Why so few US Linn (and Lejonklou) dealers?

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hcl
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Why so few US Linn (and Lejonklou) dealers?

Post by hcl »

Reading ThomasOK's post I find the subject worthy its own thread, so; @ThomasOK (and whoever like to contribute)

I get it why Lejonklou havent been able to build up a huge net of dealers (relatively new on the market and with a very limited budget), but what would You think is the reason that Linn are are so scarcely representated in the US?

Even in these hifi-agnostic times, Sweden count about 1.5 million people per Linn dealer, so quite ok representation.
ThomasOK wrote:I didn't remember that you were in the UK. There is one thing I have talked about on here before but I think it bears repeating in the context of this thread. Of course, it would be best if everyone could listen to all the alternatives and you are in an enviable position to do so. But markets outside of the UK are quite different and the US market is very different. For starters, the last reports I heard were that the US accounts for only about 6% of Linn's total sales. There are several reasons for this from Linn canning the best distributor in the US and trying to do it themselves, to some reviewers being somewhat xenophobic and others just not liking Ivor, to a lack of consistent representation through dealers. From those sales figures it should be obvious that hardly anybody over here does the kind of business with Linn that the larger dealers in the UK do. Therefore there is not the amount of demonstration equipment available on the floor of US dealers in general. Then there is the problem of geographic size and the paucity of Linn dealers in the US. Here is a good example. The state our store is in, Michigan, is slightly larger in land ares than all of the UK! How many Linn dealers are there in the UK? According to the Linn site 62 and from comments on the Linn forum there must be at least a quarter of them that have received recommendations. How many are there in Michigan? One. To take that further Indiana and Illinois are neighboring states to Michigan neither of which have a Linn dealer (that's right, Chicago - the third largest city in the US - has no Linn dealer). Put those three together an you have over double the area of the UK. I could even expand it farther as there is little or no coverage in several more states bordering on those and I have customers who drive from farther away because they have no dealer. But you get the idea: one dealer vs. 62 in an era over twice as large. If you want to go by population instead of land area it is not as bad. However, those three states have almost half the population of the UK so Linn is still obviously underrepresented. What all this means is that listening to all these variations and possibilities for yourself is just not an option for most people over here.
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John
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Re: Why so few US Linn (and Lejonklou) dealers?

Post by John »

Well it looks like today there are 35 Linn dealers in the US, back in 1985 there were twice as many when Audiophile Systems was the US importer of Linn and Naim. Some loss may have been due to the split off of Linn and Naim and then the new requirements Linn began to impose on their dealers regarding demonstration standards or the product line required in order to represent the product. I'm sure most of the most profitable population centers are covered. Chicago is void of a Linn dealer, but there is one just outside Milwaukee, some 90 miles away.
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