Hi-Fi Hut demystifying hi-fi products

Daniel Rooney and his business partner Elliot Purtill established Hi-Fi Hut in early 2010. The company specialises in high-end hi-fi and home cinema systems. It is also developing own-brand accessories.

What distinguishes your business from competitors? Traditionally, high-end hi-fi products have been marketed to men of a certain age and background, and have been a bit of a mystery to other consumers. We deliberately took a different approach by trying to demystify things and make the shopping experience more approachable.

We set up things so that our showroom developed out of the website rather than the other way round. We were very much a clicks-to-bricks operation initially with our retail brand growing out of that. Our website remains an important part of our business as we carry between 3,500 and 4,000 products on it, which I believe is considerably more than any other retailer in this space.

We’ve also focused solely on selling good products and not compromising ourselves by offering cheap and nasty ones, and we’re very proud of this.

What has been the biggest challenge you have had to face? The biggest challenge was in setting up a company selling what could be seen as luxury goods in the middle of a recession.

It was a risk, but it was that or go on the dole at the time so we went for it. Elliot and I had been had been in the audio-visual installation business for more than six years, but that work dried up during the recession. We felt there was nowhere to buy the goods we wanted to sell in Ireland and figured that we could make a go of things.

It was difficult initially because we didn’t have access to finance for the first few years but things got easier. We’ve proven ourselves so it’s easy to get credit from suppliers and to get finance now. The challenges now are more around issues such as logistics, rents and so on.

What is the biggest mistake you've made in business? We spent a lot of time and effort developing our web presence, and we've been through three, nearly four iterations of our website on various platforms, some because of bad luck, such as one platform going bust and the other closing.

We should probably have employed experts from the start who had a better understanding of things than we did, but we learned from the experience so it did have some benefits. And your major successes to date? The continued growth we've experienced having pretty much doubled in size every year over the last three years is something we're proud of. We are selling into the UK and further afield and that's going well, and we've also gone back into the installations business again. In addition we've managed to buy our building so that gives us more security and allows us to manage our costs better.

What was the best piece of business advice you've ever received? Probably to buy your property if you can. It just makes everything so much more secure. I was given that advice a few years ago and just recently we were able to pull it off. The other thing is don't try to be all things to all people. Specialisation is key.

Who do you most admire in business and why? I think that the work Tony Fadell (CEO of Nest) has done is really impressive, particularly being able to sell his business on to Google for $3 billion. My original degree is in project design and so it is something that excites and is important to me. We're working towards developing our own range of accessories to go with the products we currently sell and so he's a good inspiration to have.

What advice would you give the Government to stimulate the economy? It would be great if there was better advice out there for people starting a business. You find yourself in at the deep end trying to learn about getting set up for tax, meeting regulatory requirements and so on as you go. A lot of the information you need isn't readily available so you often only learn about things late on.

Do you think the banks are open for business at the moment? We've received financing and are pleased with how things turned out. You need to have a business plan and for it to be backed up by real world numbers and a couple of years' solid trading behind you. Then they're interested.

How do you see the short-term future for your business? We've just redone the showroom which we felt was necessary because, while we sell a lot online, some people still like to visit the store to listen to the systems we sell before buying. That was a worthwhile investment.

We’ve also started selling our own designed speaker bracket through Amazon in five countries and it’s going well. The plan is to potentially expand upon the range over time. It’s very much a sideline, but we’re excited about it.

What is your business worth and would you sell it? I don't know, but I wouldn't sell it right now. I feel like, after the hard work we've put in, we're just on the cusp of taking off. I could see a purchase if we end up developing more of our own products and we get some flow with that, but I'm not sure it would be worthwhile selling the business and starting over. I'm not sure I could handle doing it all from scratch again.