Pioneering spirit
Published: ASIA
Three years after its inception, Sennheiser China has gone from strength to strength. By building an experienced and knowledgeable team it is pushing new frontiers.
Founded in Germany in 1945 by engineer turned entrepreneur Professor Dr Fritz Sennheiser, the brand that continues to bear his name has become a leading manufacturer of professional and consumer microphones and headphones. At the age of 98, Dr Sennheiser may have recently passed away, but the Sennheiser legacy he built from scratch continues to pioneer new developments in sound technology.
Employing some 2,000 people throughout the world from its headquarters near Hanover in Germany, Sennheiser operates four manufacturing production sites around the world together with a global network of sales ubsidiaries and long-term sales partners. It may have taken some 47 years for Sennheiser to take its first formative footsteps into Asia, but it has certainly made up for lost time. In 1992, it established a new subsidiary in Singapore, to oversee the entire Asian market except for Australia. It took a further 15 years following that before China was given its own dedicated office set up. However, since opening for business, the decision to do so has been well and truly vindicated.
Throughout the 1990s, Sennheiser Asia acquired a strong foothold in the region for all its business segments including music, theatre, broadcast, film/studio, consumer, conferencing and aviation. The Singapore office had overseen and maintained Chinese accounts since 1994, but a decision was finally made to open new subsidiary offices in both Mainland China and Hong Kong by the German manufacturer in order to better serve and penetrate the Greater China area, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Several new offices were established after 2000, including Beijing, with an aim to improve customer service with customers in mainland China. Finally, in 2008 the traditional dancing dragons and drums beat while the ribbons were cut initially at the 300-sq-m Hong Kong office located Kwun Tong, Kowloon, closely followed by the 500-sqm Beijing office in early 2009.
At the time of their inceptions, the closely interlinked Beijing and Hong Kong offices consisted of 16 and 13 personnel each, comprising carefully recruited experienced sales, marketing, finance, administration, logistics and technical service teams. The current Greater China team now exceeds 40 and continues to grow monthly. If the current sales projections are anything to go by, it will have doubled in size by 2012. ‘We’ve seen a very encouraging trend in the Chinese market for some time now,’ explained Volker Bartels from the Sennheiser executive team. ‘Chinese consumers are becoming increasingly aware of premium brands and the high quality of German workmanship. It’s now the time to have our own sales and marketing subsidiary operating in mainland China. We may have started small, but for four years now we’ve been achieving steady double-digit growth in the Chinese market, and this trend is set to continue despite the current world market situation. We are well prepared to serve the Chinese market with the two subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Beijing.’
Marc Vincent was charged with the task of ensuring Sennheiser’s fortunes aren’t left to chance in China. The President of Sennheiser China is of Canadian descent and perfectly fits the pioneer spirit of these new subsidiaries as he describes his thought process in accepting the challenge laid down to him. ‘The nearest I’d been to China before being offered the position was Bangkok, where I had installed a studio in the 90s,’ he readily confessed. ‘In late 2006, while I was working at Sennheiser Canada, I was offered the job to set up the Chinese operation. I flew out to Beijing for a four day assessment trip, which is in no way long enough, but I had this really positive vibe about the place. When I returned home I discussed it with my partner Stella and we decided to sell everything and relocate to Beijing.’ Mr Vincent and his wife relocated to the Chinese capital in February 2007, taking with them just two suitcases each. They haven’t looked back since. ‘It was the best decision we have ever made,’ he admitted From 1987, Mr Vincent gleaned 13 years of experience working in the USA and Canada primarily selling and installing studio equipment in addition to acoustic design. ‘I really enjoyed my time working for a company called Sascom. We supplied and installed high-end consoles from Raindirk, Soundtracs and Lafont into studios such as the Lucas Skywalker Ranch and Paramount Pictures. But then Pro Tools came along and the budgets started to shrink. I was spending a lot of time travelling, so when I was offered the opportunity to work closer to home for Sennheiser Canada as their new VP of sales and marketing, I took it.’
From January 2000, he showed a very special knack in assembling a winning team during the ensuing seven year stint. ‘I was allowed to build a small team in which I assigned good sales guys to the new product divisions that Sennheiser were starting to roll out, such as Evolution, wireless, the 600 series and so on. They’d get to know their products inside and out and were constantly on the phone answering questions helping our customers and in doing so driving the sales forward. If you find and develop the right talent, they will ultimately run the business, take on responsibility and won’t want to leave as a result. When it was time for me to leave for China, I didn’t need replacing as everyone knew what they were doing and didn’t need managing. This is the best accolade that you can achieve and I want to achieve similar results in China.’
Mr Vincent identified Priscilla Lam as the regional manager of sales for the Hong Kong subsidiary, having been won over by her skills in selling him a 100-sq-m booth and outdoor stage at the Shanghai Pro Light & Sound in 2007, despite him having no budget. ‘Priscilla realised we had no budget, but discussed some ‘creative solutions’ with us and before I knew it I had spent a small fortune. To say I was impressed with her sales skills would be an understatement.’ Soon afterwards however, Ms Lam was repositioned to her more natural role as director of marketing, allowing Bernard Lee to assume the sales director position.
In total, there are currently five directors employed in both Hong Kong and Beijing. ‘When you have the right team, everyone knows what they have to do,’ furthered Ms Lam. ‘We don’t need to spend our time having meetings and discussions, as we almost always end up at the same conclusion. We’re self driven by positive energy and we all really enjoy working together and pushing the boundaries. Each director drives their own team and all our combined successes add up to building Sennheiser brand values.
We approach things differently and burn the midnight oil, but the results are gratifying.’ On the consumer side of the business, Sennheiser has agreed terms with some of China’s leading retailers including Suning Appliance, which has been granted sole chain store representation of Sennheiser’s headphone products in the country. A target of 100,000 headphone sales was achieved in the first year alone, so the future bodes well.
On the professional side, Sound Works & Supplies Ltd was handed the task of distributing Neumann’s catalogue in China, Hong Kong and Macau as recently as February 2010. This followed the decision to nominate Sennheiser’s professional products, such as the 2000 Series of wireless products, to Rightway Audio, who are strong in the theatre, broadcasting and live sound domains. Furthermore, Mr Vincent then signed an agreement to exclusively distribute K-Array in China, encompassing the Italian PA
manufacturer’s highly innovative speaker systems. ‘K-array came up with the most original and exciting live speaker technology I have seen in years,’ he explained. ‘I believe that the KH4 system provides a true solution to significantly reduce touring transportation costs. It just takes time to adjust into believing that such a small system can cover such huge venues. As such we promoted the K-array technology and their systems on a 15 city regional tour throughout China recently.’
‘It’s a great tribute to both Susanne Seidel who is the president of marketing and Paul Whiting who is the president of global sales in Hannover for pushing the decision to invest in the region,’ continued Mr Vincent, who analyses the sales to date with satisfaction. ‘They fully believed in us and had confidence in us. Their judgments have been rewarded as the new subsidiaries in Japan, Russia, India and China are all paying off. The great thing is that we’re not extracting sales growth out of our clients – it’s natural. Our increasing market share is across all fronts rather than being weighted in certain sectors, so it shows we’re doing things right. Everyone who works for Sennheiser comprehends the image, the branding, the philosophy, the respect and the understanding of what Sennheiser is. Ultimately, however, it’s not all about products and business. If you blend the right team, anything is possible when servicing what is the biggest market in the world.’ The long hours and hard work is now paying dividends it would appear. ‘In our first year, we were nominated for best marketing and branding alongside France, Germany and the US at the annual awards in Germany. In comparison, we have a microscopic budget, so when we won, Priscilla was in a state of shock.’
It’s been a fascinating voyage of discovery over the past three years for Mr Vincent and his team who continue to push new frontiers. ‘Many people thought I was crazy to come here at first, but I fully believe that China will be the biggest market for Sennheiser in the world soon. We don’t measure our success against others – we simply do our own thing, set our own goals and we’re not scared of the challenges that lay ahead.’
A Shanghai office was established in late 2009 and once again, Mr Vincent knew talent when he saw it. ‘I was recommended the services of Chen Ziqian, who used to work at Melody Developments by Jurgen Freitag. I invited him for lunch on December 3 last year and knew he was the right person, so when I said at the end of the lunch ‘Let’s get to work, I hired you two days ago’ he was a little taken back. At the time I was in Shanghai to oversee a K-Array installation and had to rush off for a meeting. The electrician on site had no idea about loudspeaker system design, but Chen Ziqian told me to go to my meeting and he’d take care of it. Now he’s never worked with K-Array before, but I needn’t have worried-he set it all up perfectly, and worked well into the night to achieve it. He took ownership and this shows that if you put your faith in others, you will be rewarded.’
China may have some 40 times the population of Canada, but it would take a brave person to stake a bet that the team Mr Vincent is still assembling will not assume total control before very long.