"Wouldja like fries with that?"

BTW....I guess we see the market making full circle...there's nothing better than shopping a high end store with GREAT products that are exicting and cutting edge...with a REAL PROFESSIONAL SALES STAFF that have a REAL REASON to be there...and are able to pay the bills...as opposed to KIDS which don't have a clue.

I guess Best Buy is finding that compeating in the High
End arena takes REAL PROFESSIONAL SALES PEOPLE...not that they ever were there...to bgin with.

I was surprised when I walked yesterday into the Beaverton store here in Oregon. They had a piece of paper on the door saying they are closing.

BB's days are numbered too. CostCo & WalMart/Sam's Club will eat them alive before 2011, latest. It will be those & online. CE is following booksellers.

Reflections on Magnolia Hi-Fi, from someone who worked there 25
years.

By Bruce Lee
Note: This article is in response to the February 12, 2009
announcement of Best Buy assuming direct control over Magnolia
Audio Video and the subsequent closing of many of its retail locations.

There’s the danger of making statements of opinion sound like
statements of indisputable fact. I want to be clear, upfront, that what
you read here is strictly a perspective–one man’s take, unintentionally
yet perhaps unavoidably tainted by the fallibility of memory and the
melancholy of looking back on a big, important piece of my life.

But I was indisputably there. My first visit to Magnolia Hi-Fi was in
1974. I was so impressed that I applied for a job there. Not with a
resume, but with a long personal letter to company owner Len Tweten.
I ended up sending two. It took eighteen months to get an interview
with his son Jim. I was hired in 1976, probably more for the reason
that my future brother-in-law already worked there than from the fact
that I had already been selling hi-fi gear for a couple of years. I felt
like I had been admitted to Kennedy’s cabinet of the Best and the
Brightest.

There were parallels between Magnolia Hi-Fi and Nordstrom: Both
founded in Seattle by folks with strong Scandinavian roots, both
family-operated businesses, both renowned even more for their high
level of customer service than for the high quality of products they
offered.

Len Tweten is one of the few people I’ve known who I would
characterize as truly eccentric. All his customers seemed to revere him
and all of the people who worked for him seemed to fear (and,
admittedly, admire) him. To be dressed down by Len Tweten was akin
to being sprayed with a verbal sand blaster. He had odd manners of
language during those episodes, seemingly inventing new cadences of
profanity, delivered always at Klipshorn volume levels.

Customers were correct about getting treated well at Magnolia Hi-Fi.
Len gathered around himself people who shared his vision of
prosperity through people-pleasing. He gave his employees the
authority to act independently to solve problems. He bristled (and
sometimes exploded) at the suggestion of putting together a company
policy manual. To Len, doing the Right Thing for his customers came
naturally. But it has to be said that for us–his employees–the greatest
incentive was avoiding the Wrath of Len should one of your customers
call him with a complaint.

Len and Jim were both gamblers, and their willingness to take risks was
unquestionably a key factor in Magnolia’s success. For example, they
took chances by choosing to carry what were, at the time, audacious
products, such as a $1000 cassette deck (from a hitherto unknown
company called Nakamichi) and the first projection television (the
Advent Videobeam). Bob Carver came first to Len Tweten with the
prototype of what would become the world’s first super high-powered
amplifier (the Phase Linear 700). Jim was instrumental in convincing his
father to gamble on more locations in the Seattle area. These new
stores were often staffed by ex-employees of other CE stores that had
gone under while trying to compete with Magnolia.

Sure, there were some losing hands, but they’re not worth much of a
mention. There were the troubles that inevitably accompany growth–
communication problems mostly. And there was the issue of erosion of
company culture. Again, this was in parallel to Nordstrom. During the
time when it was a regional (Pacific Northwest) player only, Nordstrom
had a relatively easy time hiring salespeople who understood The
Nordstrom Way, as the company often simply hired people who had
been life-long customers. That became tougher to do when the
company expanded into new markets. Magnolia experienced similar
challenges when opening stores in Oregon and California.

The really big payoff for the Tweten family of course was Best Buy’s
acquisition of the company in the fall of 2001.

Personally, I wanted to believe the propaganda I was fed by Best Buy–
that they bought Magnolia because of what it was, that they
recognized a winning formula and didn’t want to alter it (much). And to
this day I feel certain that–at that time–they believed it also.

But I was in a position, as Director of Advertising, to be in daily
contact with “the hive” (BB HQ, then in Minneapolis suburb Eden
Prairie) and, abetted by my natural cynicism, I was aware of significant
changes almost immediately. I won’t bore you with the details, but
suffice it to say that the primary responsibilities of my position
changed gradually but inexorably from creating advertising to pouring
over spread sheets. Eighteen months after the acquisition, I left.
(Postscript: Magnolia’s “in house” advertising department lasted
another year and a half or so after my departure before it was entirely
eliminated.)

Funny. To many observers, the “Golden Age” of Magnolia Hi-Fi was the
stage where it operated around half a dozen stores. Last week, Best
Buy announced the closing of seven out of thirteen stores. Two of the
remaining stores are also among the oldest. It appears at this stage
that Best Buy is content to allow these few stores to continue, albeit
with direction coming now solely from Richfield, Minnesota. (We’ll see.)
Perhaps a retail model such as this is intrinsically limited in terms of
scale, like a complex wristwatch that can’t be mass-produced and still
maintain its quality and specialty.



Bruce Lee is the owner of CreativeLee Advertising