We are very proud to have had a fantastic/successful 2017 Dealer Training Certification. Education has been an important part of the growth of VPI. The more the dealer/person selling a VPI knows about the product the easier it will be for them to be as excited as we are! Our training events usually run for 3 days. Friday the dealers get to hang with the VPI staff and enjoy some solid team building. Saturday is when we all roll up our sleeves and build some VPI turntables. Finally on Sunday we all gather together and listen to varies systems and approaches to developing a listening room. (In the main picture: Wayback Audio, Northern Audio, Prestige Audio Video, Kosmic, Living Acoustics, Brooks Berdan LTD, Krispy Audio, Reference Analog, Soundstagedirect, Audio Advice, and Fort Collins Audio) All three days are equally important for the dealers to get to know the people building the tables as well as the VPI team meeting the dealers who are selling them. Also is a chance to stores to talk with each other and share ideas!
Day 1 - Meeting the VPI Team
This tradition started to remind us whether it is a good week or bad week we all need to take a step back and celebrate our accomplishments. While in New Jersey we had to make sure to expose them to another long standing New Jersey tradition... a trip to Harold's Kosher Deli! Seriously, this is the best deli you can get before taking a train into New York! We all survived the endless corned-beef and their world class pickle bar! Washed down with a "healthy" Napoleon pastry! To all of you audiophiles and dealers out there remember to never set up a turntable on an empty stomach!
Day 2 - Training Day!
The second day of training is when we all dig deep and build a turntable but first we have an overall factory tour, branding, and marketing, and general discussion with the dealership about VPI. It is important to make sure everyone understands and cares about the VPI product line. Another exciting point was showing the dealership the level of testing and procedure that goes into every VPI and showcasing Mike Bettinger our Director of Electrical Engineering. On top of our improved electrical engineering, Mike also showed the testing and functionality of the ADS in greater detail and the pro-type for our new VPI Aurora Phono. The Aurora is projected to retail for $2,000 and be available sometime during the fourth quarter. After the tour and marketing/branding meeting we broke out the tools and started to build. To give the dealers a full scope of what it takes to build and work on a VPI turntable we start them off by building the basic production model. This year was the Prime Scout in white. They added the feet, installed the platter, installed the VTA base, tonearm, and wired the motor. Once the dealers have successfully built the turntable we take a break for some more food and some VPI related videos. We shared one of our favorite videos about working in a High End Store After refreshing we got right back at it and started upgrading our Prime Scouts!
The VPI Dealers learned how to upgrade the feet, the platter, the motor, and VTA base, and the tonearm. The picture above was Cameron from Krispy Audio going overkill with him upgrading his feet to Avenger Reference feet! In that case the feet cost almost as much as the table but if a customer wants to make that upgrade it is totally possible!
The training ended with proper cartridge mounting and alignment. Harry Weisfeld led the dealers through the setup and some tricks of the trade to make their lives easier.
Day 3 - Music Room Listening
To end training we spend the last day listening with our dealers. We have 5 rooms setup at the VPI listening house. The equipment is continually changing but the direction of the rooms is to have an "entry level", "entry level audiophile", "you are an audiophile", "you are a single audio", and the "fair play room" there will be more about the listening rooms in a later post. It is important to know how a product sounds just as much as it is to know how it works. It was the perfect wrap up for our training and all of us coming closer together in the VPI family.
