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- [00:00]
Max Deluchire
Foreign.
- [00:12]
Tom Edwards
Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio. The show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Today's episode is a multi sensory experience as we turn to the business of scent and sound. First we hear from the founder of a sonic branding studio who's turning his creative instincts to the world of fragrance.
- [00:34]
Max Deluchire
The best brief you can give us is actually one that has sound in it. Give us sound, because from sound we can instantly translate how that may come to life in scent. Because if you give us sound, we can translate that better than any other sensory mode.
- [00:48]
Tom Edwards
And later, we meet the founder of a British audio company that's built a loyal following with its design led high performance systems.
- [00:55]
Alan O'Rourke
We think we make wonderful products and when people discover our products and then they get it home, they send us an email saying, you know, I've never heard my music sound so good. We do what we do for the love of music, really, I guess.
- [01:07]
Tom Edwards
This is the entrepreneurs with me. Tom Edwards, you're listening to the entrepreneurs. Max Deluchire is the co founder of dlmdd, a global agency that helps brands define how they sound and now how they smell. Trained as a composer and shaped by a career in music and across media, Max has worked with clients like Amazon, Singapore Airlines and Mini to craft sonic identities. More recently, his team launched Scent by DLMDD to explore the role of fragrance in brand experience. Max stopped by Midori House to explain why scent is the next frontier. I began by asking him what a sound branding expert is doing in the world of fragrance.
- [01:57]
Max Deluchire
My background, the background of all my business partners is in the world of sound. And we've set up a relatively successful agency that works with brands all over the world on their sound identities. And I suppose the move into scent comes from, well, many things, you know, a passion from my side. I've always liked scent. I've absolutely no knowledge in it whatsoever, so no right to play, I suppose. But sound and scent are brilliantly aligned. You know, they do very, very, very similar things in marketing science, in psychology, in the ways we live our lives. And I think there's a bit of a shift as well in the world of branding and advertising and marketing at the moment, where sensoral branding is becoming a bigger thing. We've had clients over the years now say we've done a sound, we've created a sound and started to become synonymous for it. What do we smell like? Maybe we should think about that, you know, what do we taste like? All these kinds of things as well. And so I've been thinking about it for a while, you know, a year or so, to be honest. And then there's that point, isn't there, where it goes from pub chat to somebody's got to say, right, we're gonna put our stake in the ground, we're actually gonna do this thing. And so we did. And the more I've learned about it along the way, the collisions, if you can call it that, or the. The beauty and the marriage of sound and scent is just brilliant. A perfumer works in just the same way that a composer works. And as I spoke to more perfumers or heard more perfumers talk, I thought, this is just brilliant. You could just change the language, the vocabulary, just replace the word sound with scent, and you're talking in very, very similar world. So that was the sort of nucleus for it, really.
- [03:27]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
And it's interesting, isn't it, because I don't know if it's apocryphal. You probably have all the facts and figures at your fingertips. But people always say that scent is the most powerful trigger, certainly for sort of nostalgia and memory, don't they? And so I guess you're right. If you're thinking, what's the glib word holistically about what a brand conjures in the minds, in the feelings of its audience, of its consumer, of its prospects, you can't neglect.
- [03:52]
Tom Edwards
Do you think that you'll end up.
- [03:53]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Being, you know, the one stop shop then for these sensorial experiences, or do you think already, I don't know. What does the early direction of travel tell you about whether people might say, can you help us just with this? Or do you think they might like you to look at everything, or does it not really matter?
- [04:06]
Max Deluchire
Well, in the first instance, I thought, well, people could come in and say, well, we've done a sound with you, great. We can do a scent as well. They might come in and do scent and say, oh, you do sound as well. But there are definitely the briefs out, out there in the world where people are looking at both at the same time. They're the golden ones. And interesting, particularly in the Middle east, where scent is very well understood as a thing in just everyday life and sort of scent brands and scent identities and that idea of sort of fragrance and somebody's identity. Seen quite a lot of briefs emanating from, from that part of the world already that are crossing both. So, yeah, I mean, it's either way. People can come in and do one or the other or both. But yeah, I mean, obviously the golden nugget for us would be to have clients coming in and doing both activities would be fantastic.
- [04:44]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
The One Stop shop. So you've mentioned that it made sense to you, but you didn't have the deep background or any background. So to whom do you turn? And you said you're passionate about scents. I'm sure you had your favorite, you know, fragrances or perfumers or houses or even, you know, these noses who have these famous reputations within the trade. What did you do? Did you just get in touch? Did you start to go and visit with people? Take us back to that very, very start of the process?
- [05:08]
Max Deluchire
Yeah. So the first thought was, right, if we're going to do this in our sound business, we work with the best composers all over the world to make sound identities for some of the biggest brands in the world. So I thought, right, we're going to use exactly that same methodology here. We're going to go and try and find the best perfumers out there. And I thought, well, in my, you know, small but passionate knowledge of the world of scent, I thought, well, where would be a good place to start? And I'm quite a big fan of the brand Molten Brown. I don't know if you know, Molton Brown, but very sort of, you know, iconic British fragrance brand. I thought, better find out who the noses are behind who designs, you know, for Molten Brown. Where are these people? So a bit of research and, you know, got a few names together. Realize there's this family out in the south of France who design some of Molten Brown's most iconic fragrances. So I thought, right, I'll get in touch.
- [05:55]
Tom Edwards
Oh, another trip to the south of France.
- [05:56]
Max Deluchire
Yeah. What a shock.
- [05:57]
Tom Edwards
The thing, the suffering I do for my art.
- [05:58]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Yeah, yeah.
- [05:59]
Max Deluchire
Well, it was a little bit more difficult. It's a good story, actually. A little bit more difficult than that. So I thought, right, get in touch with these people. Haven't got a website, haven't they? These people have absolutely no website. So I thought, this is really challenging, you know, you don't appreciate or you underappreciate maybe, because everyone is so contactable. When somebody's suddenly not that contactable, you become a bit of a detective, I suppose, to think, you know, the more difficult it was, the sort of. The harder I worked to try and think, well, I've got to try and figure out where these people are and who they are. So got a family's name, the Chabert family in the south of France, in this place that from what I could see from a business address listed on some Sort of business director, a place called Moan Satou. And I thought, right, no website, no, no contact, not even a telephone number. And ended up, I'm not joking, on Google Street View with the. Dropping the little man onto the street, walking around trying to find the address of this place, of this perfumers or perfumery to little success until I got, you know, like, you know, you can sometimes see the, the road sign. And so sort of just scribbled it down and wrote an old fashioned letter saying, you know, I'm Max and I do this thing with this company called Deal MDD and we want to start a scent division. And you love your work and what do you think? And sort of thought nothing, probably won't get there. I actually got one of my team who speaks French to translate it as well. And I thought, actually, you know what, we've probably done that really badly, let's just send it in English and sort of own it. And then I got an email, I left my contact details. I got an email saying, so nice to actually receive a letter. We never received letters. Your letters landed on all of our desks. I wrote to all of them, come and see us, let's talk more. And they happened to be in London. We had an initial conversation. I went out to the south of France and have done with a variety of all the perfumers around the world who we're working with and just started building these connections, these relationships. But that was a story. But it was fun. You know, it's quite unusual to write an old, an old fashioned handwritten letter.
- [07:47]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Well, I was going to say, and it's amazing in these kind of, you know, Entrepreneurship 101, there's all those things like, you know, don't wait because if the more you find out, the less inclined you're going to be to take the plunge and this idea, just reach out to people because the worst that can happen is they don't get back to you. Right. I mean it's a cliche because it's so often true.
- [08:02]
Max Deluchire
Yeah. And people love it, don't they? Especially when, if you're going for a very specific thing and you've obviously done your research. But the more I found out about perfumers and how they work, I just thought this is, it's almost too good to be true. You know, sometimes it is. But I thought, well, this is great. These worlds are so well connected to one another. And I thought actually this is great as well because it's quite nice to. I think I might be wrong, but I think we're the first agency to bring together these sensory modes under one roof. At least I hope we are. And it's quite nice to be the first. I'm sure other people probably jump on it as well, but it's my prediction for where the future is. But it's quite nice. I'd like to be able to put a stake in the ground. So hopefully with the first.
- [08:42]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Hey, well, for now, write in, complain about Max's remarks, challenge him. He strikes me that you'll be ready to. You can discuss it, you can debate it with somebody. So you've reached out to some key people in this sector, the walls come down a little bit and you start to get into it. Talk to me about these sort of.
- [08:58]
Tom Edwards
Phases of development because I find this really, really interesting.
- [09:01]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
And again, to get into the. Interrogate the sort of mechanics of then moving the process forward, you've got this sort of discovery phase, creation, activation. Explain to us how that works, because it's really interesting.
- [09:12]
Max Deluchire
Yeah. So it follows exactly the same format. Developing a scent identity follows exactly the same format as developing a sound identity, which is, first of all, just to figure out what we're actually doing, why are we in the room? What do you want to achieve? And typically, for any brand looking at any part of their identity, it starts with a boardroom thing of we should probably have Ascent. It'd be great to have a scent. We can be iconic for Ascent. But of course, most people doing that have never done it before in their lives. So that first bit of the process is just grounding everyone in what we're trying to achieve. What is the brief here? And that exciting thing of figuring out what is the brand's objective in doing this exercise, but also what are the possibilities? And so once we start all of our work with the discovery phase, that looks at that, paints all the possibilities and then starts to actually narrow. Narrow it down a little bit and starts to be a little bit more particular. So we are translating a brand's values and all of its tenets, all the things that brands have very, very well established in their armoury. You know, if you're a brand and you don't really know who you are, you're probably doing something wrong. You know, the best brand clients we work with have very established principles for who they are and what they are, and then we're translating those into what could that smell like? And it's a phenomenal process because in scent, there's a thing called the scent wheel, which is basically the spectrum of scent. So all of the different scent families from sort of, you know, fruity, from aquatic through to sort of gourmand or the whole sort of spectrum of scent. And it's an amazing thing if you write down, if we were to do it together now, and we had a set of brand identity principles, you start to smell around this scent wheel and we do it sort of live, you know, with fragrance, real fragrances in the room, and it. Your brand starts coming up in all these myriad of different ways and you can start to go, well, probably not that, but that feels so. Something about that over there that felt really, really, really right for us. But conversely, actually, then you showed us this thing over here and that was great as well, because that sort of captures this part of our brand. And so we're going through that process of figuring out what are these different aspects, what different parts of this scent will. Could translate your brand. And then once we've got that, in the very first instance, we've got some key commercial references that we can hang our hat off and that we can start to say, well, perhaps our brief begins to smell like this, you know, in an identity sense.
- [11:26]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
So that's step one and then I guess, step two. I don't know. Each phase, I guess, is in its own way critical and exciting. But maybe the sort of the creation, when you then get to go, I guess, and speak with your master perfumers and say, look, you know, here's the deep research. This is what it tells us.
- [11:43]
Tom Edwards
What happens then?
- [11:44]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Is that collaborative? Do you have to then entrust them? Do they sort of. I imagine them almost like sort of mad sorcerer going away and stirring things up. How does that next creative bit work?
- [11:53]
Max Deluchire
Yeah, it's great. I mean, on that point, go into a perfumer's studio and it is. That is the perfect blend. We say in our sound business, you know, that what we do is the sort of blend of art and science. But it couldn't be more true in scent with a master perfumer, because in their labs, you know, it is. It looks like a scientific workshop, a scientific laboratory, but it's inherently artistic, at least the ones I've been in. There's the sort of creative studios which, which feel like sort of artist studios of the sort of ideas generation. And then there's the very sort of technical side of it as well, where you've got everybody in, in. In white lab coats working away and. Yes, so that once we've got a brief established and we know what we're trying to achieve from a sort of hero perspective, then it's to brief the Master Perfumers. And yet all of our work is deeply collaborative. You know, we don't just sort of go away and come back and say, here's the scent. There you go. You know, enjoy. Goodbye. There's a huge amount of bringing. I think the joy for us is taking our clients into those environments and actually having a hand and being involved in the iteration and development of the thing. It's a brilliant thing. In fact, it's a sort of career memory, I think, for a lot of our clients. So, yeah, it's that collaboration between Master Perfumer, who's obviously the North Star vision in guiding things, but taking everyone on that journey as well and being the torchbearers of it, that's good.
- [13:09]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
And I guess, what about evolution? Because I suppose it's interesting, isn't it? Sometimes you get brands who are quite flighty, they're jumping from one thing to another or a new CMO comes in, they want to change everything around. How does it work with scent? Is that the same as any other brand facet? And it can be a journey that you go on, or if you have something iconic, Martin Brown or any others of Chanel fragrance, whatever it might be, is the value in not changing at all. I guess what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other.
- [13:36]
Max Deluchire
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point about, you know, the sort of. The fundamentals of identity, particularly in anything sensorial. There has to be that commitment to that singular thing. We get it a lot. A lot of clients say, you know, with our assets, can we have different iterations of them? And the more you iterate, the more you dilute the original thing. It's a bit like saying, you know, have Nike changed the visual logo?
- [13:56]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
And that's funny because I guess as you walk around, you might hear, I don't know, a sound door creaking a certain way or the sound of a railway or the echo in a certain room. And I guess these days everyone's got an iPhone, right? You can quickly record something, fragrance, a bit more nuanced. What happens if you are experiencing a scent or a particular. I don't know, somewhere? How do you do you have to. I know. Is it jot it in a notebook. Notebook, try and write it down or. Cause you can't quite capture it in the same way as you can with a visual or even with a sound recording. What happens when that happens?
- [14:30]
Max Deluchire
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, that's why, in honesty, I've gone to some of the world's best master perfumers who've got that catalog. It's an amazing thing, you know, talking to them and getting to know some of these amazing perfumers around the world, is they can deconstruct a scent, you know, immediately smell it and know what is in it. Obviously, I'm not claiming to have that skill at all, I don't. But I have done some workshops and been in the room where you come to know you smell a famous scent, CK1, for the sake of argument. And when you are presented with the ingredients that make up that thing, when you smell it, you almost feel like they're having you on, say, that scent, that iconic scent that's very recognizable, let's say, CK1 in this example. And then they. They say is made up of these, you know, five or six core ingredients. And you smell them and you think, how on earth can that thing become that thing? It doesn't make sense, you know, to the sort of untrained nose like myself, but it's amazing. It genuinely is, you know, that you put these different things together in the pot and stir it around, you know, in simple terms, and it makes that iconic thing. So to answer your question, how you would, you know, note down or capture the. You just wouldn't, because you can. You couldn't at least me work backwards from that at all, but perfumers can, and it's an amazing skill.
- [15:45]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
And do you think when. If you go in and say, I was in, you know, I don't know, would it be in. I was in a cathedral in certain city and this moment struck me and the light was like this, and this was the sound and the scent was. And you can't describe it.
- [15:57]
Tom Edwards
Can they use those other cues?
- [15:59]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Can they almost work back. Do you see what I mean? With the sort of peripheral detail that you give them. Are they that skilled? It's almost like mind reading, I guess, in a way.
- [16:07]
Max Deluchire
Yeah. Well, it sort of starts to straddle into the world of synaesthesia as well, which is that if you hear something, you can smell it. And some of these perfumers, you know, have. Have that amazing thing, you know, and actually, I've been told the best brief you can give us is actually one that has sound in it. Give us sound. Because from sound, we can instantly translate how that may come to life in scent. So obviously for us, that's brilliant. That's the lifeblood of our core agency, tlmdd, is in sound. So I thought that as well, you know, to have a perfumer say the best brief you can give us. Give us, give us the words and give us some visuals and show us the, the person that we're designing for, the audience that we're designing for. But give us sound because if you give us sound we can, we can translate that better than any other sensory mode. Was another sort of bit of a eureka moment.
- [16:53]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Yeah. I hope you just said best brief. Last question. What's the dream assignment? You don't have to name a specific brand, but is there a thing where, you know, followed this to its logical conclusion? You'd be like, ah, my work here is done. What would that, what would that look like?
- [17:08]
Max Deluchire
You.
- [17:08]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Maybe, maybe you've already done that in your audio work, but what about in the.
- [17:12]
Max Deluchire
Yeah, kind of. So I've on a personal level always felt that the brilliant sort of industries for our work particularly are in travel and aviation. You know, always had a dream in our sound business and we were lucky to fulfill it quite early on of working for some of the world's sort of foremost airlines. You know, not a budget airline, but, you know, sort of the more luxurious end of the spectrum where you can, you can design beautifully, you know. And we had a knock on the door very early on in our sound business from Singapore Airlines and we developed the entire sound ecosystem and sonic design for Singapore Airlines. So from the moment you walk into the lounge and walk into the airport through to, you know, when you, when you board the plane, the boarding music, the landing music and there are. It's just unbelievable. This sort of. We do a lot of work that is designed, you know, just to drive a brand, just to hit a brand home really, really hard. And then we get these lovely briefs that are more about experience and sort of beautifying the, the travel experience is one for me anyway. That's just such a fancy. It's like the golden brief. And as I say, we were lucky to fulfill that. Early on we worked with Singapore Airlines and what was particularly interesting about that at the time, and you know, funny how worlds collide at the same time that Singapore Airlines were designing the sound identity, we were doing that in tandem with the creation of a scent identity at the same time that was pre us doing any of our scent business or anything. But it was this very sort of, I guess this was some years ago. So this was sort of quite the early stages of these worlds starting to collide in this sort of multi sensory approach. So it's. Anything in the world of sort of elegant travel for me is the dream because I think that those sensoral aspects are so powerful and so memorable in the travel experience. You go on YouTube and just type in Singapore Airlines boarding music. And there are like, it's crazy. I mean, it's got millions and millions of hits, fine. But there are thousands upon thousands of comments of outpouring. You know, people outpouring say, yeah, this reminds me of going to see my family here or flying here to do this, whatever it might be. And it's just, you know, you sort of read it, you think, wow, it's nice to do work that people really love, you know, and that actually genuinely makes an impact. And that is always the thing in branding and advertising. Sometimes you think, God, you know, does anyone actually care about this? But when they do and they love it, then you enter into something a little bit more special. So that's the sort of sector in the space that I'm most excited about and, you know, already doing some quite interesting things there and it's just, it's the perfect playing field for this stuff.
- [19:39]
Tom Edwards
That was Max Delucia, the co founder of DLMDD. And you can find out more by heading to dlmdd.com and thecentagency.com you're listening to the entrepreneurs. Now we are joined in the studio.
- [20:03]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
I don't know if there's some kind.
- [20:04]
Tom Edwards
Of record a second week running. It's Fernando Augusto Pacheco. Hello, Faye.
- [20:09]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Hello. It's been a pleasure to be here on the Intrepenness.
- [20:11]
Tom Edwards
You know, you're not allowed to just keep inviting yourself back.
- [20:13]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Maybe you'll be back next week as well.
- [20:15]
Strict rules on this now.
- [20:16]
Tom Edwards
We were talking about, well, sonic branding and scent and we're keeping things in the sonic realm.
- [20:23]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
A name I think probably familiar to our listeners. Faye, tell me, what is that name.
- [20:27]
Tom Edwards
And why did it pique your interest this week?
- [20:29]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Well, I'll tell you a story, Tom. I was looking for a very chic CD player and it took me years to find out. Once I read a short review and Monaco magazine written by David Phelan, our technology correspondent. And he was mentioning this brand called Ruark. And then, you know, I had a look at the website. I said, oh my God, this look amazing. I bought it, I wrote a piece about it and how kind of, I really enjoy the sound. It looks good on my living room. And then of course I said, let's talk to the founder. I think it's a great idea. I think it's a great story. You know, it's one of those kind of organic stories that I, I kind of Randomly, but it's really good. And when I spoke to Alan o', Rourke, who is the founder, he co.
- [21:10]
Alan O'Rourke
Founded actually of his father, the company.
- [21:12]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
About 40 years ago, and he's telling me that actually there's a massive market for that, people that want beautiful sound systems in their home. I have to say here, I'm going to promote them because they're good. I have an R3S compact music system with a CD player, of course, in rich walnut. It looks nice. They have different sizes. And we had a great chat.
- [21:33]
Nice promotional material there, Fernando. But it is interesting. I think Wilkinson is one of those brands that, you know, we often talk in audio about heritage allied to innovation. You talk about the 40 years of storied history, but of course, being at the cutting edge, all in the service of richness, of listening experience. Tell us what you chatted about.
- [21:52]
Well, we spoke about, you know, the beginnings as well, and how he's actually feeling quite optimistic about the future of music systems as well. And people care about the quality of their sounds as well.
- [22:03]
Alan O'Rourke
Roark was founded in 1985. It was a partnership between me and my dad. So my dad was a furniture maker, cabinet maker. And he grew up, left school, took up an apprenticeship, started making furniture, which led him into the early stages of the British hi fi industry. So making cabinets for the likes of Hacker Radio, Dynatron and I think that sort of nurtured our love. We always had music playing our house. I trained as an engineer with Ford Motor Company. I think with his cadet making skills and my engineering skills, we just shared a passion for particularly loudspeakers. That's what started us. We used to make our own speakers as a hobby. Did that for quite a few years. And it was sort of friends and family said, these are really quite good. It was back in the day when stereo had just really started to come. Now it went from mono systems into stereo systems. Back in those days, you'd have like the Concorde taking off and you were trying to recreate the sound of Concorde and the orchestras and train the Flying Scotsman, the steam train would come. You had these test records you could buy. So it's very much about trying to recreate the sound of the real live performance in your home. And that's what hooked us. And I loved it. We were just very enthusiastic. But it was in the late 80s, early 80s, I suppose that with some, you know, we thought that, well, perhaps we have something here, this is something we could turn into a business. So we came up with a few designs One being the Sabre was our first bookshelf speaker, quite big by today's standards. Then the broadsword we had and the accolade, and we got in our car and started going out. It was a local dealer as well, a company called Rayleigh hi Fi. It's still there today. I mean, they were the hi Fi shop for the. For the silver Essex area. And we took them into them to sort of listen and they liked them. They bought a few pairs and then we. It spread from there, really.
- [24:04]
That's amazing. And, you know, a brand like yours, of course, you know, since 1985, the music industry have changed so much, but you still make beautiful music players. So there's still definitely a market for that, right?
- [24:18]
I mean, definitely. I think my dad, being a cabinet maker, he knew how to make cabinets which look good. And I've always loved design anyway. I've loved. I just love looking at architecture. And I think we sort of realized that, you know, in this world of, you know, lots of stuff available, you've had to go the extra mile in design to make things which stand out. And I think even more today, people want products which look good in their homes. Monocle is an advocate of that. You know, you less. Less clutter. Buy things which are beautiful. Good design doesn't date and we very much believe in that. And our products are evolutionary rather than. So they've evolved over time. So you can see the link. The right link is always there.
- [25:04]
They are real objects. I think you're music players. So, you know, I have the. The smaller CD player, the R3s as well. But you have, for example, the R810, which is 10A10, which is like a table almost. It looks amazing. It's a proper kind of statement, you know.
- [25:20]
Well, the inspiration for that came from my grandmother. She. Because she had. When I was a kid, I remember going around there and she had one of the original, like a proper radiogram when it had the turntable built in as well. And some of them had a tape recorder and it had a shortwave radio in it as well. I could remember just. I think that's where I developed my love for radio as well. Just scanning through the stations, listening to all these while my mum, my dad were with my grandmother in the. In the other room. I'd be in her front room playing with his radio and playing with his radiogram. I used to love it. And I think radiograms took over from the parlor piano, really, when pianos were thrown out and people got their radiograms in but yeah, so that was really just another statement piece. I mean that's our flagship product. But it's, you know, when you look at what you. Perhaps you go to like Conrad or Heels and you pay for a console table for the same price you're getting a complete music system, something that looks beautiful as well.
- [26:21]
Max Deluchire
Amazing.
- [26:21]
Alan O'Rourke
And do you care as all about the sound quality as well? Because one thing my concern with the streaming era, if I may say that sometimes the quality of the sound is definitely not as good as when you're listening to vinyls or CDs. That's a bit of a concern of mine.
- [26:37]
Tom Edwards
What do you have to say about that?
- [26:39]
Alan O'Rourke
I agree completely. I think that I must admit I do stream a lot because it's access to new music, things you discover. But that's why I like radio. But certainly I think that just because it says you, it tells you it's a high resolution stream. You don't know what's happened to that stream all the way down the line. So it may be a 24 bit, you know, 192 kilohertz, that's what it says on it tells you what it is. But, but it could be an MP3 file they've converted to that. Whereas at least with a record or with a cd, you know, it's true. Sixteen bit, you know, it's a, it's a, you know, you know the quality you're getting with streaming now, if there's a restriction in the bandwidth somewhere down the line, then the quality you get isn't going to be the same as that CD or the, or the, or the LP that you're listening to.
- [27:31]
So how do you listen to your music? Besides the streaming, do you still have a kind of a vinyl collection or a CD collection?
- [27:38]
I still have a, I still have a big CD collection and I still have all my old records as well. Some of which I'm told are worth quite a bit of money. There's some original Beatles recordings and, and stuff like that. So. And at the moment we're seeing a little bit of a, certainly a bit of revival. I think it's lovely to see physical formats. You know, I mean vinyl is vinyl certain back. But what we're hearing is that CDs are, you know, a lot of kids are getting back into, into CDs again. You know, it's that ownership, it's that being able to hold something to touch, you know, own something of, of the artist.
- [28:15]
Max Deluchire
So important.
- [28:16]
Alan O'Rourke
Yeah, it is, it is absolutely.
- [28:18]
Who is your customers or. Because I Do notice that, that younger people, they want to buy the CDs, you know, sometimes they come with different covers as well. Are they also kind of approaching perhaps some of your products, Roark? This kind of slightly younger generation, we.
- [28:33]
Think we make wonderful products and when people discover our products, they tend to buy one then another, Then they have a whole, a whole house full of them. They have an R1 in their bedroom, an R3 in their living room. So it's something that sort of, you know, so people get into. I think it's the design as well. Our thing is to spread our word, I suppose, really, you know, we're still a small company. I think that's the problem. A lot of the, the hi Fi industry is small by comparison to the likes of Sony or Bose. Getting our names known is quite difficult, probably for us. Being in the likes of John Lewis has been very good. John Lewis, one of our, you know, of a good retailer for us. And quite often on the registrations, when people find no, where did you discover our products? It would be, oh, I saw it in John Lewis. And that's where I think the design has been important, because initially they're attracted by the look. I say all the time, if you're maybe wandering through a store and you see something will catch your eye, it might be a new jacket. And you go over and you were never thinking of buying that jacket. But when you try it on, you think, oh, this feels. It looks good. So I think it's being visible. I think that's the trouble with a lot of this. The better products, they're hidden away behind closed doors. Particularly hi Fi shops, you know, especially as hi Fi shops, most people feel a bit perhaps afraid of going in, feel they need to be knowledgeable of the.
- [30:02]
Or very tacky. Yes, they're like, oh my God, yeah, yeah.
- [30:05]
But that's, that's really not the way it is. Some hi Fi stores are starting to sell a bit of vinyl now, trying to get people back in. And that's what it's about. It's a bit like serving nice coffee, making the places more inviting. But I do think that probably hi Fi stores and the enthusiasts that run it, they're not very good at marketing. They think that to have a big pair of speakers in the window, for instance, is going to draw people in. But for many people it's probably a big. I can't go in there. Because they probably think they couldn't afford it. They don't know anything about the products. Whereas, as you know, with little products like R3. It's very accessible and beautiful. And beautiful. And one thing that we, I think that really pleases us a lot of the time is when people do buy products and they bought it initially, perhaps seed in store, and then they get it home, they send us an email saying, you know, I've never heard my music sound so good. And you think, well, what have you been listening to all these? But then they get back into their they listen to their music again and start to seek out new music. We do what we do for the love of music, really, I guess.
- [31:13]
Tom Edwards
That was Alan o', Rourke, the founder of Rourke. And you can find out more by heading on over to RourkeAudio.com.
- [31:30]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
And that's.
- [31:30]
Tom Edwards
All for this episode of the Entrepreneurs. We'll be back at the same time next week. Do look out for Eureka, which drops every Friday. The program's produced by Laura Kramer with.
- [31:39]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
Audio editing by Jack Dewis.
- [31:41]
Tom Edwards
You can find out more and browse the past archive@monocle.com or wherever you get your audio.
- [31:46]
Fernando Augusto Pacheco
If you'd like to get in touch.
- [31:47]
Tom Edwards
With the team, drop a note to Laura. She's on lrkonical.com I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to the Entrepreneurs.