Some reminisce and going forward 2026

2026 is going to be interesting. In our small world of high fidelity and automation purveyance we mark 35 years in our Carlton location. The world is no friendlier than 1990, when Mr Kennett was selling off the profitable state assets for the “magic of privatisation” that simply downstreamed extra costs onto the weary backs of middle Australian consumers to fund the profits of the foreign companies that now own our utilities.

Our largest disruptor of recent times … well there was Covid of course … we were meant to have a sharp recovery after the pandemic. Instead, Mr Putin invaded the Ukraine and launched a period of consequential inflation as perhaps a form of intentional economic warfare on the west. The special military operation that was meant to take three weeks is heading for its fourth year and the world is a less happy place.

Mr Trump and his absolutely bewildering tariffs have done material damage to our marketplace. Those brands that depended on the US market have been damaged substantially with the new costs often being disseminated internationally rather than simply burdened on the US consumer. Thus we have seen mainstream AV products be qualitatively degraded as they respond to rising costs with lower quality production values to maintain price points.

Some brands have left our market altogether rather than struggle. In an own goal the first brand to see a price rise was the iconic US McIntosh brand that suffered a twenty per export price rise as their manufacturing costs were raised by the tariffs.

Meanwhile we have seen the rise of the new school of Chi Fi …  Dragon brands like Eversolo and Wiim are rewriting the rules for cost effective streaming and amplification. In our small select brand scene those UK brands that were taken over by the Chinese in the noughties, the likes of Quad Wharfedale Mission et al, are back in the playground with a stunning combination of mentored design and a build quality that the UK factories in the noughties were simply incapable of.

Now the primary acquirer of those UK brands, a company known as IAG, is going full circle and opening manufacturing facilities for high end audio back in the UK. We have just acquired our first pairs of UK made Wharfedale Aston speakers and they are exceptional.

A few Uk brands … Spendor, Rega, Cyrus, Chord Electronics for example, held the line and have maintained their UK manufacturing facilities throughout that transitional period of the nineties and noughties. These are superb entities that are marked by a morality of their work practices and a dedication to brand values. Today they are back in force with a design strength and build quality that set the absolute standard for high fidelity products in their price ranges. It warms the cockles of my British heart that these particular brands are on the ascendent.

These independent and successful UK Hi Fi brands generally have a continuity of ownership and management where there is a genuine passion and innovation alongside a commitment that goes beyond short term financial return.

On the other hand, those British Hi Fi manufacturers that sold out or were possessed adversely in the nineties were marked by management that was divorced from the welfare of the staff, and were simply looking to sell off the assets and the brands for max value and personal return without any regard for the continuity of provenance.

I went on my first UK supplier trips as a director in the late nineties and early noughties and was mortified by the management norms of some of these UK companies that I was investing in brand corroboration here in our small business in Australia with at the time.

I had naively imagined that they were owned and run by clever audiophile engineers with the disposition of my geography teacher. Think Paul McCowan or Michael Creek.

Instead Mission, Tannoy, Quad, et al were being directed by degenerate aristocrats and speed managers who had sometimes acquired the companies from the founders and “greed was good”. They drove expensive cars at high speeds whilst drinking profusely. They had mistresses in every port and saw international travel as an opportunity for personal goals and debauchery rather than furthering their company’s international future.

And they were proud of it. They boasted to me of their personal pursuits involving greed and lechery while entertaining us on the expense account and giving cursory and sometimes derisive credit and attention to their hard working crews. As a director visiting with a well-educated UK demeanour I was treated as “one of them” and they demonstrated their unabashed greed and corporate pillage. They betrayed their brands and their staff. Their mentorship was shameful.

Now some of these companies are blossoming as new Chi Fi, still with UK personalities such as Peter Comeau designing them but with fantastic new Sino derived precision and cost effective manufacturing.

Monitor Audio is a particularly good example of effective transition into full offshore production. With all their kit designed by very dedicated Essex technical crew but working synergistically with their Guangdong factory since 2004. They are actually the worlds largest consumer loudspeaker brand in a very quiet way with their own shops in China. These days they also own Roksan. They bought it for a single pound after the previous Brit owner pillaged it with debt.

Quad is also born again, still with British design values but with a build quality and utility that makes the old UK gear look neolithic. The new Quad electronics have a tactility that is only found in the best of high fidelity products. They have gone full circle and have opened a factory in Huntingdon to make the new Electrostatic loudspeakers.

Going forward in 2026 it seems that we are going to be in a state of perpetual Cyber Sale. In Australia Black Friday sales started in September and have continued into January. It is apparent that the major retailers are adhering to the letter of the ACCC by advertising a high retail price on their mainstream white goods brands for a month, then bringing the prices back to the Go price for the “sale”.

It’s not that consumers are getting a bad deal, they can always ask for the go pricing and get it at point of purchase. It is perhaps more that the retail majors are forced into this pricing policy as a result of their needs to have something … anything … to promote in their over saturated advertising environment.

It is possible that some of our specialist brands, that were tier one Hi Fi and Visual, may have been irrevocably damaged by being sold at twenty per cent off for nearly half the year. We deal with most astute and high research consumers, they aspire to products and will devote long term study to the pricing of items that they are interested in. Why should they ever pay full price when the brand may be found on sale for such a protracted period?

The local AV specialist scene has, in my humble opinion, never been better. There have been casualties, especially in those businesses that had a business model dependent on middle Australia home owners, but there has never been such a cool bunch of Hi Fi shops in Melbourne as there will be in 2026.

Unlike the majors, these owner operator stores exist in a genuine condition of fierce competition with each other. It’s much more than just competing on price though, the quality of the offer is what is on the line here, and the potential client visiting stores will meet fantastic standards of presentation and salesmanship.

Needless to say, we doing our best to ensure that Carlton Audio Visual is up to the standards of the new school of retailers and integrators …

We have been building walls, both literally in our new premises at 186 Lygon St, and figuratively with a nurtured selection of additive products. What is old is new, we retain our industry partner distributors who empower us to proffer competitive and qualitatively exceptional products.

At the end of the day we are only as good as the people who work here and the customers we work for ... and they have been fantastic. 

Thankyou colleagues and clients.