READ OUT LOUDTHE STORY BEHIND

BANG & OLUFSEN

SURVIVING IN A NICHE MARKET

BEFORE YOU START….

please look into your camera and tell us slowly your name, city and country… Then you can start reading this paragraph out loud… Have fun!

The competition forces them to continuously perform at a high level. Their independence ensures that they are not held back by any internal office politics.” A logical-sounding, but bold concept that we also see in Alessi.

Nowadays, design in combination with user-friendliness has becomea hot issue – thanks to the success of Apple. This should create plenty of opportunity for Bang & Olufsen, you could say. “I have a lot of respect for

the way in which Apple puts fantastic products on the market. Thanks to their explosive growth they are now facing an important choice: should they remain a rebel brand or should they become a mass product?

Becoming successful is not the greatest challenge; remaining successful is. That applies to us too. Due to our success we chose a path that did not fit in with our core and lost touch with our target group at

the start of the millennium. Our company suffered. By 2008, we reached a dip and were forced to reorganize and fire 300 employees. We will never make that mistake again.

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