Yamaha and West Coast Hi-Fi celebrated the opening of Australia’s first Yamaha Sound Centre on Saturday 22 February 2014. This store-in-store branded concept is the first of a planned nationwide rollout and was officially opened by the local state MP Rita Saffioti.
“It’s the realisation of a dream”, said West Coast Hi-Fi director Glen Tobin. “The opening is not only an achievement for West Coast Hi-Fi, but for Western Australia, by being the first in Australia, and indeed the world.”
Simon Goldsworthy, general manager of Yamaha Australia’s AV division, reported that the temperature nudged 40° Celsius during the day but thankfully there was an ice cream truck on hand to cool everyone down and super chilled pop singer Gossling took to the Yamaha stage to belt out a few hits. Somewhat appropriately, Gossling sings the ditty being used in the Cancer Institute of New South Wales’ summer campaign:
“West Australians now have a state-of-the-art showroom in which to experience the full gamut of Yamaha’s home entertainment range,” Goldsworthy said.
Neil Keiles, director of West Coast Hi-Fi said Yamaha was now very well-placed for strong sales.
“We’ve trebled our normal trade and quadrupled store traffic with the launch of the Yamaha Sound Centre. No other brand can achieve what we’ve seen here today, and we’re excited to see where this partnership will take us.”
In an earlier story announcing the development of these Sound Centres, Goldsworthy explained why Yamaha was pursuing this concept:
Yamaha has an extensive range of products, both within its traditional categories as well new categories such as desktop audio and headphones. With most retailers spoilt for choice and only wanting to stock a limited number of brands in each price point, not every model gets taken on and, therefore, does not get displayed.
So when customers call and ask where can they see and demo a certain model, it becomes difficult to find a store that has stock and has it set up to demo. The Sound Centre concept gives us the ability to send all levels of consumer to a single store nearest them and know they will be able to see, hear and be shown all the features of the product.
Update: A previous version of this story described Neil Keiles as the director of the West Coast Hi-Fi Group. Keiles is actually co-director of West Coast Hi-Fi, Malaga, with Glen Tobin.
Here is a look inside the Sound Centre (images furnished by Yamaha Australia):
