The Chord Company
Shortly after the Chord Company moved into its new premises, the trade magazine I then published, The BAJ visited and spoke to Managing Director, Sally Kennedy about improving the service the company offered to its customers. This feature first appeared in print in January 2003
After having established and consolidated an extremely successful business despite “struggling hugely in very small, cramped premises for far too long”, Managing Director, Sally Kennedy is overjoyed that The Chord Company now has a home that befits its status as a leading supplier of specialist cables to a world-wide customer-base, and which provides the ideal environment for a team that strives to offer unmatched service and support to its resellers and end-users.
Indeed, the process of relocating demonstrated The Chord Company ethos of everyone in the business being involved and having an impact upon it. As a result, the company refurbished its new premises and moved itself in, and was operating as usual within three days. As Sally notes: “In the first week we had twelve international distributors visit us and I was amazed that the team had made the place look as though we’d been comfortably settled here for ages.”
As well as enhancing its production capabilities and operating efficiency, the new facility will enable The Chord Company to boost the support it provides to its retailers and distributors. “Now that we have the proper facilities – a nice conference room, a demonstration room, and plenty of space in the production area for training – we’re aiming to have our retailers come to see us and take part in some training. Along with showing them just what’s involved in making our products and giving them the opportunity to build cables that they can take away and use in their home systems, we’re also looking at sales training – by which I mean helping them with ways to sell our products: I wouldn’t dream of patronising our retailers by suggesting that we know more about selling than they do. That certainly isn’t the case!
“I also hope to spend time with them and get feedback about what’s happening in their businesses because I get mixed reports from our own sales representatives – and other companies’ – about how retailers are managing. I’d like to know how they’re evolving, what they’re moving into and so on. Someone recently said that retailers are an endangered species and that, naturally, is a concern for me. But, as a company that’s privately owned, and not a shareholder company, we can be flexible in our approach and can change and do whatever we like to help retailers. I’m keen to do whatever’s necessary to ensure sales for The Chord Company and its retailers. We have an export market but I wouldn’t want to depend on that exclusively. The UK retailers are our principal customers and I will do whatever I can to help them be successful.
“Naturally, we’ll entertain them if they wish… although some of them may have already heard about our entertainment and might want to leave at the end of the day: one of our last visitors got us barred from a local hotel. We don’t mind… as long as they had fun, that’s the main thing!”
One major element of The Chord Company’s ethic – and success – that she is keen to expose to visitors is the lengths to which it goes to ensure that selling and using its products is a trouble-free, uncomplicated prospect. To guarantee compatibility with a wide range of systems, for example, the company has established close working relationships with a wide range of component manufacturers. “So, for example, when we have a retailer phone us because they can’t get an answer from a manufacturer about how to connect a particular combination of products, we find out how to do it for them… as a free service. If required we’ll make them special cables at the drop of a hat with the configuration and connections the manufacturers prefer. There might come a point, however, when we can only offer that very extensive service to our committed and loyal customers but we are wholly dedicated to looking after those people.
“The people who work here are very knowledgeable…because we’ve had to be like that. We have had to be flexible because we’ve always felt that we need to offer our retailers a truly outstanding service. When people ring us they can always speak to somebody who can deal with their enquiry – if it’s not the person who answers the phone, there will be someone in sales or production who can provide the answer to their question.”
In terms of production, The Chord Company employs in-house technicians working full time – predominantly on bespoke cables, which represent a large part of the company’s business – and outworkers who concentrate on standard stock, all of which is thoroughly quality control checked at the factory. The production process is designed to ensure a speedy response to orders with next-day delivery on standard cables and a guaranteed delivery within ten days of special cables – although these are usually delivered well within that time. Sally points out: “That’s better than any other company I am aware of. Because all our products are made here, we’re never waiting for someone in the Far East to make them, package them, and send them back.”
A further benefit of the new premises is that the company can now accelerate its expansion programme. In between buying the premises in February and moving to them in September, the company grew considerably. Sally says, “It’s just as well that I bought additional space. I had intended to rent it out, but we are already using it ourselves. We have a couple of projects on the go: one of them is trying to refine the service and products we offer to the custom install market. We’ve always been able to offer cables to the CI market, but we were up against bigger companies coming in from America who have been providing relatively cheap cables there for years. The big difference with CI as opposed to regular retail audio is that price is very important, because you’re not going to see the cable anyway. The cable also has to be very robust because they’re going to be pulling it through when they install it: so it’s a very different market with a very different customer profile. It’s a difficult shift for a company dealing with specialist high-end products to move into bulk, cheap, but still good quality cabling. Obviously it would be very easy for us to produce a cheap nasty product, but we don’t want to do that – that’s not the way our business is run.
“So we’ve taken a little while to find something we are happy with, something that’s better than equivalent offerings, and which our customers will be happy to buy and use. It’s difficult dealing with cheap, ‘commodity’ products like CAT5. If you are really only interested in the dollar at the end of the day there’s stuff you can do, but that’s not going to make you happy in life is it? For me money is security, and what’s more important is doing a good job, doing something really well, and having a lot of satisfied customers.
“So we have the basis of our install products out there in what is a very price sensitive market – that seems to be all that matters – and we will continue to go after it. We haven’t got the full range out yet but we will definitely be pushing forward with install cables.We want to be able to offer a one-stop shop with our products. However, things change so rapidly in the CI market; but I’ve been lucky to find someone to do some consultative work with us who knows what he’s talking about and has been able to assist us greatly towards devising cable solutions that address the needs of installers and their customers.”
Another market in which The Chord Company intends to increase its presence is that of instrument cables. It has been involved with this in a low-key fashion for a number of years “because everyone who works here is a musician of one sort or another,” and there are Chord Company cables in a number of highly regarded studios, the names of which it is not allowed to advertise.
Moving home is commonly regarded as a highly stressful experience. So, when a company moves ‘home’ while simultaneously moving into new markets and planning to increase its activities, you’d expect to see signs of strain. However, the busy but relaxed, harmonious atmosphere at The Chord Company’s new premises indicates that’s not the case here. There’s a distinct air of quiet confidence throughout the building that suggests the move heralds a significant step forward for the company and the service it offers its customers.
We then spoke to Technical Director, Nigel Finn about the Chord Company’s latest products
Over the past few years the company has been working to produce a complete range of Signature products. This began with the Signature RCA, which it launched two years ago. The designs feature particular attention to screening – both its efficiency and the way in which the screens are connected; screening being an element that the company feels has become crucial over the past few years particularly because of the rapid improvements in CD players.
The Signature RCA was extremely well received and reviewed, and won numerous awards. In 2002, The Chord Company released the Signature Digital, whose design leant heavily on that of the Signature RCA
Customers then started asking for a matching speaker cable, which was something that was already in development – development that was hampered by the problem of producing a screened cable that was not, to quote Nigel, “sufficiently stiff and unwieldy to be unusable by all but the most obsessive of cable experimenters.” Having engineered a suitable solution, the company now has a “no-compromise speaker cable that has still been designed to produce the best possible sound quality rather being particularly easy to accommodate.”
At the other end of the spectrum, it has introduced its Carnival Silver Plus speaker cable. This retails at a competitive £5.49 per metre and £9.49 for the bi-wire version. Nigel observes: “We are very pleased with the level of innovation that we have employed to produce this cable – particularly when you consider its very reasonable price. In listening tests, Carnival Silver Plus comes across as more dynamic, lively and detailed than its competitors.”
Each new Chord Company product undergoes a lengthy development process. Once a prototype has been produced it undergoes an initial listening test by Nigel before being subjected to blind listening tests by a panel that includes musicians, hi-fi enthusiasts and music lovers. The procedure has been refined over the years with the result that Chord Company products deliver a consistent performance with a wide range of equipment, and the cable ranges develop in a noticeably linear fashion. “There is a strong family resemblance in all our cables so that if a customer chooses to upgrade they can hear exactly what benefit they’ll achieve by spending a little – or a lot – more money.”
