161. Where Luxury Meets Sound: A Century of Timeless Innovation at B&O
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大家好,我是 Bessie 李倩林,欢迎收听今天的备忘录。 奢华生活方式视听品牌 B&O 全球的董事会 11 月初在上海举行。 备忘录很荣幸能够有机会采访了 B&O 的全球 CEO Christian。 我和他聊了聊 B&O 能够成为百年品牌的关键因素、策略以及他们的坚持。

B&O's focus, quality of products, and success factors are similar to our previous episodes. This is another episode of reference content for those who want to make a good brand. Like the usual full English content, we will provide a Chinese-English text guide to those who need it in the Backlog House public account.

另外 BNO 为我们的听友准备了 BNO 声音艺术展特别定制款的杯垫。 每一款杯垫的图案对应了这一次展览上面的 A9 音响面罩的一款设计,一共 12 款。 我们会在 12 月 6 号挑选 12 位听友的留言随机送出。 如果你好奇是哪一些的设计图案,你可以在 BNO 的官方微信、微博、小红书上面找到答案。 谢谢你的收听!

Hi, welcome to today's episode. It's an all-English episode, and my listeners would know when it's English, that means someone who's very important, global position, global CEO will come onto my show. So it's our privilege to have B&O global CEO Christian Thier, right, is your last name, Christian, onto our show. Thank you so much for being on my show. Hi, Christian. Hi there. It's a pleasure to be here. I really enjoy it.

So we actually did this recording in Shanghai. And I understand that after the pandemic, this is, I don't know, how many trips have you already done to Shanghai? Oh, I've done many. I come here regularly. We have a great team here and there's a lot of things happening here. And Shanghai in China is really in the forefront of many of the things right now. So it's good to be here and learn and see what's going on. And also, I just learned from your team that China is your largest single market. China is our largest single market as well. So there's a lot of reasons to come.

Of course. But there's also another reason that you're coming here. This is, I think next year is the 100 years of B&O. We are celebrating 100 years next year. So it's amazing that the company has been around for so long. I know.

Given how technology evolved, right? Yeah. We have a story to tell because not that many people know that we have been around for 100 years. And that is just an amazing feat in itself. And if you look in the consumer electronics space, we are the oldest company around. And I think also we have an exciting future ahead of us for another 100 years as well with a new strategy. So we're really looking forward to next year, but also beyond 2020.

Yeah. Well, exactly like you said, I mean, my family and also my brother's family were a big fan of B&O. So I didn't realize that this brand has been around for 100 years or soon to be. This is the 1990s. What are the key to the...

success, shall I say, that for a brand like this, like you said, technology evolves so quickly and there's so many options these days. And also young people, the way they assume or consume music, consume electronic products is very different to, say, people 100 years ago.

How do P&Os survive for 100 years? First of all, I think it's the people and the passion from the people. We have amazing people across the world and of course in Denmark as well, in the factory and in the offices as well. At one point in time during the Second World War, the whole factory was bombed and disappeared and the whole village was out the next day and rebuilding it, right?

and taking care of it and wanting it to succeed. I think that's one part of it. So the people and the passion and the commitment that we see. But I think also the way that the company founders set the company up and never kind of compromising will to only do the best and not to give up. And we think differently. Those were two ethos from our founders already back in 1925.

And we have lived by them. Now we're taking them back even stronger than we've had in the past. And then of course, if you have those values, you try to always make the best and solve the problem for the consumers. And design and acoustics has always been our thing and craftsmanship as well to make amazing things and make magical moments for people. And that has been a success.

And now we're going to double down on that as well going forward. How come the Second World War didn't, should I use the word, kill the company? Because that killed many, many companies at the time. I think it will come back to the people again and setting it up. And of course, also the demand for the product. I think we have always done desirable products. People want the product. People aspire to our products. And when they see them because they are beautiful and they are different from a design point of view, we...

We say now in popular terms we try to get away from white plastic and black plastic and as far away as we possibly can. And we make it beautiful in wood, in aluminum and in textile fabrics.

And when you see it, you almost instantly recognize this is a B&O product. We try to solve the problem for the customers as well. And if you go back and look at some of the iconic products, one of them is Biosound 9000, which is the six CD player, wall mounted or table stand or on the floor stand.

the standing product as well and at that time you had basically square black cd players where you could load in maybe either one cd or six cds and it wasn't very nice and it it wasn't like art created out of that so

the designers of david lewis at the time he figured out a way of beautifully displaying your cd records and the artwork on the cd records and making sure they stopped actually in a given position on this one and then of course that his arm was moving the magical movement and it becomes an art object it's not it's more than playing music so so we're proud to be in the music

and sound industry and that will never go away. It has been around forever and I'm sure it's going to continue to be around forever. But then to make it really beautiful that you have a piece that you're proud about and that you want to showcase

in your room and that is different. I think that's what we have always done. We go our own way and you see that in the iconic products from the past and you will see that in future products as well. My husband used to have a Biosound 3200, I think, and my brother has 289. And I also went onto your website to look at all the products since the very beginning, all the iconic products, like you said.

Every piece of those products looks like either an artwork or...

very nice furniture you put it there you wouldn't think that's that's a speaker no it's a part of your decor you know it goes very well with whatever you have in a room 100% we make art pieces and we make beautiful sound it looks beautiful it sounds beautiful and it evokes these emotions and feelings when you see them and you're a proud owner of a piece that is going

going to last for a long long period of time and that we have now also made the products in a modular way on a platform way so they will be upgradable serviceable repairable as well so you buy it and you look after it for the next generation it's never going to go out of vogue yeah but i look at those products i think to myself do i call them speakers or do i do we call them high-end furniture or do we call them artwork b you know

That's a good one. Because if you look at a home, everybody wants a home to look beautiful. And if you hide the sound away, you put other art objects in your room, in your living room. Why hide it away when you have something that is already beautiful from the beginning and that you can be proud and cherish and that has a function as well so you can look at it and feel good about it. And it's time to bring beautiful sound.

out into the homes so that you can see it. It doesn't have to be invisible anymore. Yeah, I learned from your team that David Liu is a designer, you said, and Steve Jobs are actually very good friends with each other. We know, and I think he's writing about it in his book, actually, that...

the only non-Apple product that he had in the office was an A9. So I can understand that. It's a beautiful icon product that we also celebrate here now with the art of A9 in Shanghai yesterday. So I can totally see that. And we know also that among Apple senior executives, we have many B&O fans as well because they are also trying to do things differently. And I think they also took that slogan for a while, be different, we think differently.

So yeah, there's a lot of similarities, I think, between what they did and are doing and what we're doing. We'll come back to A9N8 later because I think you're doing something really interesting about the product. I want to come back to this 100 years celebration of your company.

Because at the moment, China is going through our first cycle, which is a very important but also very challenging period of time. To a lot of the brands, people are thinking to themselves, what do I need to do to make sure that I survive this cycle and become a long, sustainable brand in this market and in the world? So we look to successful brands like B&O to learn from your experience.

So in those 100 years so far, what are some of the milestones or highlights of this 100 years history that tell people those are the things, reason why B&O is a 100-year-old brand? And like you said, we have another 100.

at least another 100 years to go or many of them to come. I think there are many milestones as such, but I think one of the most important things is again, is the people in the company and the people in our birthplace, Struve, as well, and in Denmark in general as well, who have this passion and commitment to the brand. That's really, really important. But then to keep on innovating, we don't stand still and we think differently again and we try to find new ways of doing it and then doing something that is better and that is solving a problem. And that has kept...

us around for 100 years and that's also the strategy now going forward when we have sharpened our strategy and focus on luxury timeless technology as the three key words in our business strategy going forward and when we look at the penetration of that market we have a very low penetration to this point we're still a small company which means the opportunity is massive the way that we are looking at it so

So if you are the market, which we are in this case, but we can create a bigger, newer market. So I don't think we are that dependent on the macroeconomical situations in the market that if you are like 80% of the market, of course, market shrinks, you will also shrink. So from that point of view, I think we're in a good place. And there's only one brand in the world, B&O, who can offer a luxury timeless technology experience and beautiful sound. There's nobody else who can do that.

We feel excited about this opportunity as being our own blue ocean. And if you look at other luxury categories, there's always a few brands that you have the customers to choose between. If you look at watches, you have a few watches brands. You look at cars, there are a few. If you look at fashion, there are a few. Jewelry, there are a few. But if you want to find a beautiful piece of art that's playing music, there's only one. There's only Bang & Olufsen.

I think that's what we need to nurture and we need to take care of in a good way going forward. But of course, we are a product company at Elnund today and we need to keep on innovating on the product side and making beautiful designs using our craftsmanship skills in wood and aluminum and

textile and audio and acoustics as well. And I think the trends really also go our way if you look at the trends for high resolution audio. So the streaming platforms are coming out with high resolution to a higher degree. If you have high resolution, you also want to reproduce that music in high resolution. So the demands on the equipment at home will go up, which is great in our case. When we look at luxury consumption, it's Yen Si.

who are big consumers of luxury and will continue to be a very important segment for luxury growth going forward. They want to personalize the experience. They want to be culturally relevant. We offer a product that is cradle-to-cradle certified. So basically a product with longevity and it's the most sustainable type of product that you can have. And then you can personalize it as well with our Atelier services. So I think we are playing in

to that trend as well. So we feel pretty good about what the future has for us. Well, you mentioned Gen Z. I guess if we trace a long way back to the introductions of Walkman, before Walkman, we consumed music at home most of the time.

But Walkman was introduced and then came many other versions of different Walkman. It's basically portable music. And now you look at the way that young people consume not just music, but content like podcasts, right? They put their headsets over either over the years or in year and then you got noise cancellation. So the pieces got smaller and smaller and smaller.

versus what your beautiful pieces are, larger pieces, right? So you see this new trend of consuming music by not just Gen Z but younger and younger generation. Is it a challenge or is it an opportunity for B&O? I think there's an opportunity because also the younger generation and Gen Z in particular, they're also interested in heritage. They're interested in history. And it's also interesting to see how vinyls are resurging in popularity. That's right.

Somebody told me half of the vinyls sold are sold to somebody who doesn't even have a record player. Because you buy it for the artwork and you buy it for you want to keep it and hold on to it and it's something to look at. And CDs are also coming back and researching, partly because of course of the acoustical experience but also partly because of the whole experience of having a physical object. So I think the younger generation starts to appreciate that as well.

So from that point of view, yeah, the past is good and we connect the past with the present and with the future. So from our point of view as well, that's fantastic if people have an interest in the history. But also when we look forwards, I think music consumption

What we try to do is to make it seamless. So independent of your use case, that you have a seamless experience, whether it is in your car, whether it's at home, whether it's at work or whether it is on your yacht or your private jet. We want to make sure that we provide that seamlessness and that we have an offering that fits for the use case. So we have a broad portfolio for that reason. We have in-ear phones, we have headphones.

We have Bluetooth speakers, we have small speakers, we have bigger speakers, we have TV products and outdoor products. If you fall in love with B&O, then we want to follow your journey in life and to be able to offer you an amazing music sound experience throughout. And that's our benefit because we have that portfolio. True. By the look of your product, it's difficult not to be colonized by your product, to be honest, at home or whatever you're on the go.

I know that B&O has three very important pillars which you mentioned several times. Luxury, right? So you got luxury, you got timelessness, and also technology. I want to ask you about these three pillars. Now luxury in technology, when I think of luxury, you think of luxury products, right? So it's all about the exterior. It's about the exterior design, the look and feel of it, the appearance of it.

But how is luxury reflected in the technology bit of the product design? That I'm not sure. So maybe I take you through all the three words because we have chosen them carefully and we've been really doing a diligent work in arriving at these three words. And also why they are our business strategy and why we believe that that will give us a blue ocean opportunity because there's really nobody who can copy it.

By definition, if you want to be in luxury, you need to have heritage. If you look at all the luxury brands, they are established 1800s or 1700 century. And we are next year, as we talked about already, 100 years. So that's the first piece. We have a globally recognized brand. When people hear Bang & Olufsen, people know that this is an amazing global brand.

We have desirable products. People see the product, they are distinct from a design point of view, from a craftsmanship point of view and from an acoustical point of view. So when you see it, there is, yeah, I want it, can I have it? Which is really important. Then we have pricing power. We are going our own way with the product experience that we're delivering, which is also enabling us then to charge more for it. There's more value in the product and in the whole experience, which I will come back to.

Then we have our own distribution network. So if you want to provide a customer experience and good customer journey, we need to do it end to end. So it starts with pre-purchase, whether you're online or offline. When you go to the store,

or you visit the web page, it needs to be good experience. And of course, when you have bought the product, it also needs to be good experience when it's being installed or unpacked or unboxed. And then when you're using it, of course, it needs to be good. And then if it fails, it needs to be serviced and repaired. It needs to be good experience.

And we have a store network of 400 stores in the world that can look after our customers in this way. There's no other player who really has that capability. Then we are offering atelier services because you want to personalize your product. You want to be different. We see that in luxury as well as a trend. And we can make really any color that you want to have.

We can make any tree that you want to have or any wood that you want to have. You're taking that to extreme. We will make the remote control for you and we can make the wood in the lamellas as well from your own tree and from your own garden. So we believe that is really, really powerful in terms of playing in the luxury space.

Then if you go to the second word, timelessness and design is of course super important here that the design will stand the test of time. And we know that our past products and the icons, they are doing that and people are still enjoying them 20, 30, 40 years after they were born.

So that's really important. But also the serviceability and the repairability of the products. And we are now building, which I will come back to in the technology section as well, but we're building our products based on product platforms and technology platforms. I mean, we are reusing

the same software in all products. So we don't develop one product, one software anymore. Good for you, thank God. That's good for us. But it's even better for the consumer because if you buy a product today, you don't have to worry that the product is going to be

old or not being current because there will be a new software coming that we can download over there into the product so if new features are coming new functionalities coming you can rest assured that they will be made available for you as well and then also when we build the products we looked at our past and we already discovered that our engineers from the 70s and 80s they were smart they built them in modules and they screwed the products together they didn't glue

them together. We are doing that now as well. So if you look at the latest headset, H100, it is repairable, it is serviceable. We can open it up, we can take it apart, we can put batteries in because it is screwed together, which is amazing. That's the modular design. It's a modular concept design, right? So serviceable, repairable, and that also makes them, of course, customizable. We can use that as a service.

So if you combine that with luxury and what I just said about timelessness, there's really nobody else. And then if you take the technology piece as well on top of it, we are leaders in acoustics in the world. We are doing amazing acoustical experiences. We have in Denmark something we call Tone Masters that are working in the company, and they are designing the audio in the way that artists intended it to sound. And they spend hours in these acoustical chambers and making sure that the product

is reproducing the music the way the artist intended it to do, we never compromise on that. So we actually start with the acoustical experience and then we build a design around that. And by doing that and on our technology platforms,

We believe that is also something that the others in the world cannot copy or cannot take after. So those three words and luxury timeless technology, we believe is really key differentiating for us. Then putting that back into context in the world with the trends, luxury is growing. Everybody wants products that are standing or being usable for a long time. Longevity is really important. You don't want to be in a waste economy anymore, throw products away.

those trends together with high resolution audio is also playing to our brand and to our strengths. And then we have the complete portfolio. So we want you to fall in love with us. And when you have fallen in love with us, we want to make sure that we service you very well. So you stayed married with us forever. For life. Timelessness and technology. I often found these two

sort of contradictory to each other, right? Because Timeless is something from the past, it will stay on forever. But technology evolves so quickly. So iPhone every year is a new version, right? So how do you make these two elements work together so well? First of all, the design needs to be timeless from the get-go. But like I said, the modular building system and the technology platforms enables us to keep on evolving the product and developing the product.

And then because also we are proud about our heritage, if you take the turntable from Jakob Jensen, we can connect that wirelessly today to our latest speakers. We take a product from the 70s and we connect it to a current product wirelessly and we make sure that that is working together.

Seamlessness is important for us, the past is important for us, and the way that we then use these technology platforms enables all of that. And who knows what technology will be available 5, 10, 15 years from now, but we have this small printed circuit board that is the brains and the heart of the product, and we can actually take that one out easily as well and put a new one in. So should there be something that we're not aware of today that will happen,

five, ten years from now, then we can actually also build that into the product if the current platform allows for that. Otherwise, we take the platform out and we put a new platform in. So we feel confident that we have again here something that is making

also the technology seamless. Sorry, timeless. Yeah, of course. I think that's so smart because I mean vintage is the trend now these days. The younger generation, the older vintage they like to see craft, right? So the design of your product

from, I don't know, 50, 60 years ago is now the vintage to a lot of the young generation. But you actually can switch or replace the core technology that's hidden in the product. So these two go so well together. They go well together. And the material is...

Aluminum lasts forever, wood lasts forever, the textiles that we have last forever, the designs are, like you say, beautiful from the get-go. And why then have to replace everything if you're going to replace it? It's actually not more than maybe three centimeters by three centimeters, that whole brain and heart that we have in the product. And acoustically, they're already...

amazing and well designed and probably a bit over engineered even but that's good because then it means it lasts forever. Yeah, there's this lovely story of a consumer of yours in Paris. He owned a Biosound 9000 32 years ago. I'm sure 32 years ago he saved up all his savings, right? This would be the first B&O piece that he bought.

So BL sat on 9000, he owned it for 32 years. Then it broke down and then he took it to the B&O. I think because it was so precious, he didn't want to let go. So he took it back to B&O. And BL not only fixed the product, but he also offered his consumers another 12 months warranty. Isn't that amazing? First of all, like we said, you know, the product itself has become a vintage and I think that's why he didn't want to let go.

but you still can find the parts or the switchboard, whatever you call it, to replace the technology and it still works. And I have my own story. My husband owned a Biosound 3200, right? So more than 20 years ago already. And it's still working. That's great, I think, for a consumer value point of view. But we started...

When we turned 95, we looked at other industries, watches, and we looked at cars. And these industries have classical programs when you restore classical products because they are still valuable even if they are getting older. So we decided to put the same thing in place. And we did at that time 95 of the turntable Biogram 4000. And they sold out immediately. In 24 hours, they were all gone. So we realized we were onto something. And then, of course, we have expanded on our capabilities and competencies

and looked at the whole portfolio going back in time on how we can repair it, how we can service it. Unfortunately, not everything from the past is serviceable and repairable, but we really try hard to make sure that we keep parts and save parts and

make new parts if need be so that we can rebuild them and service them and then make them as good as they were when they were new and sometimes even better because some customers want to add something extra onto it as well, which we're also offering and doing. So yeah, we'll keep on doing that because we believe that's the right thing to do. But that's also a great answer to the sustainability effort, right? Isn't it?

Because you don't really need to throw away stuff. Exactly. And that customer you referenced in Paris, he even wrote a handwritten letter to me about this because he was just overwhelmed with joy that this could be a reality in today's world. So we have expanded on that and we have different service centers in the world who can take care of that. Right.

Let's talk about your commitment to the sustainability. Because I know you have this cradle to cradle certifications in your organization. I think that's a proof or certificate of an organization's effort to sustainability, right?

So just for our listeners benefit, can you explain a little bit what Cradle to Cradle certification is about? And what do you need to do as an organization to earn that certification? So basically it means that the product never goes into the grave. So it comes back alive again. So Cradle to Cradle, otherwise Cradle to Grave.

Yes, cradle to earth. Exactly. And we want to make sure that the products can be used and reused and we build them that way. When they are built in such a way so that they can be reused and reborn

then you get a certificate that is just certifying that that is basically the case. And we have, I think, two products that now have received certificates. We have a few pending certificates and we have made a commitment as well that we are going to make. Yeah, it's an engineering challenge, but it fits well into luxury timeless technology as well. So for us, we don't have to go and do...

something extra. This is part of the core strategy on how we have done things in the past and now we will continue to do that for the future. So for us, that's a natural process. Okay. That modular concept that you talked about earlier on, it fits really well into the sustainability effort, doesn't it? It fits absolutely. So I think your latest product, this over-ear headset,

a lot of the parts can be replaced. They can be replaced, batteries need to be replaceable and you can open up and service the product.

You will see there is on one place in the product there is a screw that enables us to open it up. If you look at the predecessor, that screw wasn't there and that screw seems like a small detail. The engineers spent many, many hours, weeks debating and discussing on how that should work and what it would look like because it needs to be there so that you can open it up. But we have amazing engineers who are taking care of that and thinking about all of this. And like I said,

For us, this is not something extra. There's not an afterthought. It is part of the core strategy of the core DNA of B&O from the past. And we're bringing that up and putting that really in the forefront of everything we do right now. I have so much respect for that because at one point I look at the assets I have. I have like 10 pairs. I close myself. I said, what am I doing? That's the last one you need. Five of them are B&O, so good for you. But then you can sell them on the used market.

Which is another thing we're also looking into. We haven't announced yet, but if you go and look at reloved type of products, it's becoming more and popular as well. And that's also a trend. So even though we have said on the strategy, we are going from a pricing performance point of view, Northeast, so higher prices, better performance. That's what we're striving for. And to make, like I said, the best product that you can possibly do.

We know there's a secondhand market as well and our again classic repair program and restoration program fits well into the real of the type of concept as well so that also people can enjoy a used product as much as a new one. Is that also part of the young generation insights that you gather? I think it is because

They want that as well and coming back to vintage is coming back in vogue like you say and that fits super well into watches, fits well into cars, fits well into our products as well. If you're building them the way that I just described then it works. If you're doing the plastic thing and the value is basically zero for that. But if you look at, at least in Europe, I don't know about here, but if you look at...

Biosound 2, which is an iconic product from us as well, if you bought it four or five years ago, you essentially get the money back if you're selling it on the used market. Of course, the new one is more expensive, again, but there's not many products in the electronics space where you get your money back after four or five years. How do you and your team keep yourself up to date to young generations' habits of electronic products and the way that they consume music? I mean, we talked about it earlier on, right? Yeah.

being young generation, there's always younger generation coming along, the way that they approach music and the way they appreciate or not appreciate music is very different. If you look at today's younger generation, short form video is everything has to be short. Everything has to be fast food kind of approach, right?

Somehow, sometimes the audio quality might be a compromise they're willing to take. How do you stay relevant to these younger generation? First of all, I think it's about understanding what they want and what their needs are and how they function. And that's one of the reasons why we're here as well. Yeah, I was going to ask. China is in the forefront of all of this. And we want to learn from the Chinese market on how the young generation can see

are consuming not only music but anything in general and of course all these insights we take back home we have the board even here looking at all of this it's not only me and my team who are looking at but we also do have a consumer insights team and when we

have ideas about what we will build and how we want to build things. We go to certain markets and we do tests basically with consumers to get their feedback on what they think and what they like and what they don't like so that we calibrate ourselves towards that generation.

then i have three critical kids as well at home they are looking after yeah my calibration as well whether i'm in tune with what's going on in the world and we all have that so we get a lot of feedback from our families as well and then from our talented team in the markets as well i know we all look to our kids right my daughter is 25 years old so i always look at the way that they she consume music it's very different and we learn from them and they're also

At least my kids are very direct and outspoken on what is good and what is not so good and what we need to work with. So I get a lot of input from them. But I think that is the name of the game as well. Generally speaking, for any company, you need to have a good insight team and you need to have an ability and desirability to learn because the world is moving on. And of course, some pieces will be, in our case, strategy-wise constant. But you need to be a constant learning organization and then...

adapt and reformulate it and when we look at many of the luxury products in the world as well not only the companies that I talked about before but the products they have been conceived in the 30s and in the 40s and in the 50s and the 60s and then they have tweaked them and tuned them over the years but essentially they look the same and if you're not the connoisseur of watches or bags

You don't know if this is the 70-year model or the 80-year model or the 90-year model. They look very similar.

And that is in demand right now as well. But we need to stay tuned with the market for sure. Do you find Chinese consumers slightly different than consumers elsewhere? I think from a technology point of view, if you look at what WeChat and things can do, that is ahead of, I think, the rest of the world. So technology-wise, for sure. And also luxury consumption-wise, for sure. And that's why you see, of course, all the luxury brands being here as well and

I think the world, and that already changed I think a while back, but you need to look at China first and then you can take that to the rest of the world, not the other way around where you take whatever is working in the rest of the world and try to apply that to China. That has changed.

Many of my friends work in a luxury category, in luxury groups. So what they said to me was one great thing about the Chinese consumer is for luxury sector is that they're much younger than their counterpart elsewhere. So you got much longer lifetime. You're able to sell products to them. That's right. That's good. Serve them well.

No, but we know that from research and other company research as well that the Yen Xi, China Yen Xi is the fastest growing luxury consumer in the world. And the next, I think, if you look six years down the road, they will contribute to 80% of the luxury consumption. Then of course you have the Yen Y as well that is also pretty big in the Americas particularly.

on luxury, but we think that's good because that's the direction we are heading. And then if you look at again, they are also EMC, the biggest consumption group of streamed audio. So that fits very well in to our strategy as well. And then with music, they like what I talked about before heritage and vintage, they like customization, personalization fits perfectly into what we are able to offer them as well.

We want them to be successful and go out and consume. Yeah, I think there's an observation of the market in China that the younger generations are also becoming more sensible when it comes to consumption. Absolutely. Because it's excessive products and productions of many, many things.

So, what I want to do is I want to buy stuff that lasts forever or at least lasts longer. So, they tend to go a bit upmarket. They're willing to save up the savings and buy that one piece of product that's got quality, that's got sustainability, that can last much longer. Absolutely. That trend fits perfectly into our strategy as well. So, I think we're well calibrated.

to the current trends for sure. And that's also why we believe we have a huge opportunity ahead of us. We still have a lot of things that we want to do, so we're not resting on our laurels, but I think we're in a good place right now. Okay. Can I talk to you about a pandemic? Yeah, absolutely. Because I know you became B&O Global CEO in 2019 and then boom, pandemic happened the very next year. That was a tough one for sure.

How do you lead an organization that you're only a relatively new CEO? How did you lead your organization through that difficult period? So I had like, I don't know, six months before or eight months, something like that before the pandemic really hit. But what we try to do and what I try to do is, of course, be out in the market and listen to the markets. And I could do that for a very short period of time. And then you were basically stuck at home like all of us were. But

Again, it comes back to the people that we have in the company and their willingness to work through this and try to help and find new ways of doing things again. So it was what it was. And we worked from home. Some of our engineers skipped down into the factories at night time and did things. Oh, really? Working dark? We actually developed the current Contour TV system.

Throughout the pandemic. Oh, wow. They wanted to surprise me. So they went on weekends and evenings to the factory and built a prototype. And we did that in record time during the pandemic as well. So if there's a will, there's a way. And it comes back to people, passion, commitment as well. And also from our dealers and our partners as well to kind of help us. It wasn't easy. And we had...

Particularly, I think two tough months when Shanghai locked down completely and when Beijing locked down completely because then our warehouses were also locked down and we couldn't transact at all. But except for those two months,

We did well. We managed to keep the business going and also because of the breadth and width of the portfolio, we had a portfolio that was suitable for home, which was great because now we are home and I want to enjoy a better audio experience at home or better TV, visual experience at home. Perfect, so let's buy some products for the home.

Because obviously if you had travel retail completely closed down, that didn't work so well during that time. So the breadth and the width of the portfolio for sure helped

as well and we found new ways of doing it. But we were hit as well for sure, especially two months. But you've turned it around. We've turned it around, absolutely. And last year we did our best year in terms of profitability that we've had for six years. And we laid a good foundation as well for the strategy that we announced now, was it 18 months ago, the Luxury Timeless Technology Strategy.

We worked a lot in the background with what we want to do and how we're going to have a long-term vision and what that long-term vision is at the same time. And you have more time when you do that at home because you can't travel anywhere. So we worked quite intensely with that. And then, of course, the world.

was also locked down in different time periods. So some countries opened up, other countries shut down. And of course, as the pandemic spread across the globe. So luckily, again, we have a global geographical footprint, which helps to keep things alive as well. But it was tough. It was tough for everybody. And...

of course in China as well it was super tough. Exactly. But I guess now even though it's post-pandemic but there are ways of work, working is now here to stay right permanent. Yeah. So things like working from home, flexiwear working which means people are spending more time at home. That must be an opportunity for you right for B&L. I think it is. We if you look at on how we work as such as well we have kept the flexible

workspace and we leave up to each and every department to decide on when they're going to be in the office and how they become more efficient and effective and what works for them. It's not one size fits all in terms of how we work. Then we have adapted the wearable products more towards enterprise that we didn't have before. And of course, that's a long-term benefit because we put it into the platforms and to make sure that they function well together with video conferencing them, for instance. But also if you're using

a headset or a screen for a long time and you're using it more makes sense to have a better one a more comfortable one and it makes sense as well to have one that you can use for both leisure and work and as you know our products are fantastic for leisure people knew that already but you can also work with them really well and H100 again when you look at

The microphones that we have put into that headphone, it is like studio-grade microphones. And the wind suppression noise cancellation is amazing. So you can put them on in the airport and really people believe you're still at home in the office, which is also great news for everybody who is working with them. I tell you, I've been doing so many virtual meetings. The first thing people would notice is, oh, what was that?

what headphones are you using? And you want to look beautiful as well when you put on a headphone. Exactly. I have, like my wife and our daughter, when I brought them the H100, the first thing they do is, of course, they pick the color they wanted to have. And they went, my wife went for the apricot color and my daughter went for the sand, the gold one. Wow. But that was, they picked the color. That was the first thing they did. The second thing they did was run to the mirror and have a look.

on how they look in them. They didn't even put the music on. It was, how do I look in them? So, but they look great. And that's important. Yeah, you gotta look great in a virtual meeting. The upper body is the only thing people get to see, right? Exactly. That's so smart. And I think, again, our products fulfill

Talking about product A9, and thank you very much for inviting me to the event last night. It was a great event. And it's so exciting to see the A9 product in person. I mean, I know this product has been around for 12 years already. And the latest innovation that you're doing with the product is the cover that you work with artists to come up with all sorts of very interesting, very artistic cover products.

that you can put over this speaker, right? Do you want to tell me a little bit about background to this idea of working with artists? I know you all work with various artists, right? But the idea is always so interesting. Yeah, so we have done a few of those collaborations over the years. First of all, it's a great product. It's a product that, like you say, I've been around for a while and

You want to modify it and everybody has their own taste. And it's a great way because we have the cover that can be painted.

You buy paintings, you can buy new covers for your product as well. And then obviously as a tribute to the product, to have great artists designing covers really makes sense. And not only covers, in the exhibition yesterday as well you had bread loaves as legs as well. So it was more than only the cover.

That's part of what we want to do. We want to offer an artistic, an art object and of course then

paintings and painters, that's art. Craftsmanship in any form or shape is art and is becoming art. So our tribute to art was expressed yesterday with A9. We do that with other products, of course, as well, because you can customize them and you can get the wood, like I said, etc., etc. Yeah.

That's who we are. And nobody else is doing any of that either. So I think that's great. But the partnership or the design makes the product even more interesting. I mean, it was a very nice piece of furniture already. You put it anywhere, any corner in your home, it just goes in.

really well with your environment right but now it makes it even more beautiful it is now I have to ask this as a customer of your product going forward would you allow customers to customize the cover like I've got a great painting I did with me and my daughter can I use that to customize my own cover you can actually be doing that going forward oh fantastic okay so when it becomes available you gotta let me know so

We can already do it today, but do it in an industrial scale will take a while back. But people want that and we can fulfill that.

those dreams and making sure that it fits nicely into the environment or like if you have the painting and you want to have the product to look like the painting as well why not of course we cannot make any copies of real artwork so we probably will not make a Picasso or anything like that but we need to respect the copyrights of everything but it's great to do the co-development like we did here with

with the artist and then also that there was a painting actually hanging next to the product yeah as well in yesterday's exhibition yeah that's yeah all credit to the fantastic china team that we have here exactly it's beautiful it is beautiful all those are beautiful and i went on to your website as well you have our piece and the elsewhere in the world by by other artists is really really creative exactly and then we had a beautiful gift as well with the wine coasters or glass coasters i know that you can take home and

they will remember it forever. Exactly. So that was a great additional benefit. I want to ask you, last but not least, your leadership.

Because like we said, you only became the CEO in 2019. It's a five-year tenure versus a 100-year company. I'm young still. You're very young. Now, what attracted you to P&O? Yeah, so first of all, I also grew up with the brand and I had the Beosound 2300, the one with the cassette. And I sold that when I was living in Latin America to somebody who could not buy one because they didn't have it in that market at the time.

And I thought I was going to repurchase it when I came back to Europe, but that never happened because other things came in between, etc. But I've always been a fan and had B&O products at home. Then I forgot about the brand. I was in love with the brand, forgot about the brand and was doing my thing. And incidentally, like a year before I got the request to be part of this process, I

I had bought some B&O products because a friend of mine told me that, have you checked this out? No, I hadn't. And then I went to check it out and then I bought the TV and a few other things. Wow, okay. So then I thought, okay, they are back, which is great. And then, of course, when the headhunter...

called me and approached me. I mean, if you can help such an iconic brand as B&O, you cannot say no. And then this was about trying to understand what the problems were, because we had certainly problems five years ago. And then the second thing was, can I help to fix them? Because there's no point in moving to Denmark. And if you cannot believe that you're going to make it right, and that we can fix it. But I believed

that the problems that we had were certainly fixable and I believed that my toolbox could be useful to help to restore the company. So we went for it and are still here. And you did help. You turned the situation around. We changed a lot over the years as well obviously because in the beginning we were a multi-brand or we distributed through multi-brand and we didn't have as clear vision of where we were going to go at that point in time but

When I joined it was just get back into black. If you don't make money, you have one problem and that is to make money because otherwise there is no future. So that was the first port of call and the first mantra that we had get back to black. And we succeeded with that. Then the second phase of the strategy was to build robustness. So what is broken and how do we make sure that we have a solid foundation for going forward?

investing into the factories, the roof was falling in on one page of the factory, the facade was not nice. So yes, they renovate whatever needs to be renovated because there were certain pieces that had not been looked after for quite some time. Also competencies within the company, because if you don't fix that and you start to scale something, then we'll just scale a problem and you don't want to do that. So we also looked a lot on product and product quality and other areas.

And then where do we want to go from here? And that we announced more or less two years ago. Then we have been working with that. So now we are like in the third phase or entered in the third phase, which is the growth phase, where we know that we have a super exciting market opportunity that

Currently, it's estimated to be like 19 billion euros and it's going to grow over the next six years to 48 billion euros. So good growth rate. Yeah. I think it's 16% in CAGR. And if you look at the consumer electronic industry, it's going to grow at the same period of time with 1%. So we are in a good place to capture that opportunity with the current strategy.

Yeah, so far so good. I look at what you've done in the last five years, you're just finding the focus for the company. Exactly. So setting the vision, setting the focus, the North Pole, where we want to go. And the beautiful thing in our case, like I've said many times, when we get there, the faster we get there, we're going to be alone there. So it's a really good place to be. I had a look of your annual reports.

And there are nine future risks in the annual report. Those are products, growth strategy, talent, cybersecurity, ESG and sustainability, macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, climate change, corruption and human rights. So what are the top threes that keep you up at night? I mean, there are many things that are risks in any business. And I think that

Also today in a market where there's so much scrutiny on what you say and what you don't say, of course everybody is listing all these risks. So there's nothing like that is unique for B&O. I think you can look in any company's annual report and you need to

the risks in that because of how the regulations are. But it's nothing that keeps me awake at night, I can tell you that. Really? No, no. So I sleep well. Wow. That's a great position to be in. It's a great position. But I think we know where we're going and that gives us comfort. We have a great team as well in place that is dealing with all the issues. We have ambitious plans, so the faster we can get them executed, the better it is from our point of view.

If there's something I wish for is that we can do this transformation faster, really. It doesn't keep me awake at night because again, we're going to a place where nobody else is. So there's no race. If you have two, three competitors, you race to get there. But I think we have a strategy that is very difficult for anybody really to copy because you cannot buy time, right? If you don't have 100 years of heritage. So from that point of view, I think we can do it in our own pace, but

I'm patient as a person as well. So the faster we can get there, the better it will be. So where do you see B&O five to 10 years later, other than the revenue growth to more than 48 billion euro? We will be in many more homes, I think, as such, and we will delight many more consumers and customers.

not only with great audio but in the whole customer journey, the whole experience like you get from any luxury, good luxury brand. You have a fantastic experience that where we look after you, we become friends of the house and we look after your products, we look after you and your families and your use cases that you have. We cater for making you happy.

And if you do that, you will stay with us and you will buy more products from us. Well, like you said, in a very humble way that you're a small company, you're still a small portion of the bigger markets and your consumer love your products and the products stay forever. So your return customer, I don't know how high it is, but you constantly have new customers who are wanting to own your product. We need new customers. It's important for us, but it's also important to keep the current ones. And

A good way to keep customers and to get new ones is to make them happy and deliver on their expectations and always serve them very, very well. It is, again, a proven recipe in luxury and in many industries as well. So it's not something new, but it's more difficult to execute if you don't have a clear vision, plan, strategy and empowerment of the organization. So we still have a way to go before we are where we want to be.

but I think everybody again is on board on this journey to serve the customers and to make them happy and solve the problems that they may have. And word of mouth spreads also very quickly. So if you get a good service, you will tell your friends and your family and then they will come and they will also then hopefully be happy and served well. And then they will tell their friends and it multiplies very, very quickly. And as a luxury brand, you need to do that. So we pay a lot of attention to

all the details in this customer journey, whether it's in-store experience or whether it is product experience later on as well, or product and service and repair. And we have things that we know we can do better and we will continue to improve on those.

Speaking as a very happy customer, I wish you plenty of success coming in your way in the next five to 10 years. And I want to thank you so much for being on my show and share so much insights of B&O success and your future vision with our listeners. Thank you very much, Christian. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you.