Morpheus in Deutsch

First Morpheus landed in Germany yesterday care of our friends at UPS and our new friends at Design and Sound. We had a call to say thank you and how they were smitten as soon as they opened the box. They had some friends pop over in the evening and they all seemed to want one and the luxury price tag was clearly no barrier.

As I was having the conversation with a clearly very pleased customer, I was reminded of our experience when showing the Morpheus in Las Vegas for first time in a beautifully laid out suite at the Venetian Hotel. Imagine a split apartment set out with an elevated Dining area and a lower level living room. The Morpheus was set out on the Side board with a pair of beautiful Penaudio Rogue loudspeakers and the machined aluminium handset astride.....Now where was I going with this? Oh yes, the experience: Well as people started to stream through the corridors and snifffing their way around all the show bits and pieces as they stumbled upon us the reaction was quite extra ordinary. We in the hi-fi trade are more used to afictionados dissecting the sonic reproduction of their favorite CDs and records as they sit for lengths of time, very seriously, critiquing the products. This time the experience was quite different, more instant , and very pleasing. Almost without exception as eyes locked onto the first Sonneteer Morpheus in the room, they all said:"Oh that's beautiful, I want one" then they said, "oh what is it?". It may as well have been a toaster, we got them at, erm, hello! That's sort of what our friend Christian experienced yesterday at his place.

Now, I am one the two guys who designed the Campion, Alabaster, Byron, Bronte and Sedley as well as one or two non Sonneteer things we will not mention and I am quite fussy about sound qulity and am rarely happy if its not spot on. rarely do I think we've got something spot on as there is always room to improve. Of course if I didnt let go then the campion, 15 years on, would still be on the test bench and in the listening room and Sonneteer would never have come to be. I digress! What I was trying to say is that I have Morpheus in my living room. It is my main system.

Oh I still love the natural stress reliving sound of the Byron through an Alabster and I have as pair sitting to the side begging to take the Morpheus's spot in the corner of the room. Aint gonna happen!

Smelling mistakes!

I just read down and noticed quite a few typos and spelling errors. I'll get round to sorting them out.

Must use spell checker more often, must use spell chocker mre oftem, mist use smell cheker more opten, must use....

On Stephanomics Something I put on a BBC News blog site-Haidernomics anyone?

Posted on the BBC Blog:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2009/07/two_labour_markets.html#comments

I wrote;

82. At 4:39pm on 22 Jul 2009, Sonneteer wrote:

Interesting reading one or two of the comments about markets. Selling DVD players to China caught my thoughts particulalrly and this is why: Both China and India are growing despite the global downturn and their Middle classes continue to grow at a rate of knots. Demand for high quality, luxury, lifestyle goods will hence grow and most of these are developed over here(the so called west). My company, Sonneteer, makes such things for example.

Also, recently, we were costing up a new product for production and one of sub contractors insisted on getting part of the quote subbed out to China. So we compared this with another supplier based in the UK and landed cost actually turned out to be the same. On top of the fact they are less than an hours drive away, in the same time zone, and speak English means the choice is a no brainer. We had decided to make everything in the UK anyway, but it was interesting to find out that the cost argument already means making it here. This will happen more and more as long as we encourage R&D to stay here and we continue to develop and make the quality products here.
In our particular case its luxury 'sexy' hi-fi and area which Britain has a traditional reputationonce akin to Swiss watches. If this can be harnessed in all similar areas of engineering and manufacturing then we have a solid bases to take advantage of these growing economies and at the same time winning the cost as well as the quality argument. it also means keeping and developing the skills and expertise right here.

This is a solid basis to build an economy and if we see it by looking far enough ahead(and it's really not that far to look really) then we can thrive.

Absolute democracy corrupts absolutely

I thought i'd write the heading down while it goes through my mind. pondering upon it.

Sonneteer history updated

Oh I just updated the Sonneteer about page with some more about us and history:

http://www.sonneteer.co.uk/about.htm

So those who read below and wondered if I was ever going to get round to finishing it, this will fill the void. No one reads this anyway! Do they? I wouldn't.

Post on FT.com [link to ft blog shown]

from: http://blogs.ft.com/gapperblog/2009/07/little-laptops-snap-at-the-oligopoly/#comments

This is my comment posted [ go to the above link to see the ft blog]:

This is an interesting take on a theme I experienced indirectly at a course i represented my company, Sonneteer, on recently funded indirectly by HMG.
It was to do with presenting businesses to other businesses, be it for investment or just telling them who you are and what you do. It was part of a lot going on locally here in Surrey by the technology centres and the University, aided by funds from the Government to accelerate British small businesses.

Ok, well to the point, a lot of talk was about the technology in products not being as crucial as how they are delivered to the customer in a package they end up desiring and hence 'investing in'.
At Sonneteer, as a luxury British music systems(hi-fi) manufacturer turned to this approach a couple of years or so ago when we started to look at what customers actually really want (even if they dont know they want it yet) rather than stuffing every latest technology one can think of into an ugly box and trying to flog it.

In a sense a PC or full blown laptop is just this, a box of too many tricks, hampered in its usability because it tries to do so much. Netbooks, for want of a better term, do exactly what they are expected to do.
As a luxury goods maker, at Sonneteer, we have to try very hard to appeal to the 'wants ' of the buying public and more so than in the commoditised(can I say that?) market. So now we make 'Sexy hifi' in the same vein as apple make sexy MP3 players etc. And that's just the point. Desire and actual need, rather than; it makes the tea, cooks the dinner, feeds the dog we dont have and changes light bulbs as long as you are willing to plug in your laptop to it to download some software into it it and spend a day programming it if you have an IT degree!!

Keep it simple, keep it beautiful, make it sellable. HMG says so! To coin a Gordon Brown phrase, 'we've heard you'.

www.sonneteer.co.uk