New State of the Art 12V Store

Think of a car and home audio store that aims to be the equivalent of a CES or SEMA Show for consumers.

That’s what Mike Hong of Audio Design, San Jose, CA set out to do. Given that he is also Founder of Lucas Lighting, he toured the country visiting retailers and was able to view state of the art shops that helped inspire Audio Designs new location.

The ultra modern design and layout of the shop is unique in that it’s modeled in a music theme, where some rooms are rounded in the shape of a treble clef and when you look up, the ceiling baffles reflect similar curves.

Hong decided to move to the new location when the home/commercial audio portion of his business took off during the pandemic.  The aim was to give home audio more space in the new 22,000 square foot shop that’s less than a mile from the earlier 5,500 square foot location.

Home audio now represents the larger portion of Audio Design sales.  But the home and car segments play off each other.  “We expect the home business to help our car business. They go together… many of our car customers became home audio customers and our home audio customers are now starting to become car audio customers,” Hong said.

The focus of the new shop is “discover, experience, enhance.”  The car side includes four to five demo cars at any given time, and full displays from some vendors (kind of like a booth at CES).  At the moment, Alpine’s F#1Status Tesla S demo car is in the shop.  There are four Rockford displays: Punch, Power, motorcycle and powersports.

Other current demo vehicles include a Polaris Slingshot with a full Alpine Type X system, a 1959 Chevy Impala with an Audison system.  There is a Lamborghini Diablo with mixed brand components and a couple of Ferraris to show off paint protection film, ceramic coating and tint, which is also part of Audio Design’s business.  Some of the demo cars  are on loan from customers (including the Lamborghini). “We’re lucky enough where our customers don’t mind us displaying their vehicles,” Hong said.

There is a design room to show the different ‘customizations’ that Audio Design offers.

On the home audio side, experience rooms (considered next-level sound rooms) include a separate living room space, a Dolby Atmos Theatre space, a room for Devialet home audio equipment, and an architectural audio and subwoofer room where Audio Design sells a lot of Paradigm and JL Audio.

The building includes offices upstairs. There’s a training center for special events where Audio Design will hold regional vendor training that other dealers attend.  “It allows our employees to get the best training possible,” said Hong.  Alpine is planning a training event next month, as is VOXX, and Audio Design is in discussion with other vendors on additional training.

The store does not invest in advertising but is very involved in community outreach.  The shop recently held a Cars and Coffee grand opening event with the Northern California Ferrari and Exotic Car Clubs. Hong plans on working with other clubs including Mustang, Corvette, Subaru and Porsche.

He is big on networking. “I’m very active in various different car clubs and I work with a lot of general contractors for our home business,” he said.

Was there a shop, in particular, that inspired the new location? Hong said, “ABT near Chicago stood out.  It was very impressive.”

Audio Design has three home audio design specialists. On the car side, there are two installers. “We need to increase our staff on the car side,” he added.

Car audio brands carried  include Alpine, Audison, AudioFrog, AAMP, Hertz, Kenwood, Kicker, JBL, JL Audio, Sony, VOXX, and iDatalink.

Home audio brands include JL Audio, Paradigm, Anthem, Sony, Devialet, Marantz, Bluesound, NAD, McIntosh, Kaleidescape, Wolf Cinema, Epson, and Bowers and Wilkins.

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