Molding your passions into a profitable career is something we all strive to do. No easy accomplishment, it’s one that requires an ample reserve of persistence and patience. Mason Granade had both. A musician and audiophile for most of his adulthood, to Granade, selling hi-fi at an electronics superstore seemed like a natural career path. The market, however, had different plans.
“Once things started going custom, hi-fi began to die, and I knew I needed to adjust in order to survive,” Granade relates. His adjustment entailed bidding adieu to the hi-fi business and joining the crew at a nearby custom home electronics installation business. It wasn’t long before he was itching to run his own business.
During the interim he supported himself by selling used cars. During that time, people called me nonstop at my house asking me to install home audio systems for them. I sold more electronics out of my trailer than I had sold used cars off the lot. I guess you could have called me a ‘trunk slammer’ of sorts, but clearly I had a following and people liked the work that I did.”
The calls and requests encouraged Granade to push his business plan into high gear, and in 1999 he launched his own A/V installation biz in Monroe, Louisiana, called Home Cinema & Hi-Fi. “Although hi-fi remained my passion and expertise, home cinema as a hot ticket at the time, I knew I had to offer the complete home entertainment package to clients.”
Like many other A/V specialists, soon discovered that his main competition wasn’t other area A/V specialists but the price tags on products found at the same type of big box superstores where he had once worked. “My biggest battle was and still is convincing customers that I am able to compete price-wise with retailers,” he says. In many cases, the white-glove service and expert installation he could provide didn’t matter to customers. It all boiled down to finding the best price in town on products. It was this challenge that lead Granade to Wave Electronics and its line of Elura speakers.
“The Elura speakers allow me to hold the market because they aren’t sold directly to consumers through retail channels; I don’t get ‘shopped’ by offering Elura, so I can maintain a good price margin,” Granade explains. “Plus, the speakers have some really great features, like the bezeless design, that appeal to clients.”
Granade also credits the fact that Elura speakers come in three different models—red, blue and black label—for being by far his company’s best-selling product. Of his company’s yearly $1.5 million in sales, Elura speakers contribute $35,000. “There’s something for every application, whether the client was multi-room music or surround sound, lives in an existing home or new construction, has a tight budget or a looser one.”
Another bonus: Because Wave Electronics has distribution centers nearby Granade never needs to worry about the overhead from stocking them at his showroom. “There is no warehousing expense, I can either drive to pick up product or have them shipped affordably next day.”
