After two appearances at TWICE panels last year Tom Campbell, corporate director of Video & Audio Center and Robert Zohn, president and founder of Value Electronics revived their tag-team tech discussion of how to sell Ultra HD, this time at a CE Week event in New York on Tuesday.
Zohn and Campbell, both energetic and enthusiastic advocates of Ultra HD and CE in general, began their discussion with Zohn saying, “The buck stops at retail,” when it comes to selling the new TV format. “We have to do the job for [manufacturers] at retail to display, explain and sell Ultra HD to consumers,” he noted.
Aside from marketing and training, the main support top-tier TV makers are giving specialists like Value Electronics is the UPP program on premium products. “That protects specialists like us,” Zohn said, repeating an important mantra: “The advantage of being a specialist is being able to explain and install Ultra HD,” providing more margin to the retailer.
Campbell recounted Video & Audio Center’s success in selling Ultra HD. He said the retailer sold 27 4K sets in three hours during the recent grand opening of its newest store in Century City, Calif.
“We paid the sales tax [on those sales] and do same-day basic installation,” he noted.
Thanks to Ultra HD from Sony, LG, Samsung and others Video & Audio Center has had their biggest first quarter in 33 years, Campbell said.
As he showed how his Sony Xperia Z2 tablet is waterproof (see photo), Campbell told the audience to use Sony’s 4K camcorder to sell more 4K sets. “There is plenty of innovation in this industry and we have to create excitement at retail to sell it.”
Zohn and Campbell sure exuded excitement during their event yesterday, which is probably a glimpse of how their stores operate daily.
