Video & Audio Center Repositions Itself as 'Technology Retailer' in Upscale LA Mall

Now Video & Audio Center (VAC), known throughout L.A. for TV and audio price matching and extra-mile customer service, is making over its image. President Joseph Akhtarzad calls the 2½-floor Century City experience space a “technology store” and with it wants to change the face of consumer electronics retailing.

“It’s about connectivity,” said Akhtarzad, pointing to smart appliances from LG and Samsung in the rear corner of the store, that feels part Apple Store, part Best Buy. The store is located close to an Apple Store, with a health and wellness location -- due to open next month -- in between.

There’s the requisite wall of TVs -- from tier-one brands Sony, Samsung and LG -- that comprises the left side of the store, but the look is fresh. TVs are bolted to single beams with space in between. Larger models are on credenzas. LG has a featured display in the store's rear on what store executives call a “wedding cake design” where TVs are displayed at different heights on a circular frame.

LG Senior Vice President-Home Electronics Rick Calacci beamed at the structure Thursday, calling the dedicated LG area “like an LG showroom.” It’s not just LG TVs: The store also is showcasing LG’s top-shelf smart washer and dryer, sound bars, headphones, a smart speaker and unlocked smartphones.

To emphasize connectivity, the store -- still working out placement and last-minute tweaks before the official opening this week -- had an LG ThinQ smart speaker, with Google Assistant voice control, Chromecast built-in and Meridian Audio sound inside, sitting atop the LG smart washer. Israel Perez, LG’s market sell-through manager-North America, built up the connectivity message. From an app on an LG phone, a user could schedule the washer to start or get a notification when the dryer is almost finished.

Placement of a smart speaker atop a washing machine underscored a challenge of the VAC store and audio retailing in general. Meridian Audio is associated with Hi-Res Audio, a challenge enough in a smart speaker. Placing the speaker on the washer shows how a user could operate the washer with voice commands via the speaker, but it’s a tough environment to show off the sound. LG has been increasing its push into premium audio, evidenced by Meridian Audio integration. Calacci conceded it’s “a challenge” at the store level: “You can’t demonstrate the sound the way you want to.”

The Century City location has no sound rooms so making a claim for better quality audio is difficult in the open setting. VAC Corporate Director Tom Campbell said a room in the back could be converted to one but that’s a future decision. For now, the right side of the store is sectioned off, back to front, with a handful of appliances; an 8-foot section of audio components from Denon, Marantz, Heos, Onkyo and Integra stacked neatly in columns; an equal-size section devoted to far fewer Sonos products; and vignettes with TVs and front-channel speakers or sound bars around them.

Harman’s Revel brand -- its flagship speaker line -- owns three of those vignettes with floorstanding speakers flanking large flat-panel TVs mounted to the wall. One of the TVs is Samsung’s Frame TV, billed as more framed art, or an oversized photo frame, than TV.

Revel has traditionally been sold as the reference speaker in a top-notch home theater system. At this store, the $2,000-$5,000 per pair speakers are in the same neighborhood as a $400 Dyson hair dryer and cordless vac, a Sony PlayStation 4 VR system and cellular phone accessories. When asked why Revel is in what seems like an atypical selling space, the company’s Western Regional Sales Manager William Curtsinger told us: “Brick-and-mortar stores are dying off. This gives us good visibility.” The Century City location, adjacent to Beverly Hills, has “the demographic we’re trying to reach,” Curtsinger said, “and it’s good advertising.” Revel does about $300,000 a year with VAC, he said.

For the launch event, one of the Revel speaker setups was paired with a Sony TV. That will likely change, Curtsinger said, since Harman’s parent is Samsung. Although the companies operate separately, they worked together on “helping Joseph a lot with margin” and “keeping it in the family,” he said. “If you look around, there are no other floorstanding speakers.”

Nearby at the Sonos section, Russell Ramos, Sonos experience specialist, applauded the “trade show” atmosphere. On how his company could able to convey a high-quality sound message in an open space, Ramos first spoke of how loud Sonos speakers can play when they need to but quickly steered the conversation to “simplicity” and “ease of use.” He spoke of upcoming features to the Sonos One -- Google Assistant and AirPlay -- and how users can control a Sonos system “from anywhere in the home.”

Niche audio company Riva Audio, which prides itself on sound quality in the wireless speaker market, landed a prime spot -- the middle strip of six demo tables for smaller electronics. Riva President and Chief Engineer Don North expected store traffic and sound levels to be “modest, but not crickets.” The company will train store staffers to tell customers about Riva’s feature set: the user experience, ease of use and smooth path to getting on the home network, he said. For premium users, they will talk about using Riva with NAS (network attached storage) drives. Sales trainers will also push the “generous return policy [30 days]” because, North said, “the only place you can really demo them is at home.”

The middle-aisle demo stations feature an array of product categories: Bluetooth speakers, smart speakers, headphones, tablets and Samsung smartwatches. At the ribbon-cutting, there were some unlikely neighbors: an iHome clock radio was in a demo station facing a Sony OLED TV. Google Home and Amazon smart speakers sat next to each other at another station.

Video & Audio Center plans to transition its other four stores to the new look, what Akhtarzad calls the “future of technology retailing.” But he doesn’t plan to let go of the forward-facing pricing model that helped get him and his brother, Mayer, another principal, where they are. Their target is “the 1 percent,” Akhtarzad said, but even that consumer is sensitive to price and saving money. “The rich don’t get rich by spending,” he said. “They want to save.”

Prices were shown on a card on most products, with the suggested retail price given, crossed out and appended with the VAC price, the practice its other stores use. That discount-store price tag style seemed incongruent with the upscale atmosphere of the mall, where Apple rarely discounts. A Sony 77-inch OLED had the $19,998 sticker price, marked down to $12,998, and across the aisle the iHome Bluetooth clock radio was discounted to $59 from $69. The TV price was a dollar lower than Best Buy’s price. VAC matches or beats prices from authorized competitors, and that strategy won't change, says Akhtarzad.

Cost saving is a message Akhtarzad wants to convey with VAC's push into smart appliances. A user can load the LG smart washer, put in detergent and then let the machine determine the most energy-efficient time to run, he said. That’s a selling point even to his wealthiest customers, he said, and he had an order of three from one client. The customer wants “two for his laundry room and one for his kids’ laundry area,” he said. Akhtarzad’s goal is to be the No. 3 appliance retailer in the U.S. in three years. His stores won’t stock a manufacturer’s full lines, but he will sell customers any appliance, he said.

Akhtarzad, who studied to be an electrical engineer, is looking to copyright the store's vertical design and “how people are looking at displays,” he said. Customers don’t want to be confused by a mix of products, he said. He wouldn’t give the square footage of the store, which is noticeably smaller than the space of the previous VAC store in the Century City mall -- a space now occupied by a Microsoft store -- focusing instead on the vertical extension of the new space that’s considerably higher than other stores in the area. “It’s how you use it,” he said of store space.

Akhtarzad described the design of the store as “like a department store,” comparing it to Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus or Nordstrom where "you don’t see all the clothes mixed up.” His store has vignettes, store-within-a-store layouts and brands grouped together. One station has Google Home and Nest products to demo the smart home. When we noted Best Buy has been implementing similar strategies, with sections devoted to smart home and voice control, Akhtarzad compared Best Buy with Men’s Wearhouse, where brands are mixed. His customers wouldn’t shop there, he said, preferring more of a “boutique” shopping experience.

The store has an open feel and an “air wall” in front that draws customers in. There’s no glass in the front of the store, except when the store is closed. Display walls are colored with different LEDs, and all lighting can be changed any time, said Campbell. Where another VAC store might use all available space for displaying gear and accessories, display walls facing out toward the mall show large manufacturer ads. There’s a towering mannequin wearing a GoPro camera. Customers can play with VR headsets at the front of the store. A robotic bartender makes drinks.

“The market is changing fast,” said Akhtarzad. “A lot of custom guys and a lot of retailers are not going to exist because the way to go into the market is changing.” People are learning to do more themselves “out of the box,” he said, “so they don’t rely on custom guys anymore.” Products like Sonos that consumers can set up themselves are “killing the receiver business and killing the speaker business,” he said.

“We need to go to the next notch,” said the retail veteran, who sees technology’s future in voice control. The store has Google Assistant- and Amazon Alexa-based products, but doesn’t sell Siri-based Apple products, which are well represented two doors down. “I want to have a good relationship with Apple,” he said. He also said if a client wants to do Apple control, “that’s what we do right now,” regarding the company’s custom business, which does Apple control via Crestron and Control4 systems and Apple TVs. A concierge area, near the front of the Apple store, tells customers about the Just One Touch custom business.

Asked whether voice control could go the way of multiroom audio and become as do-it-yourself as a Sonos system, Akhtarzad said it comes down to having the right client base. On whether the Amazon-Google feud could play out at retail and force dealers to commit to one platform or another, he said, “We don’t take sides. We let the consumers tell us what they want.”