by
Keijo Tanskanen
Hifi and high-end dealer MrHifi reached 10 years career last spring. Founder Mikko Raumanen gave me a short interview before my summer holiday. Here is a short overview of the discussion.
MrHifi was founded in spring 1997 when Mikko was still studying and got an idea of dealing second hand hifi components. At that time Mikko had been a hifi enthusiast for approximately five years. So, a moderate background for dealing was already developed. Cleverly Mikko decided to keep all the costs at a minimum and for example the very first shop was in his living room!
After a relatively successful beginning he proceeded to find a separate business office and hired two employees. The business idea was crystal clear: free and independent dealing without import pressures supported by informative customer service in order to improve the listening experience. This has worked well through the time and the 10 years anniversary events were organized successfully during four weekends in April and May 2007. Congratulations! During each weekend there was a new audio system represented. Thanks to this there were sets for many tastes! Mikko told he is satisfied with the results of the events. He had a lot of feedback and in summary the Linn and the Quad systems got the best feedback – well, that’s not a surprise.
Mikko told me some interesting thoughts about the current hifi atmosphere in Finland and his point of views about the high-end and his preferences. He has found that the most popular hifi system price class is 2000-3000 euros and that the traditional two channel systems still represent a big part of the total sales. He’s also noted that many of the hifi enthusiasts will buy a 10 000 euros system after a couple of year’s experience of the cheaper system. Though price or brand is not a prerequisite for the high-end, some kind of connection to them anyway does exist, Mikko told and mentioned at the same time that the sound quality is still the only clear criteria for the high-end.
Then we had a discussion about the subjective preferences. Mikko thinks it is important to choose the components which will give up sonically as little as possible and which have uniform quality of the sound. Personally his most important preferences lie around the resolution which is quite a same as positively analytical sound. When I asked him about the meaning of musical sound he said that in his opinion it is the same as live-like or real sound which means that positively analytical sound belongs inside musicality. Well, it may be unnecessary to say but I have exactly the same opinion about this issue.
Then our little discussion was over and business and hobbies go on. Hifi and high-end live quite well in Finland and many of the enthusiasts will get what they are looking for from MrHifi. Naturally the scale of systems in MrHifi reaches all price classes too. Even for die-hards one of the most expensive high-end systems in Finland is available. In the future Mikko will consider expanding their business functionalities and have one more office in the centre of Helsinki. The product assortments will also be adjusted. We’ll see how these plans will be carried out. Good luck!
Thanks for the interview Mikko and MrHifi!