Face of sound and vision

After all, with retail turmoil on our high streets, a generation of shoppers preferring to conduct their business online and the general economic gloom, you would assume there is little demand for high end hi-fi and media systems with price tags into the tens of thousands.

But you would be wrong and neither is Jon Harker, owner of the shop in Oxford’s Park End street worried.

He explained: “We are fortunate in that we have been going 24 years and we have a good customer base.

“Obviously that helps provided you run a good business and give good customer service.”

Mr Harker added that another positive for the business is that it is not reliant on banks.

He added: “We started the business on an overdraft and did not put in any capital.

“There was a real bank manager and he was quite happy for us to carry on. That was the case for three or four years until it got to the stage where we did not need the overdraft any longer.

“The scary thing is that if I turned around now and went back to the bank, I would just be a number in a computer.”

Mr Harker started his working life working in famous tobacconist Weingott and Son on the corner of London’s Middle Temple Lane, where his main clientele were barristers and the occasional journalist sloping in from Fleet Street.

But hi interest in hi-fi equipment was ignited by the invention of a friend, Fraser Shaw. It was a special record turntable which he had literally designed and built on a kitchen table but which immediately started to attract attention from the industry.

The pair decided to set up in business together manufacturing the turntable, christened the Oxford Crystal Reference, which sold for a cool £2,000 but is still hankered after today by enthusiasts.

“It looked a million dollars and sounded extremely good,” explained Mr Harker.

“But instead of concentrating on one product and making a real success of it we made constant design changes and diversified into other products.”

The experience was short-lived and although the pair set up Oxford Audio Consultants together, Mr Harker bought his partner out and has been running it successfully ever since.

“There was no-one in Oxford doing what we wanted to do and we linked up with the person who had distributed the turntable abroad. He was and still is the top distributor of high end audio dealing with most of the major brands.

“He did not have a seller anywhere in this area and there was a big gap in the market.”

The business started next-door to its current location in a smaller unit and concentrated on selling audio products ranging from £1,000 to £50,000 and above from manufacturers such as Krell, Audio Research and Sonus.

“People would come in and listen to what they wanted. Typically they would be upgrading part of a system and that kind of customer would come back to us every year or two to make another upgrade and that is still typically what they do.

“A recession may mean they miss a year, but they still do it because they spend a long time listening to music which is a hobby that brings them great pleasure.”

Customers are spread throughout the country. A good example is an individual in Swansea who upgrades his system every year. Mr Harker reckons he has spent a cool £250,000 in the last decade.

When upgrading, customers can trade in their old equipment which is then re-sold by the business, opening up another market sector of the less well heeled looking for top quality systems.

The business focused on audio until about 11 years ago when the home cinema market started to become prominent and was difficult to ignore.

Now Oxford Audio Consultants has dedicated rooms set up to exhibit the latest home cinema and audio products as well as all-in-one systems which can control heating, lighting and security, all at the touch of a button or through an app on an iPad.

“The combined systems is probably the biggest growth market followed by home cinema,” Mr Harker revealed.

“The pure audio side is still there but most customers are growing older which is both a shame and a cause of concern.

“More people are concerned with getting a better sound from their home cinema and we have installed some costing more than £100,000. The experience of watching a film is infinitely superior to most cinemas.”

Rapid technological change is obviously something Mr Harker has to keep abreast of.

For example, the days where CDs were bought routinely are over and they are likely to be consigned to specialist sales as records were a generation ago.

In their place have come downloads from the Internet and hard drives to store them. Films can also be downloaded and stored this way.

Mr Harker said: “We now have a lot of customers not using a CD player at all but control music through an iPad which can play something different in separate rooms of the house.”

The pace of change in the industry is so fast that Oxford Audio Consultants now holds monthly events and demonstrations for customers to help them keep up with the latest developments and to allow them to upgrade if necessary.

Mr Harker added: “It is a very different market and we have got to adapt constantly.” ib