Re-Tales

Matt Thomas's hi-fi business has always been personal. He wants to keep it that way—in his curated, personalized sales approach, in choosing esoteric gear to carry, and in his listening preferences and not wanting to get too big.

A health crisis was the catalyst for Matt Thomas to start Hearken Audio: A back injury caused temporary paralysis. "For lack of a better word, it was an experience," he told me in a recent phone conversation. He's now fully recovered, but the experience changed him. He decided to pursue his passion. He was already an avid audiophile and music lover; he had been for years. After the accident, almost five years ago, he started Hearken Audio, a home-based dealership in Kitchener, Ontario, where he lives with his wife and two teenage daughters.

The business has grown. Recent expansions include partnering with a Canadian distribution company, Northstar, which will add new brands to his distribution roster. Working with Northstar's Ian Anderson, Thomas plans to expand Hearken's territory, enlisting US dealers for certain brands. Hearken currently has two listening spaces: a 14' × 20' room and an open area that's roughly 20' × 20'. He is in the process of adding a third, which will be much larger and fully treated. He plans to equip it with a high-end reference system. The other spaces focus on smaller, more domestic setups.

Whichever kind of system a customer is looking for, Thomas aims to provide experiences curated for customers' wants and needs. "I wanted to change the landscape of the hi-fi store," he said. "I like the idea of more of a salon, where people come in and get to hear what they want to hear."

Such personalized service, he feels, is best achieved one-on-one, by appointment. "I've been to dealerships where you go on a Saturday afternoon, there's like 20 people in a showroom, and you're trying to listen to something and people are talking," he said. "We want it to be more of a personal experience. If you want to commit the time to us, we'll commit the time to you, 100%." If a customer wants to hear a particular component, Thomas can have it set up and ready.

Appointment-only is not, he insists, a method of gatekeeping. He's against that. "I really hate the hi-fi shops where it's ... this elitism, where you've got to be spending X amount of dollars, or you've got to be this kind of person to buy it," he said. He welcomes the merely curious to make an appointment.

Because the dealership is small, it is easier to keep it personal. "I like what I like, and what I'm trying to sell is stuff that I really enjoy and that satisfies me." His tastes—hence Hearken Audio's product range—gravitate toward classic gear: SET amplifiers; high-sensitivity loudspeakers (often horns); "hot-rodded" old-school idler-drive turntables from Garrard and Lenco; innovative, artisan makers; plus more modern approaches that extend to "the esoteric," he said. Whether analog or digital, he seeks components that sound natural.

When selecting equipment to carry, he trusts his ears and instincts. Much of what sells is not well known in the US, European brands like Ilumnia and Bastanis. He recently added Cinnamon Audio, a newer, Portuguese brand. When he talked with the founders at High End Munich—even before he'd auditioned Cinnamon products—he had a hunch that they would be a good fit.

His interest in new brands makes sense considering that he's new to the industry himself. "With this industry, especially when you're in the high end, it takes time for people to have trust in you. It takes time to build a clientele and build a reputation as well," he told me. "That's still ongoing, to tell you the truth. I learn stuff every day," including from his more experienced customers.

Much of his business comes via word of mouth. Many customers have become friends. He enjoys the interactions, advising, helping customers make good decisions, especially the ones who are newer to the hobby. Lately, he says, more younger people have been coming in—and buying. To better serve that audience, he's considering turning a nook in one listening room into a headphone bar, with desktop sources and amplifiers.

Buying hi-fi gear should be fun, Thomas believes. He's committed to making sure it is. "It shouldn't be just robotically going through this motion of trying to find gear."

Risking sounding obvious, Thomas says that dealers need to be good listeners. He doesn't just mean that they need to know good sound when they hear it. He also means listening to customers and respecting their tastes, in music and in hi-fi. In our conversation, he described an A/B listening session he attended at the most recent Capital Audiofest: An exhibitor played a Bernie Grundman–mastered lacquer recording of two versions of the same track, one mastered from an analog source, the other from DSD. Thomas and Ian Anderson both preferred the all-analog version. Some listeners though, including younger ones, thought the DSD-sourced version sounded better.

"Sometimes you hear something and say, 'Wow, that's amazing,'" he said. "And then you hear something that maybe technically is better, but because your ears are used to a certain thing and it's your reference, to you it's not as good. I think there's something to be said about that."

"At the end of the day, a lot of this is art, and who's to say this piece of art is better than another piece of art?"

Not all is personal preference, however. Thomas is among those who consider live music a key reference. Hearken Audio is just blocks away from Centre in the Square, a major Kitchener concert venue where upcoming acts include Pat Metheny and Los Lobos. "We're constantly hearing live things. And I think that's key for anybody doing this," he said. "As dealers, we need to keep going back to the reference of real music and then trying to make our systems emulate that." It's the ultimate reference for the hi-fi he loves: "If it can fool me and make me feel an emotional response to it, I'm in."