Probably our most amazing night to date, we were joined by Rune Skov of Gryphon, Bjorn Bengtsson of Nordost, Michael O'Rourke of Linn and Johan Coorg of Hegel, as well as over 100 of our customers for a very special evening.
Each of our international guests presented the latest innovations from their companies, astounding the audience with just how far the industry has come in recent times.
We also had the pleasure of Edgar Kramer, Editor-in-Chief of Soundstage Australia, who wrote an incredible article covering the night.
We'll copy the ending from the Soundstage Article:
The best way to conclude this feature is by leaving the last words to Audio Connection’s proprietor Nigel Ng. When I asked how he felt about having these industry leaders gathered together at Audio Connection for this special night, he stated:
What a blessing to have such incredible support for our country from international representatives. It's no small sacrifice on their part. The killer 50+ hour return journey for most of them, the weeks away from their homes and families, and by coming here, it means another part of the world is without their support (and let's face it, Australia and New Zealand represent a very small part of the world in relative terms). So, to have one of the representatives from one brand, let alone twelve representatives from eight different brands all fly down for nine customer events around the region was a milestone level of support for Australia... and quite a logistical challenge! [Representatives from Audioquest, Harman International and KEF were unable to attend the High-End Audio Innovators event at Audio Connection but visited dealers around the country… EK].
Thank you to all the Advance Audio/Audio Connection teams, the retailers we held events with, and of course, the international representatives: David Tovissi, Mark Ng and Amrit Lyall from Harman, Robert Wong and Adam Shaw-Cotteril from Audioquest, Michael O'Rourke from Linn, Alasdair McDonald from dCS, Bjorn Bengtsson from Nordost, Rune Skov from Gryphon, Johan Coorg from Hegel, and Lawrence Chu, Hylas Wan and Herris Chan from KEF.
Having this level of international support for Australia and New Zealand shows how important the region is for the brands, and also, our deeper level of connection with our brands that goes beyond just business. We have an attitude that "a high tide raises all ships", meaning that we work with our stakeholders, including manufacturers and retailers, to achieve a universal positive result for all, focussed on providing a world-class level of service for the end-users who own, or will one day own, any of our represented brands.
Owning both a retail store and a distribution company, some might think that it might present a conflict of interest, and a potential source of nepotism. However, the truth couldn't be further. As a distributor, entrusted with the brands in our portfolio, our duty is to uphold a standard of excellence in representation, knowledge and ethics. There's no better way of doing this than having our own store that we can use as an example of this. As a distributor, we can only really talk about these standards to other retailers, and as a retailer, we can put them into practice. Not only that, we use our real-world retail experiences to collaborate with other retailers around the region, sharing initiatives that have worked, and those that haven't, so that we can all grow together. For me, it’s so important that we collaborate with other industry men and women, as we have a much better chance of being able to live up to the flag bearing expectations that our brands have for us, by working together, rather than if we were to do it alone.
Stay tuned for the next event!
