From the top: Torben Ballegaard Sørensen
Perfection by design
Bang & Olufsen’s chief executive explains how the company has survived the steady march of mass technology by focusing on superb engineering and iconic styling
words by Boyd Farrow
portrait photography by Richard Ansett
There might not seem to be much similarity between Lego, the colourful building bricks for kids, and Bang & Olufsen (B&O), the audio-visual kit for obsessive adults, other than the fact that both are world-famous Danish brands. Torben Ballegaard Sørensen, who quit his job as Lego’s business development chief in 2001 to become B&O’s chief executive, thinks otherwise.
“With both, the more bricks you have, the more fun you have,” the youthful 56-year-old beams, flanked by the entire product range at The Farm, B&O’s headquarters in Struer, 225 miles northwest of Copenhagen. “Each new piece of equipment adds value and functions to what is already there. We integrate as well as enhance existing technologies.”
Consider the company’s cheapest item, a keyring, he urges. With it, you can turn on the radio, TV, DVD or lights as you step into your home or turn them off as you leave. Moreover, the miniature polished stainless-steel remote control is as cute as any bauble you would want to carry around.
Or consider the Beo 4 remote, which can control your TV, music systems and computer files without it even being directed at them and is cast in zinc so it won’t get sweaty. It’s also as heavy as a 4×4, but that’s the point: to emphasise the quality.
If an impoverished technophobe can get excited by the remotes, God knows how giddy the two million consumers on B&O’s database must get about the gear itself – the ¤15,000 BeoLab 5 speakers, say, which analyse the “sound of the room” and tailor their performance accordingly.
The defiantly idiosyncratic company was created to pursue such perfection. Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen founded B&O in 1925 to create a peerless electric radio. Now, from the modern buildings built on the original site, B&O dreams up some of the most lusted-after home-entertainment systems available in 80 countries.
New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which includes B&O products in its permanent collection, says it “delivers the largest and most consistent design portfolio among the world’s industrial companies”. This autumn the Danish company will finally get its own museum in Struer, which will chart the home-entertainment evolution.
Uniquely, B&O creates such instantly recognisable products – the wall-mounted six-disc CD player that displays its loaded discs in a straight line, for instance, or the sculptural speakers that look like organ pipes balanced on spikes – by giving designers complete freedom.
“It’s better that they have no idea about our technical or cost limitations,” reasons Sorensen. “For most people, design is just styling. For us, everything starts with design. We’re trying to humanise technology. Designers look at how we live – they sometimes even speak to social anthropologists – and come up with proposals. It’s then up to our engineers to make those proposals work.”
Although Sørensen insists that all products are market-driven – “We are a business, not an art school!” – B&O has survived the march of mass-production only by focusing on design, technology and even retail innovations – its boutiques represent the antithesis of today’s consumer electronics business. This anti-mass-market strategy, accelerated in the mid-1990s, has paid dividends. Annual turnover is nudging $500m (DK 2.5bn) and Sørensen says B&O should be a $1bn (DK 5bn) company by 2010.
His fiercely loyal customers, he says, discover B&O in their twenties and thirties and often work in business or the arts. “They want products that allow them to feel good at home, have a striking look, are easy to use – and last around 15 to 20 years instead of two. The business is totally polarised; more commodities are disposable, but our customers want uncompromising quality and aesthetics.†He feels strongly that the term ‘luxury’ has become devalued. “We strive to avoid over-diluting the brand, even when we are tempted,†he explains.
“When we started making phones, we had either to
reinvent the device or change it.†Sørensen is referring here to the iconic, banana-shaped BeoCom 2, created from a single piece of aluminium to give “unrivalled sound quality†and “exceptional balance†in the hand.
The phone has also become a handy device for filmmakers when characters need to be shown to be wealthy or fashionable. Mel Gibson’s ad executive, in What Women Want has one in his apartment and in The Devil Wears Prada, glossy magazine ingénue Andy gives her boyfriend Nate the one she was given at work. The company’s systems are strategically placed in many slick American TV shows, including the ultimate imageobsessed show Nip/Tuck.
Significantly, B&O recently entered the mobile-phone market, teaming with Samsung to make the €900 Serene which, naturally, looks nothing like any other mobile phone. The screen, for example, is past the mouth, “so women won’t get it smeared with make-up,†he explains.
Men, on the other hand, may love the mechanics; at the touch of a finger, the phone opens up in your palm. Says Sørensen: “You can’t download games, but you can do the things you need to do. This is the phone for when you go out at night. It’s like wearing a good watch – Louis Vuitton produced the carrying case. And in common with all our products, it has some element of surprise: it opens automatically when you receive a text message.†He adds that around 60% of Serene buyers are new customers “taking their first step into our worldâ€. A bigger step for B&O would be to assert its design superiority in virtual space – the realm, epitomised by Apple’s iPod, where great design means seamless software and network interaction with other products and services. Sørensen laments that B&O invented the iPod’s navigation wheel in 1995 but failed to patent it. “We now need to inspire our designers with ways of using new digital technologies – new graphical user interfaces, new ways of interacting in cyberspace and so on.”
He’s aware, though, of the dangers of experimentation, noting: “It’s like insulin in the human body; too little and you die, too much and you die.” As part of its successful diversification, B&O makes products for the medical industry, as well as Audi and BMW car stereos and aluminium parts for BMW interiors. Meanwhile, many luxury hotels install B&O systems in rooms, as do yachts and private jets.
And the future? Sørensen believes that very soon people won’t need to carry something as cumbersome as an iPod. With some remote-control variant, B&O customers could access their music in the car or movies in hotel rooms anywhere in the world. This vision excites Sørensen. “We never see ourselves just as technology or gadget providers; we want to make things that become part of people’s lives and are up to our values of simplification, convenience and quality,” he says. That is why the company shunned home computers: “We want to be known for ‘lean-back’, not ‘lean-forward’ activities.”
Ironically, while virtual entertainment occupies much of Sørensen’s thoughts, home comforts keep throwing up new revenue streams. In boomtowns such as Dubai, property developers are increasingly installing pricey entertainment systems before floors and walls are even in place. This is markedly unlike the faux ‘living room’ at The Farm, which, Sørensen winces, had most of its walls and floors dismantled to maximise the impact of just two BeoLab 5 speakers.
The comparison with Lego might be spot on, after all.
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