Q&A: Walter Schofield, Mark Levinson

It could be said that the high-performance audio market didn't begin until the launch of the brand Mark Levinson back in 1972. Through the 1970s and 1980s Levinson was the preeminent brand for many enthusiasts because of its JC-1 amplifier and later its No. 30 Reference Processor and No. 31 companion Reference CD Transport.

During the 1990s, however, as the marketplace evolved into a home-theater driven category, the Levinson brand did not react well to the change.

Today the company has reemerged with the reintroduction of several new products including the No. 40 home-theater Media Console and several new amplifiers designed for home-theater applications.

Walter Schofield recently visited CE Pro Retailing to explain how the company intends to recapture its marquee position.

Is the company still producing new products to the same levels that made the brand so desired by past generations of audiophiles?

Walter Schofield: While Mark Levinson remains true to its roots of two-channel music reproduction, the change of our production facility from Connecticut to Bedford, Mass., put us a bit behind schedule for the introduction of home-theater products. You can expect to see many new theater products from Mark Levinson in the next couple of years.

I have to convey how proud we are of our engineering team and what they did to get our current product line to market. The Harman Specialty Group's (HSG) engineering and re-documentation process of Mark Levinson legacy designs allowed our engineers to sonically enhance all our offerings, and their efforts continually receive accolades from dealers, distributors and the press.

Internally, there is a fostering culture for Mark Levinson at the Harman Specialty Group and because of that we will continue to design and build products with sound quality and reliability as our most important priorities.

What are some of the new products the company is offering, and how do they apply to the custom and home-theater markets?

Our current offerings work well within the custom-installation (CI) context. However, our next generation of components will enhance the control and connectivity within the automated and home-theater environments of the future through the implementation of proprietary features.

Suffice it to say, we also have an ambitious goal of introducing 10 to 12 new products within the next two and a half years that will fulfill our business partners' needs for reference audio, home theater and CI applications.

How can a dealer successfully carry a brand like Mark Levinson when the public has been conditioned to accept and buy mainstream products that put an emphasis on price points?

It is no secret that the middle of the market is dissipating in many categories, while the very bottom and top ends remain healthy. With mass-merchant advertising budgets, it's no wonder the market is conditioned to think of a $500 home theater-in-a-box (HTiB) as an exceptional product regardless of one's disposable income.

I don't have to tell anyone in the business about luxury homes replete with pro-style kitchens and expensive furnishings, only to find an HTiB connected to a 27-inch television in the living room.

The good news is that our dealers and distributors have the ability to take advantage of an untapped luxury-buyer segment that is largely unaware of the existence of high-quality, high-performance entertainment systems.

As a company, we are focusing a major portion of our advertising and public relations dollars on enhancing our brand and category awarenesses among luxury buyers with the intention of delivering more consumer traffic to our business partners.

Does Levinson offer its dealers any formal technical training?

Mark Levinson offers product and technical dealer training that highlights our engineering efforts to enhance both sound quality and functionality. We also offer technical training to our distribution partners that covers board-level component repair and software analysis.

Does the company offer any sales and marketing training, and how can it be leveraged within a dealer's marketplace?

Yes. We offer a "How to Sell Luxury Goods" training session, as well as a consultative sales-training module. We are also working on a "History of Mark Levinson" DVD, which we hope to have ready in the fall.

Additionally, we conduct dealer events for end-users that we call "The Mark Levinson Music and Movie Experience." These events are non-technical in nature, and they are focused on listening and appreciating music, while getting people engaged to the performance.

We have grown from hobbyists to a group of serious businessmen in recent years, but we still need to have fun doing what we are doing.

At the same time we need to ensure that our dealers and end-users experience all the positive emotions that music and movies should and can evoke.

If the Mark Levinson brand is truly back, can dealers expect the company to be more proactive within the custom channel by engineering products that are more representative of the products and technologies that people want from their music and movie systems?

The re-introduction of the No. 40 media console [preamplifier/processor], along with other products such as the No. 433 triple-monaural power amplifier are all examples of what can be accomplished when we apply our renowned engineering experience to home theater.

We are working to fulfill our business partners' needs for home theater, music and custom-channel components.