{"id":13287,"date":"2014-12-24T12:59:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T12:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/e-commerce\/shocking_bang_olufsen_profit_warning.html"},"modified":"2022-10-14T18:31:55","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T22:31:55","slug":"shocking-bang-olufsen-profit-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/technology\/shocking-bang-olufsen-profit-warning.html","title":{"rendered":"Shocking Bang &#038; Olufsen Profit Warning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Generally, I don&rsquo;t write about profit warnings but the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/bang-olufsen-sounds-profit-warning-1419234481\">latest one<\/a> from B&#038;O caught me by surprise because the luxury market is booming and the consumer electronics market is doing amazingly well yet Bang &#038; Olufsen is not seeing sales explode. As I child I used to ride my bike to the nearby B&#038;O store to marvel at the products which were beyond the reach of a 11-year-old. The company was decades ahead of the competition in terms of design.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BeoPlay A8<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/uploads\/A8-12CO-04.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/assets_c\/2014\/12\/A8-12CO-04-thumb-500x500-14188.jpg\" alt=\"A8-12CO-04.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>They did such a good job in-fact, Steve Jobs cited them as an inspiration. Apple&rsquo;s success in-turn led to the consumer electronics world taking design very seriously. As a result, there are truly beautiful looking speakers and other products on the market for bargain-basement prices.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A9<\/strong><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/uploads\/A9NS-13XX-09.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/assets_c\/2014\/12\/A9NS-13XX-09-thumb-500x666-14184.jpg\" alt=\"A9NS-13XX-09.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"666\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There is more to the company&rsquo;s challenges &ndash; they are overly reliant on Europe. I was in a B&#038;O store the past summer in France and I got the sense no one ever went there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BeoPlay A2<\/strong><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/uploads\/A2-14JS-Lo03.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/assets_c\/2014\/12\/A2-14JS-Lo03-thumb-500x173-14186.jpg\" alt=\"A2-14JS-Lo03.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"173\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To stay ahead of the competition, the company has taken its designs in a new direction &ndash; one I consider to be odd. The goal is to make the products stand out in my opinion, but standing out doesn&rsquo;t always make you want to buy the product.<\/p>\n<p>To cite specific examples, the BeoPlay A8 is gorgeous with a capital G! The A9 is too funky and the BeoPlay A2 and BeoLit 12 really suck from a design perspective.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BeoLit 12<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/uploads\/BL12-13JS-03.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/assets_c\/2014\/12\/BL12-13JS-03-thumb-500x392-14182.jpg\" alt=\"BL12-13JS-03.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"392\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Moreover, there is a trend towards connected audio and having connectivity to AirPlay and bluetooth are great but they would be better off if they owned Sonos to really leverage the trend.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, B&#038;O is like a really elegant man or woman from another era. They understand fine wine and opera but are out of touch with Instagram and Snapchat.<\/p>\n<p>A breath of fresh air could be just what that elegant old person needs to get in step with today&rsquo;s market. After all, if Apple can buy Beats by Dr Dre, anything is possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Generally, I don&rsquo;t write about profit warnings but the latest one from B&#038;O caught me by surprise because the luxury market is booming and the consumer electronics market is doing amazingly well yet Bang &#038; Olufsen is not seeing sales explode. As I child I used to ride my bike to the nearby B&#038;O store<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[158,172,196,118],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18710,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287\/revisions\/18710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}