Most car audio displays show off product. But if your aim is to promote your installation expertise, it calls for a different kind of display.
Two retailers have taken this idea and ran with it. Their displays may give you some ideas to help set your store apart from the competition.
Jason Kranitz of Kingpin Audio Car Audio, OR wanted to go beyond giving his customers a tour of his facilities and showing them a well- organized bay and wood shop.
“I just think from talking to a lot of people [consumers] that they don’t really know what makes an incorrect install. And I can show them my shop, but they don’t know what the other guys do,” said Kranitz. So he decided to display the difference.
He’s setting up the type of long, low maple tables you see in Apple stores. But instead of showing product on top, he displays mock install sections with a ‘wrong way’ next to the ‘Kingpin way.’
One table will show a mock car seat bottom half with an amplifier installed underneath. It will show metal brackets made from scratch using tractor bolts versus the typical amp install that uses sheet metal and sheet metal screws.
The alarm display will show a mock install with soldered wires and proper tape versus a typical install without soldering. The speaker display (shown at top) shows Kingpin’s use of polymer plastic rings, soldered wire and foam gasket rings.
Kingpin sells about $850,000 a year out of one location. It’s known for its custom fabrication work and Kranitz is a multiple Mobile Electronics magazine award winner.
Mobile Edge, Lehighton, PA decided to show off its fabrication skills. It created a “fabrication wall” last fall to demystify custom installation and teach customers that fabrication doesn’t have to be about wild installs but it can be about attractively matching your equipment to the car.
Mobile Edge lead installer Michael Oechsner said he aimed to show customers “that we’re not talking making your car into a spaceship but making pieces that look like they belong in the car and we decided the best way to do that is mock it up.”
When you first walk in the door you see a miniaturized view of a car trunk with wheel wells and rear hat deck and a floor. It’s shown with three levels of fabrication, including a basic custom woofer enclosure that looks like it’s part of the trunk instead of a carpeted box. The next level uses more textures, leathers, vinyls, raised panels, and accents that mirror the curves of the car. The top level moves to multi-level panels and pieces with inserts, and grilles double pressed with emblems.
There are mock car doors with different amounts of sound dampening material to show how a little works well and a little more works better.
The “fabrication wall” also shows speaker baffles that use marine grade plastic instead of MDF that eventually absorbs moisture.
Oechsner said the shop now does more custom work because it’s easier for customers to visualize it, and it gives people a choice between having a basic installation and having one that looks like it came with the car. “People don’t realize it’s even an option. They don’t realize there are shops that are taking the extra time to do this work.”
Mobile Edge won ME Magazine’s Retailer of the Year Award in 2010.
You can see more photos of the Mobile Edge fabrication wall here.
