By Douglas Weinstein
All photos courtesy of Sonance.
Sonance continues to be an innovative and culturally rich company within the world of technology design and system integration. On a recent visit to their HQ in San Clemente, California I was given a tour of their amazing facilities and came away impressed with the concepts and strategies they’ve formed about their place in the world of entertainment.
In part one of this series, I interviewed Jason Sloan, Chief Sales Officer, who talked about the rich history of the company, how they’ve grown over the past 40 years, what they’ve learned along the way, and also his personal path within the world of Sonance. In part two we’ll be visiting with Mike Cleary who will take us through the evolution of the Studio, Sonance’s experiential facility where the mantra ‘Life is Better with Music’ really comes alive and incorporates the pillars of Sonance’s company culture.
What’s really cool about what we’ve built at Sonance is that our team has been integrated into our customer facing Studio as a way to invest in people and build a culture that is contagious. When we get people and purpose right good things happen!
Doug: You were with Sonance when they made the move to the new headquarters eight years ago, right?
Mike: Yes. I joined the Sonance Team 10 years ago as the Director of Sales for the West. Partnering with our local rep teams from Hawaii to Jackson Hole was a natural fit for me as I had spent the prior 10 years of my career as a manufacturer’s representative in the Southern California market. As a rep, I understood that my main goal was to build relationships and trust with dealers and help them solve problems. Putting people and relationships first was always my approach, so the culture I found at Sonance was a great fit.
We had been in our previous facility for 19 years. It was about 50,000 square feet and 85 percent of it was warehouse. Our ‘demo’ areas were scattered about and so when we brought a guest to visit, we would give all the employees notice not to use the kitchen area because we needed that space for our tour. What we realized was that we were dividing our customers and our people, separating them instead of bringing them together. We weren’t being authentic partners and were really creating unnecessary chaos.
Eventually we decided to move the warehouse portion of the business to Fontana and bought a new facility in San Clemente with the opportunity to start from scratch. We laid the building out in a way that prioritized office space and integrated customer hospitality areas alongside our team. We realized we would need the ability to continue to update the Studio and be flexible in design so we brought a full time construction team in house who have really built something incredible here.
We started designing the Studio with what seemed obvious, highlighting our products. But over time we realized the product-first approach wasn’t really what we needed. In fact, we have remodeled the building multiple times in the eight years we’ve been here. We think of it as trying something out and then learning from the experience. Learning to celebrate our failures has been a very helpful shift in approach, really enabling us to refine our messaging. Today, we think of the Studio a lot less as a showroom and more of a marketing lab to explore ideas on how to integrate sound into the lives of our customers and add value to the overall technology experience.
Our executive team approached me five years ago and asked me to work with our marketing team. I didn’t have a marketing background, but I worked with our team to share the stories we needed to tell so we could be effective in the field. I also helped to bring in some great team members as we developed our messaging and began building ways to share those stories including social media and YouTube alongside the work of an amazing in-house Digital Media Team to produce much needed content.
In January 2020, with our acquisition of James Loudspeaker, we needed yet another remodel in the Studio to incorporate these two great brands into one cohesive team. So, we’ve had a good learning opportunity to develop ideas together and present one unified company.
And so, for the last five years I’ve been focused on telling those important stories and working with our amazing team to develop exciting content as the Director of Residential Marketing. The Marketing team is thriving and I’m excited to transition back to a customer facing role as the Senior Director of Strategic Accounts. This new role will allow me to work with our closest partners here in the Studio and out in the marketplace to test out the ideas developed in San Clemente and get real world feedback on what’s working and what’s not.
Doug: Tell us about the folks who come to visit the Studio.
Mike: We are thankful to report that the Studio is busy! Every month we have various groups invited in by our reps and sales team to share big ideas and provide an experiential learning environment. These visits range from just a few hours to a full one-day visit with a very specific audience or a more comprehensive multi-day dealer trip. It’s all about telling our stories and how we bring music into people’s lives in unique ways. A visit to the Studio always starts with hospitality and a chance to meet and greet our team. We quickly introduce our pillars which give a great overview on what we believe and why we do what we do. The subsequent tour then touches on each of those pillars and helps define our values throughout the various experiences that have been created throughout each area of the building.
For example, when we talk about our pillar “Designed to Disappear”, we can demonstrate that idea in a number of locations within the Studio, whether that’s our small aperture speakers or invisible speaker products. Rather than just train on the product from a technical aspect we often find ourselves getting questions on how to introduce architects to the design-build team or luxury homeowners in a meaningful way. In addition to these organized group visits, our partners have access to our Studio through a shared calendar where they can book key customers to come and discover solutions for their own project in a private setting. It’s these interactions that give us an amazing feedback loop into what’s working.
We also have some fantastic partners featured throughout the Studio and often have the opportunity to collaborate in hosting industry events. These partners include Lutron, Monogram, Sony, Quantum Media, Stewart Filmscreen and LG. So far this year we’ve had over 2,000 unique visits to the Studio and we see demand growing.
Doug: How about taking us on a tour of The Studio?
Mike: It would be my pleasure! We welcome everyone with coffee or a beer and now try and have our guests interact with as many Sonance team members as possible! Sharing a meal and getting to know people have really become one of the most important parts of a Studio visit. We introduce ourselves and lay out the schedule for the day, and most importantly we ask what people would like to accomplish on their visit.
While many of our tours follow a similar framework, we want to give our visitors a great experience that caters to their particular interest. Most of our dealers or design-build visitors have something on their mind that they want to understand better, so asking them what’s important for us to convey during their visit begins to build trust and authentic partnership.
Once everyone’s comfortable and feeling good, we start by walking up to the mezzanine level where we start with our pillars and explain how those ideas fit into everything we do. So, Designed to Disappear, Authentic Partnerships, Leading with Culture, Reimaging Sound, and Going Beyond are on full display.
Many of our conversations often have a visual element served up by the Sonance Design Gallery app. This app is a story telling tool we use to inspire ideas and prompt conversations. When we can tell a story and then provide a real-world experience in our space, these ideas really come to life. The app has been designed to run on an iPad out in the field but in the Studio we often have large groups so we are using large format touch screens on display in each area. Additionally, the content featured on the Design gallery is also reinforced on our new website at sonance.com so customers can have a way to take ideas home with them. Whether you are designing for a residential, commercial or marine project, we can walk you through the various design options available and let client feedback drive the product selection process.
From this high-level overview, we then get into the layout of the residential wall of products. Again, product is secondary, and design is primary. We explore how you want your sound to look. This means that we have displayed solutions for drywall, plaster, wood veneers, wallpaper etc. and we can show you how the product is integrated into these various finishes. Fully completed wall samples inform which products we want to explore. Design and concepts first, products second.
From there we go into our Great Room living space featuring beautiful lighting from Ketra and Lutron controls. The room also presents an amazing kitchen provided by Monogram. We demonstrate what even and balanced light looks like, and transition into equating those layers of light with an immersive sound experience. A lot of the conversation is driven by questions from the homeowner or design-build professional. It is a very interactive part of the tour.
If a homeowner can only give us one hour, we often go to the outdoor pavilion for a conversation and listen and then say goodbye. If multiple dealers or groups of design-build colleagues are visiting, then we break out into smaller groups and go deeper into individual products and integration methodologies.
Then we break for lunch. After lunch we start with the green room which is our ‘behind the studs’ exhibit so dealers and contractors can have lightbulb moments when they see how products are designed to disappear. When we talk about invisible speakers and small aperture speakers where you only have a four inch opening (which means the actual speaker assembly is behind the sheet rock), being able to get a hands-on look at a ceiling or wall that is open to the studs gives everyone a clear understanding on why it’s important to have your system integrator in early planning sessions so these spaces can be defined and incorporated into the design documentation.
We then take a tour of our dedicated theater which showcases solutions from Sonance and James Loudspeakers, highlighting various performance levels.
Then, we like to move outdoors and explore softscape and hardscape solutions. Outdoor entertaining is huge, and we use our design studio to show how picking the right solutions incorporated into the right design means you can have an amazing outdoor living experience with music at just the right volume all from a hidden source.
Of course, there is lots of food and drink throughout the day, but we like to end with a catered meal. This is where friendships and relationships grow. It’s not unusual to hear someone say,
“I’ve been a dealer for 10 years but never knew . . . .” It’s this sense of partnership that has driven the entire day.
Doug: Let’s finish with your new website and a little more about the Sonance Design Gallery App.
Mike: We have developed the ideas captured in the Sonance Design Gallery App through years of trial-and-error presenting design solutions in the Studio. The app was built as a presentation tool for our dealers that would give powerful visuals to tell stories about integrating technology into architecture. The need for offline viewing and mobility was huge as many of our integrator partners are often walking projects as construction sites. As our partners were finding success, they began asking for follow up customer facing content. We were already in a full website re-design and it became clear that the public website could be that follow up destination. Today we are proud to say that the tools are aligned and powerful when used together. You can browse these stories at sonance.com
Doug: Final thoughts?
Mike: What’s really cool about what we’ve built at Sonance is that our team has been integrated into our customer facing Studio as a way to invest in people and build a culture that is contagious. When we get people and purpose right good things happen! This focus on building relationships with each other and extending that to our guests is a big part of what we’re all about. Personally, my family is so important to me, and the Studio has become a space where we often see work and family coming together. It is common that we might host an AIA CEU event with a partner, bring in multiple dealers for a visit and then see the Studio open for a graduation or birthday party in the same week. At Sonance, we envision a world where music is woven like a thread through the fabric of everyday life. Our hidden audio solutions subtly elevate each moment, turning the ordinary into magical, shared experiences. We invite you to come visit and discover this for yourself!
