Dealer Spotlight: Vernon’s The Hi Fi Attic
Something that we keep emphasising here at Vinylphile is the importance of a good relationship with a knowledgeable dealer. No matter how hard we try to convey how something sounds, at the end of the day the only way for you to decide whether or not a piece of gear is for you is a personal audition. A good dealer will not only let you audition gear—preferably with your own music—they will also allow you to try gear in the only place it really matters: in your own system in your own home. Dealers can also provide system matching advice, and introduce you to alternatives you might not be aware of. With all this in mind, we decided to have a semi-regular feature where we interview a specialist audio dealer.
Our first dealer is The Hi Fi Attic, in Vernon BC, run by Lyle Duffield and Chris Morey. I’ve known Lyle and Chris for several years, and they were (and still are!) very supportive about my plans for Vinylphile. Now that the magazine is a reality, it seems only right that I return the favour. I interviewed Lyle one afternoon this past March, where we spoke about all things audio.
What’s your background? Tell us a bit about yourself.
Well, I guess from high school electronics has always been a hobby, and when I graduated from high school I went to SAIT and took electronics for two years there.
SAIT?
Yes, Calgary. Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.
Oh, OK.
So I took a technologist course, and then I worked in the oil industry for three years doing electronic metering and stuff for some oil companies. And then I decided that I was married and had a child on the way, wanted to settle down, didn’t want to be in the field. A friend of mine had started the very first Kelly’s franchise in Kamloops—Rae Meier—and I had worked for him in Calgary (for an oil company), and he sorta said, “Well, you know, if it goes well I’ll phone you one day”. The first time he phoned me I was on the Madeleine Islands off PEI [Prince Edward Island], and of course all I got was a message that Rae phoned, and no return address or anything because everybody in the hotel only spoke French! [Laughs] So it was sort of a broken message and I didn’t know how to get a hold of him or anything. Then I went back to Calgary and my wife said that Rae had phoned, but didn’t know his number. And then next time I was in Peace River, a little place where there’s more muskeg and trees and water than there was anything else. Rae phoned and said, “How would you like to sell electronics?” I said, “Sure,” and I was out of there the next day! [Laughs]
I went to Kamloops where he had started his first store, and the second store was in Kelowna—that was Grant Putnam—and then what happened was Rae and Grant joined and I was the third store, which was Vernon, and we were a company. I originally wanted to go to Penticton, but Rae said, “Well, we’re not opening in Penticton, we’re opening in Vernon. But if you want to, when we do Penticton you can move there.” After living here I went back to Penticton to look, and decided that I liked Vernon better. It was more of an all... The community was thriving all year round, as opposed to Penticton which thrives in the summer and is dead in the winter. So anyways, we chose to stay here, and I basically hadn’t sold anything in my life or anything. I just had a love for electronics, and that’s where it started.
From where did you get your love of hi fi?
My father was in the Air Force, and we were in Germany in the 1950s, and of course my father bought a Grundig tape recorder way back in probably ’56 or ’57. The only thing you could really listen to on the radio was the BBC, and I used to record it and listen to that. That’s probably where it started more than anywhere, it was just recording and listening to stuff into the evenings.
This was as a kid, right?
Yeah. I would have been probably six to ten years old I guess, when I was there. Then I started playing with it and I got really good, so that I was the one that recorded and did everything. The Canadian Armed Forces actually had a radio station, and the year we went over was the year it closed down. That’s why we were listening to the BBC. They were disposing of all their tapes that they used for when they were on the air, and dad bought a whole bunch of those, and I got listening to those. I actually to this day still have some of them.
This is reel to reel tapes?
Yes. So that was where my love of music first started. And then when I was in high school in Saskatchewan, I used to order Heathkits—what else do you do on the prairies during a cold winter? [Laughs] You listen to the radio, and I used to start building equipment. I just fell in love with that, and that was probably the forerunner of me going to SAIT and electronics.
My next question was going to be “How did you start The Hi Fi Attic”, but I think you’ve already covered that, haven’t you?
That would have been with Rae and Grant, and this was the first store.
So this store was the first?
Well, for me. They had Kamloops first, Kelowna was second, Vernon was third. We did that for 20 years, and then times were changing. The Kelly’s franchise had dissolved—we were still running it as Kelly’s, which was no problem because we owned our own stores, locations, everything—and we sorta I think at that time outlived the franchise concept, and decided also that to survive the store would have to evolve. And how do you compete against the big box stores? We’re not on the same level, and to survive would be to choose pieces of the whole industry and go after those and become more...
Specialist?
Yes. I can react to things quicker, I’m not selling a fridge, or a computer, or anything else. I’m just doing this part. We actually broke Kelly’s into three stores. Back then it was Cantel, which was cellular (we had the Cantel store which we later sold to a group from Surrey that then moved it into the mall and became Rogers). All the car audio went out and we formed another company called Autosound Plus, and we developed a couple of other stores with it. And then Brian, my partner, decided that he wanted to buy me out, which was what I had always planned anyway: I wasn’t interested in car audio anymore. He bought that, and that left me just this part, which is hi fi. We’re not doing ghettoblasters, or... In the Kelly’s days we did records and CDs, and we sorta got out of all that and just chose to do high end electronics.
How important is it for you to have a great relationship with the manufacturers of the products you represent?
Oh, extremely important. If I sell you something and you have problem, I want to be the middle man. I’m here to help you resolve your problem, and I need that relationship with the manufacturer or distributor to be able to resolve things.
You need to know that they’ve got your back?
Yes, exactly. So relationships mean more to us with distributors and manufacturers. There’re many good products out there, but we chose to deal with people we know and trust, and have had a relationship with for many years.
Right, and you can’t represent everything.
No.
Do you sell used gear in addition to new, and if so, roughly what percentage of your business comes from buyers of used gear?
Probably a very small percentage, I would say maybe 10% is used at the very most. It’s more of an accommodation for long term customers, that have bought something and want to move up. We’re able to take that back in and get them into a new piece. We’re not interested in used pieces coming through the door—we’re not a pawn shop. But we are interested in helping our customers advance and get better gear. It’s a way of them getting out of it, and a lot of people don’t want to sell their own pieces. They don’t like people coming to their door, or whatever, or just don’t like the process of dealing with it. So we try to accommodate good customers...
So would it be fair to say that the used gear that you do have is essentially just from customers trading up, as opposed to Joe Random Non- Customer saying “Hey, do you want to buy this from me so that you can sell it”?
Yes, generally it would be from a good customer. We occasionally will accept something on consignment from somebody if it’s a very good piece in great shape. We might accommodate them, but it depends on the room in the store, how much used stuff we have on the shelf at that time.
How has the global economic slowdown affected your business? Are more people buying used gear than before?
No. [Laughs] I guess when things sped up and we went through the big boom era, our high-end sales of individual gear slowed down and everything else, like doing houses and home theatre, really took off. As the housing industry slowed down again, all of a sudden we saw an increase in individual sales of high-end gear. So it’s sorta like a teeter-totter, and goes back and forth for us, so we’re somewhat lucky that way.
Also, the people we’re dealing with can afford to buy things whether the economy’s good or bad. What happens is, if you’re selling cheap gear and the economy goes soft, it’s the people with no money that can’t afford to buy. So we’ve sort of positioned ourselves a little above that. It still effects us somewhat, but not a great deal.
What are the benefits of buying from The Hi Fi Attic?
The knowledge we possess, our knowledge of equipment. Basically, a passion for music and trying to do what’s right for you. We’re not interested in unloading this big pile of equipment we bought when we shouldn’t have. [Laughs] We’re really trying to find out—for your budget—what will do the most for you, make your toe tap and enjoy it.
So it’s the more personal service that you’re talking about?
Yes, as yourself will know, it’s more relationships and people become family almost.
How would you describe your average customer, and roughly what proportion of your customers are new (as opposed to repeat) business?
Repeat is very high. I would guess that repeat business is 60%, maybe even higher. Usually we have customers bring in new people to us; referrals are very big with us. We don’t do a lot of advertising, very minimal. Everything is word of mouth, and people just find out and they tell their friends. You know we do these evenings where people come, and we’re not trying to sell you anything, we’re just trying to let you see what’s out there and different brands and what they do. People come to those things and all of sudden they’re at a dinner party, it goes quiet and then they go, “I was at The Hi Fi Attic the other day, and believe it or not they had a $20,000 single CD player!” It’s a piece of conversation and people get interested and they come down. It’s not that we sell a lot of those, but it starts the interest as a place to come and look.
Roughly what proportion of your clients have analogue sources, and how has that trend changed over the past few years?
Well, back in the Kelly’s days vinyl was extremely important to us, it was a big part of the store. I’d say it’s dwindled to probably about 10% of the store. We still sell turntables, cartridges, record cleaners, and we have a bunch of used records that people are always going through. It has dramatically dropped off, but at the same time, people with collections have maintained the interest in maintaining their record players and cartridges. We see young people now—they’re not droves—but young people all of sudden get interested in the fact that they can buy cheap records, and a lot of music is great from that era. They come in and buy a used turntable and sometimes they move up to a half decent new ’table. So, it’ll never come back, but there will probably always be a certain market for it. All of our competitors are basically out of it; they’re not selling turntables for their surround sound with six speakers, it doesn’t exist. We’re able to fill that market and do OK.
You host several after-hours events every year. What impact do they have on your business, especially from new customers?
Umm, quite a bit. We encourage people that are coming that we invite to bring somebody that they know. It’s not like we’re gonna arm wrestle anybody to by something—as you know, we’re very relaxed and calm about it—but it’s to show them what we have. A lot of those people do come back and buy, or they bring other friends. Again, it’s a word of mouth thing. You know, “You’ve gotta come and see this little place!” This isn’t Vancouver or Toronto. This is Vernon, a small city, and we do quite well with high end.
How do you decide whether to take on a new line?
A new line has to have something of interest to us: one thing is the quality of the line. We need to see a hole or we’re not happy with something else. We don’t jump lines and change every day, but at the same time we’re always looking for something new to bring into the store so that when people come in, they’re like, “Oh wow, when did you start doing this?” But at the same time, we’re not just gonna jump ship and change lines we’re doing well with. So we go through this flow all the time, and we have our standbys that will always be here, but lines have ups and downs just like stores do. They’re either hot or they’re cold, and some lines are very strong in the store and whether they’re hot or cold we’ll stay with them. Other lines we’ll slowly drop off. You just wonder why you’re doing a lot of work to try to sell them, and then it’s time to move on.
What’s the best demo session you can remember? And the worst?
Oh the worst! [Laughs] A guy came in one day and he wanted an amplifier—I forget what the price was, probably $299—so I said we have this line. Back then it wasn’t a very strong line, but we thought it was good. It was called Electra. They’re no longer around, so I’ll use the name. He said, “Is this pretty good?” and I said, “Yeah, it’s 50 Watts RMS per channel, it’s well built, and got all the features you want.” So he said, “Well let’s hear it”, so I turned it on, we both stood back and were watching this thing... going up in smoke! [Laughs] He looked at me and said, “That’s the best you have?” I looked at him and shrugged, and he never bought anything. [Laughs] So that was kind of an embarrassment, but after I assured him it was a great product, but oh, that was embarrassing.
Umm, the best sale or demonstration? I had a guy come in one day. Actually, he just wandered in—he’d been playing golf. He came over to see what we were about, he was from out of town. We were sitting there talking and showing things, and all of a sudden he walked out with $30,000 worth of stuff, just boom! He was just playing golf, on his holidays! He was, “OK, that sounds real good. I’ve never heard anything like that”. He bought it all, and I was like, “You want it all now?!”
As a specialist audio dealer, you presumably have access to pretty much whatever gear you want. What’s currently in your home system?
Ooh, you shouldn’t ask me that one!
An old Dansette?!
[Laughs] Yeah! Actually, I’ve just been remodelling my sound room and just redid the whole thing. I have a Dreamvision projector, which is up there—it’s quite nice. I’m running a Pioneer Elite receiver, and Parasound in-wall speakers. They’re temporary, they’re just in there until... I actually ordered MartinLogans, in black, but they have never come. You can only get them in white, and I need black. They have a cloth so I couldn’t really paint them. So I’m sort of in between; I’m looking at several other brands right now, and I’ll probably change. I have a MartinLogan subwoofer, prior to that I had the Velodyne Servo 1200. And I have VHS, StarChoice, and I’m running a Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player. It sounds better than what I thought it would. Whether that’s the room and how it was designed, I don’t know, but it’s remarkably nice to listen to, and it’s probably slowed me down! [Laughs] But I have to finish it. I’m sorta like the shoe maker, you know, you do shoes all day, you go home and you go barefoot. I’m sorta the same way sometimes, but every once in a while I reach a point where I’ve got to do something, and away I go and change it.
Upgradeitis strikes?
Yes!
How much time to you get to spend listening to music at home, and what are some of your favourite records?
Oh, actually, I spend most evenings listening to some music. When I get up in the morning I like to wake up to Huey Lewis, things that get me moving in the morning. I really do use music to change my mood. I like to get up, it’s a sunny day, fresh. I wanna be pumped, I wanna go out there. When I come home at night, I really want to just relax and settle down. It’s more blues and jazz. The era I’ve really come to like is the doo-wop years. For some reason I just love that music. But I’m a pretty eclectic guy, I listen to everything, but if I really want to sit down and just really enjoy something, that’s the era I would go for.
I think you mentioned this before, but presumably you’ve become friends with many of your clients over the years?
I would say most of them, yes. We were talking about worst things earlier. I’ll tell you a story. I had sold a gentleman a Thorens turntable. He used to come in every week and buy records, so I said, “How do you like your new turntable?”. He said, “Well, every now and then it plays backwards”. I said, “How does a record play backwards? I’ve never heard of such a thing.” He said, “No honestly, it plays backwards.” So I said, “Bring it back in and I’ll look at it.” So I had it for three days. It worked flawlessly and I gave it back to him. The next week he’s in buying records on a Friday, and he says, “It’s still playing backwards.” I said, “Next time it’s playing backwards, I want you to phone me”.
Three days later, the phone rings. “Lyle, you’ve gotta come: it’s playing backwards!” So out to his house I go, and sure enough it’s playing backwards. I brought it back to the store, it would not play backwards. And then all of a sudden, on about the fourth day, it started playing backwards. So immediately we were on the line to Thorens, saying, “We’ve got a turntable, and it’s playing backwards! What’s with this?” What the problem was is this: it was a 24-pole motor, and one of the windings had been soldered on backwards. So it was like a roulette table: you spin it, and if it landed on that spot, when you next start it, it would go in reverse. You had a one in 24 chance of that happening each time you started it. So anyways I got it fixed for him—they replaced the motor—and everything was fine. He worked for the newspaper and he moved away. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, and one day, about four or five years later, he comes into the store and says, “Lyle, my turntable’s still playing OK!” [Laughs]
So our customers are long term. People move away, we have people all over the country and they still phone us and we ship them stuff or they ask our advice. It’s not always about the sale, it’s just being there for people.
What’s next for The Hi Fi Attic?
Retirement! [Laughs] I’ve got a few years to go yet, but it’s getting closer. When my wife retires I will probably retire. Ideally it would be to maybe sell the store, and I would not walk away from it. I’d still like to work—I don’t even care if I get paid. I’d just come to work when they needed me, so I could still buy some equipment cheap. But in the short term, say the next five years, we’re entering some interesting times. Technology is really changing. Instead of turntables we’re dealing with iPods and Internet music. It’s a whole new world again, and it’s coming very fast, and it’s getting very good. It’s gonna be interesting to see what comes.
Contact Information
The Hi Fi Attic
1005 Kalamalka Lake Road
Vernon
BC V1T 6V4
(250) 260-3336
www.thehifiattic.com