W e've all heard of the entrepreneur who liked a product so much that he bought the company. Such bold steps are sometimes wildly successful. Case in point: Mark Levinson and his high-end startup, Red Rose Music.
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Auditioning AudioPrism amplifiers with the ribbons was a "revelation," Levinson said shortly after receiving some samples. "They were simply simply some of the best-sounding electronics I had ever heard, a perfect match for Bo's speakers." He wasted no time in setting up a meeting with AudioPrism principals Victor Tiscareno and Byron Collett. The three met in Los Angeles in midsummer and hammered out a deal in which Red Rose Music acquired AudioPrism for an undisclosed amount of money. The new partners decided to keep the merger quiet while Levinson negotiated for a retail space in Manhattan.
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Back in New York, Levinson scored a coup by leasing a space he had long had his eye on—the former museum shop at the Whitney Museum. By mid-November, he and his small staff had overhauled the space and opened the door for business. "Customers came in off the street as we were moving in," Levinson recalls. "They just loved the sound." Business was so brisk from walk-in traffic alone that he decided to forgo an ad campaign. "Just incredible, "he says, describing the public response to his new products. "We've had a storm of customers from the first day. We decided to go with a soft launch, rather than making a big announcement, so that the guys in Washington could keep up production." The Whitney enjoys an average of more than 5000 visitors per day.
In the few weeks it's been open, Red Rose Music claims to have done a larger dollar volume than many far larger operations do in a year. His installers are running themselves ragged, he says, and Levinson himself has put in nonstop seven-day weeks since day one. He is lining up distribution for Red Rose products in Hong Kong and Japan, but declines to commit as to whether he wants to make the company much bigger than it is. "Given the response we've gotten here, we could probably put a Red Rose store in each of 30 cities , " Levinson speculated recently, ignoring for a moment the logistical and administrative nightmare involved in running a business of that magnitude. "No, forget that," he corrected himself. "Small is beautiful."
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Levinson has made great sound his mission in life for about 30 years now. He began in 1972 with one goal in mind: to reproduce the sound of a musical event as though you were in the room with the musicians. In 1998, his new found company, Red Rose Music, has found ways of coming much closer to this objective through the use of new technology for both speakers and electronics, combined with special cables and accessories. These components are excellent for music as well as video and film sound track reproduction, and their tasteful design can be integrated easily into any space.
