retail. Back in the day, the audio industry practiced a three-tier distribution model, with manufacturers supplying home-market dealers directly but overseas dealers via in-country distributors. The advent of the Internet imposed price parity for serious global brands and made price-comparison purchasing a way of life for customers. The guy who sits through a three-hour demonstration will, as likely as not, open up any purchasing discussion with the comment, "You know I can buy this for such-and-such dollars at such-and-such store." It’s a reality that has squeezed margins and undermined the value added by a really good dealer. No matter the demonstrable facts, the "This product will sound better bought from me" argument tends to founder on the jagged rocks of ever-increasing price consciousness. Faced with narrowing margins and increasing competition, the logical things to do are shorten the supply chain and increase exclusivity. To that end, you’ll find dealers like HiFi Linzbach increasingly entering the realm of sole distribution, but also establishing exclusive deals with existing distributors. Walk into the room housing the Vox Palladian system at HiFi Linzbach and you’ll see not just the speakers, their matching subs and a Living Voice rack, but also the Kondo SFz transformer, GE-10 phono stage, G-1000 preamplifier and Gakuoh monoblocks -- all from the same German distributor (Bemax) as the Living Voice speakers. This room and this system are more than just the sole, exclusive German outlet for the Kondo G-series electronics and the Living Voice Vox-series speakers; they represent a long-term, cooperative investment on the part of HiFi Linzbach and Bemax. You want to buy a pair of the popular Living Voice Avatar OBX-RW3s? There are well over a dozen German dealers you might choose. You want to buy a pair of Vox Palladians? You’ll be traveling to Bonn to meet the charming folks in the big brick mansion. It’s a simple fact that there are very few audio dealers who can invest in or demonstrate this level of equipment. It’s a self-evident reality that a mixture of cutthroat competition and desperation is reducing that number almost monthly.
Which brings me back to that room and that system. Any retail investment needs to pay for itself, and the people at HiFi Linzbach are shrewd enough and experienced enough to pick a winner. The Living Voice rooms at the Munich show have been spectacularly successful for the last five years, featuring million-dollar systems that actually sound a million dollars and generating significant sales in the process. That’s a pie that any dealer would fancy a slice of, and the advent of the Vox Palladian has made that a very real possibility, a possibility realized in Bonn. The launch event for HiFi Linzbach's new installation was graced by a week of installation and presentations with Living Voice designer Kevin Scott. The complete system consisted of:
We were treated to a range of musical excerpts, on both CD and LP. Indeed, the latter was a special treat, given that the Munich systems most of us may have heard were CD only. The Shostakovich Symphony 9 ("The Execution of Stepan Razin," an EMI/Melodia pressing featuring Kyril Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic [EMI ASD 2409]) was particularly impressive, while old favorites such as Brubeck's "Take Five," Dead Can Dance and The Monterey Quartet’s live 2007 set demonstrated that this system has lost none of its Munich mojo.
Worth the price? If you’ve got
the money, you don’t need to ask. Worth the journey? If you haven’t heard the
Living Voice /Kondo systems in Munich -- or you just want to hear them with your own
material -- then absolutely. Not only are you in for a potentially mind-expanding musical
treat, you’ll get to experience HiFi Linzbach too -- in all its guises, whether that
means a €300 Pro-Ject turntable or the full "If you have to ask" treatment.
And Bonn is rather a nice city too; former capital status leaves a legacy of galleries and
museums, making this a weekend away that’s well worth considering. |
