B&W, Classe and Rotel Expand High-Performance Audio Offerings

Bowers & Wilkins (B&W), Classe Audio and Rotel—three companies well-known to CE pros and audio enthusiasts—are looking to help dealers recapture lost revenue streams.

Bucking the electronic industry’s video-centric focus of the past decade, these companies are in the midst of an educational sales and marketing initiative that emphasizes the audio side of the market.

From a product perspective, the brands have expanded the scope of what they’ve traditionally offered consumers and are supporting new product ventures with several mechanisms to help educate consumers, according to Doug Henderson, vice president of sales and marketing for The B&W Group, which owns B&W and Classe and distributes Rotel in North America.

At the center of its efforts is a system guide that helps dealers establish turnkey-like guidelines to place clients into systems that meet their budget and performance criteria.

“What we’re trying to do is suggest possibilities,” explains Henderson. “These systems won’t be sold as turnkey [solutions], they’ll be sold as individual pieces. We wanted to set the bar high and backfill it with less expensive products.”

The benchmark 7.7 system retails for $258,000 and features products from B&W’s CT8 product line and electronics from Classe’s CT series of custom installation rack mount line of products.

At the other end of the spectrum, the guide includes a more value-minded $7,500 suggested system that is made up of B&W’s CT7 components and electronics from Rotel.

Custom Installation Drives Initiative

At the heart of the company’s audio focus are products that address the latest trends in consumer preference and particularly products in the home.

• B&W’s Custom Theatre CT8.2 LCR—This loudspeaker can be used for nearly any home theater application.
• B&W ISW-4—The in-wall subwoofer, which is set to ship shortly, has been at the top of its dealers’ wish list for a long time. It incorporates dual 8-inch paper/Kevlar woofers and is accompanied by the SA250 external 250-watt Class D amplifier. B&W says the sub will be capable of playing down to 17 Hz at -6dB and will feature a paintable grille to enable it to blend in with the rest of a home’s décor. The companion SA-250 is designed to drive two ISW-4s to allow CE pros to install high-output audio systems that are capable of full-frequency response.
• Classe's CT Series—Joining the speakers in The B&W Group’s slate of installer friendly products is Classe’s soon-to-be-released CT Series of electronics. These high-performance electronics are engineered to provide installers with a selection of amplification and home theater preamp/processors that are specifically designed for rack-mount applications.

Henderson says the CT products incorporate many of the same technologies that are in the company’s existing electronics, but they add the appropriate industrial design elements, as well as circuit updates that make them installer-friendly and better-performing.

Classe asked itself how it could make these products easy to install, Henderson adds. What it came up with is a line of actively cooled amplifiers that utilize a unique faceplate and a telescopic rail system that cuts much of the labor out of installing a heavy set of home theater electronics.

“We took the opportunity during the re-design to look at the circuits [of the products] again," Henderson says. “They are spectacular-sounding amplifiers and they dovetail with the CT Speakers [from B&W]. They are voiced to match, and the Classe and B&W speaker engineering teams worked very closely together [to develop this synergy].”

As for Rotel, Henderson he says it is evolving by developing more Class D amplification solutions to provide installers with cool-running solutions that can safely live in a rack-mount environment. “The world has changed and you have to have products that live comfortably in this environment,” he says.

Consumers Are In the Mix

B&W is supporting its dealers through the diversity of its products, which is not only helping with the marketing of the brands, but these efforts are also providing a lead-generation tool, according to Henderson.

The B&W Zeppelin, for instance, has been a successful gateway product for consumers to discover B&W and B&W's Society of Sound program has been successful in bringing client referrals to dealers, Henderson explains. “The iPod and Internet have given great exposure to music,” he says, referring to the renewed interest by consumers in music.

“Our message as an industry has been how to recreate that experience. We as an industry, however, need to do quality [system] demos, and we need to inspire our dealers to inspire our consumers.”


Classe's CT Series of amps and preamp/processors is designed for installer-friendly rack-mount applications.