HARMAN Luxury Update

by Dave Tovissi
Vice President and General Manager
HARMAN Luxury Audio

Last month marked our third anniversary of the launch of the HARMAN Luxury Audio Newsletter. A couple of weeks ago, while isolating at home due to a positive COVID test, I revisited our site to review some of the stories and reminisce on what we have accomplished and shared together.

The newsletter was an idea that came about during a strategy session with the Luxury Audio team just six weeks after I joined the company. As we were reviewing our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats we realized that we needed to get better at informing our internal and external customers about our products and services. We decided that a monthly newsletter would be a wonderful way to improve communication and create a more transparent relationship. The mission of the newsletter is to Inform, Educate and Inspire.

Over the past 36 months while publishing the newsletter, we have dealt with a lot of changes in our industry. And our planet! We have been quick to share information on the impact on tariff increases from China in 2019, the fire at the AKM chip manufacturing facility in 2020, and the ongoing impact it had on the shipments of electronics. During the pandemic lockdown, we added a weekly supplement to the newsletter to update you on supply chain disruptions and our mitigation strategies.

Without the ability to launch products at tradeshows during the pandemic, the newsletter became one of the only ways we could introduce you to our new products. Looking back at archived editions of the newsletter I am reminded of how efficient and amazingly effective we were able to work from our basements and garages to keep our projects On Time, On Budget, and On Quality. This is a testament to the incredible team we have at HARMAN Luxury Audio, especially our engineers who were accustomed to working out of our industry leading engineering sites with test equipment and facilities around them.

Speaking of the team at HARMAN Luxury Audio, it has been an honor and a pleasure to work with each of you on the newsletter. Some of you have shared your personal journeys that brought you to HARMAN in the Meet the Team section of the newsletter. Your openness in sharing personal stories has made our company more relatable to others and we love introducing our world-class engineers, project managers, industrial designers, marketing experts, sales professionals and customer support team members to our readers. I can honestly say that I have learned a lot more about each of you as a person by reading your stories, and I have discovered some new bands and albums from your Deserted Island Music choices!

And thank you to our engineers who have contributed as Tech Talk authors for the newsletter - your time and effort have made this publication something special. Tech Talk articles are the most read and most shared sections of our newsletter. Your ability to describe how our products work and what makes them better is skillful. Your articles inform our readers on technical design innovations, what the role of a wave guide is, and why we recommend multiple subwoofers in theater design. You informed our readers on the benefits of a resistive ladder volume control and how we get more volume out of smaller loudspeaker designs.

Of course, we also had some incredible guest contributors to the newsletter including subject matter experts from our technology partners Roon, Qobuz and most recently Dirac. Their participation in our newsletter speaks highly of the relationships that the team at Harman Luxury Audio has built within the industry.

I especially want to thank Josh and Bez and the rest of the team at MusicDirect who graciously allowed us to feature them in the Dealer Profile of our inaugural newsletter in June of 2019.

To all the other dealers that we have featured in the Dealer Profile, it has been an honor to share your stories and your mission statements with our readership. Without you, our labor of love would not be possible - so thank you. And if you want us to share your thoughts about our industry and show us and others how you go to market, reach out to your local sales manager or contact me directly at [email protected]. We would love to share your story with our audience!

Publishing a monthly newsletter takes a commitment from everyone, including our partners at the Technology Insider Group who have hosted and distributed our newsletter from the very beginning. They not only provide us with the platform and technology support but also challenge us to keep improving our content. They share the analytics and the statistics on how our newsletter is performing and they inform us about how our readers engage with articles and how our publication compares to other industry newsletters. I am always amazed at how well our publication performs and how many people are opening, reading and sharing our content.

With content on my mind, and as we head into the 4th year publishing the newsletter, I am hopeful that YOU, our readers, can provide us with additional topics and/or technologies you would like to learn more about. Your engagement with the newsletter is what matters most to us. Please share your ideas with me at [email protected].

We are so grateful to each of you who have joined us on this incredible journey. We are committed to informing, educating and inspiring you to continue recommending our products to your customers, friends and families.

If you like what we are doing with our newsletter, I ask that you please share and encourage others to subscribe to it.

Thanks again,

Dave Tovissi