Meridian Audio Opens Its First London Boutique Store
LONDON -- British hi-fi specialty vendor Meridian Audio opened its first boutique store in London, its second in the U.K. after a location in Oxford. Like all other Meridian stores, it’s owned and operated by a dealer, in this case Rob Sullivan of RS AV in Peterborough. The London store, officially called Meridian West London, is on the famous Kings Road in the design and antique quarter of Chelsea.
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John Buchanan, Meridian executive vice president-sales and marketing, said he thinks the high-end audio industry needs to re-invent itself, as the automotive and watch industries did. “A car is now a statement, a watch is no longer about telling the time,” Buchanan said. “When MP3 came along, people didn’t say, ‘Great, it’s worse,’ they said, ‘Great, it’s convenient.’ Audio now has to be all about experience. Boutiques are about experience.”
The Muse Group, part of Swiss-based luxury goods group Richemont, bought into Meridian seven years ago and is now the majority shareholder, Buchanan said. “It’s a successful and happy relationship,” he said. “The company is Swiss-based and has other luxury brands like Cartier watches. They are not venture capitalists. This is not about changing the Meridian story, it’s about telling it better. We are building for the long term.”
Though none of the Meridian boutiques is Meridian-owned, “we are closely involved” with the retailers who operate them, Buchanan said. “This one in London was baking for two years before it opened.” Other boutique locations: Bangalore, India; Bangkok, Thailand; Kuwait City; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Mexico City; Moscow; Rostov, Russia; and Singapore. Meridian also is “close” to opening a boutique in Houston, and is in the early stages of planning one for Los Angeles, Buchanan said.
Meridian is “still very much in the front projector business,” Buchanan said. Its ultra-high-end model 810 projector sells for about $235,000 in the U.K., including all its various lenses and up to four days of on-site calibration, he said.
"Several days of calibration are needed to get the greyscale correct,” said Bob Stuart, Meridian’s co-founder. For now, Meridian is taking a backseat on Ultra HD and plans no 4K inputs for the 810 projector, Stuart said. “Video development is very fast-moving, but we paused because of the 3D fiasco,” Stuart said. “People kept asking when we were going to make our projector 3D. We didn’t, and what happened to 3D?”
Stuart thinks there’s a 4K “lobby” that’s based among the major studios, he said. “Hollywood is leading here. It’s more about copy protection than performance. There are several different encryption standards. So far, 4K for the home is depressing, with digital artifacts. We are going to wait and let others decide. Of course it would be different if this were a new audio standard. Then we would definitely want to be involved. We would have definite opinions. We will deal with the video source when it arrives. We are going to wait and see where we land.”