Julie Mullins

Last month's column looked at the hi-fi industry's struggles with recruiting and retaining qualified staff. For that article, Specialty Sound and Vision's Anthony Chiarella, also director of sales and marketing for Gryphon Audio and Brinkmann Audio, made a comment that bears repeating here: "If we're going to have a future in hi-fi, we have to make it worthwhile to make a career in hi-fi." How might that be achieved?

Achieving that key objective requires achieving another one: How do we make more people aware that our industry exists?

The hi-fi industry is evidently experiencing a shortage—not of parts or materials as during COVID and just after, but of qualified salespeople. As this column has pointed out, some hi-fi shops have closed, for various reasons, while some new ones have opened. Meanwhile, not just dealers but also manufacturers and distributors have reported difficulty finding qualified salespeople. Michael Manousselis, president of Americas for Dynaudio, stated as much in emailed responses to my questions. "I have heard more from dealers having a hard time finding experienced salespeople, that is for sure," he said. "We've seen some hire former customers, to groom them for sales."

What's going on? If people are passionate about this hobby, wouldn't they jump at the chance to get more involved in it professionally?

Stereophile's Julie Mullins walks us through Advance Paris’s high‐performance hybrid amplifiers in a Playback Distribution room. At the Florida International Audio Expo 2025, she spoke with Cédric Léon about the company's offerings, now available in the U.S. market.

Hi-fi dealership Big Kids Toys, in Greensboro, North Carolina, is aptly named. Since its 2002 inception, fun has been at the center of its ethos. At the outset, company founder Michael Twomey established a mantra: "Life is short. Enjoy yourself." It might not be all that original, but it's apt.

In the third quarter of 2024, Big Kids Toys began expanding to the Midwest: The dealership's sales manager, North Carolina native Luke Sumerford (above), opened a home-based dealership in Fort Wright, Kentucky, about five miles from the Ohio River and Cincinnati, Ohio. That's a long way from Greensboro.

Sumerford, at 29, is part of hi-fi's youth movement. He hopes to instill—or reinforce, or bring back—musical enjoyment as the central pillar of the hi-fi hobby.

Matt Thomas's hi-fi business has always been personal. He wants to keep it that way—in his curated, personalized sales approach, in choosing esoteric gear to carry, and in his listening preferences and not wanting to get too big.

A health crisis was the catalyst for Matt Thomas to start Hearken Audio: A back injury caused temporary paralysis. "For lack of a better word, it was an experience," he told me in a recent phone conversation. He's now fully recovered, but the experience changed him. He decided to pursue his passion. He was already an avid audiophile and music lover; he had been for years. After the accident, almost five years ago, he started Hearken Audio, a home-based dealership in Kitchener, Ontario, where he lives with his wife and two teenage daughters.

YG Acoustics speakers have always had a distinct look, but the massive aluminum towers in room 806 were unmissable, even if you only glanced into the room. These were the Colorado-based manufacturer’s state-of-the-art Sonja 3.3 loudspeakers.

Traditionally in hi-fi, "distribution" refers to importing and warehousing audio equipment then delivering it as needed to a network of domestic dealers. In recent years, that model has evolved. Distributors have expanded the range of services they offer, and an increasing number of companies are skipping the distributor step altogether: dCS and T+A, among other companies, have established wholly owned subsidiaries in the US to handle importation, local warehousing, and other domestic duties. They and others have hired full-service sales and marketing agents, sometimes called "brand ambassadors." The goal, of course, is to make the practice of getting a product into the country and on the radar of dealers and customers as efficient and effective as possible.