[Eddy]

Originally Posted by Sahil

I love how everything is getting professionalized these days, these moves are best for us customers. Cleaner ways of business and healthy competition would bring prices down too.

Well, yes. But we have to keep our fingers crossed. An economy recession will take us back 5 years or so

[headers]

The recession is already in. Markets are getting bad and not many predict light until April 09.

[sk456]

Reliance jas one very simple strategey in all its business.. use raw cash power to buy bulk.. and just bleed the seller dry .Im pretty sure they paid less than 1-2K for a 10k speaker. only clause is that they must have bought them in thousands of pieces.

[Eddy]

Btw, I just know of one Reliance Autozone in the Ambience mall at Gurgaon. Where are the others in Delhi / NCR ?

[aZa]

I think this initiative is/will be targeted at the mass market. The Car Accessories market being totally unorganized, this step by reliance will help the whole market. IMO The Enthusiast ICE audience is a niche segment and will be catered by the installers/dealers specializing in high end equipment and high quality installs.

[anuragn]

Very true it is targetted at the mass market. There's a huge segment which thinks that anything which emits sound when prodded... I mean played...and has SONY printed on it is eligible and the best deal is the one that is the cheapest. And SQ??? what is that?

[speedzak]

I think this is a good move for the whole industry.
1. A good organised place where the masses can go to and get quality work done.
2. Now that the masses are out of the way, specialist installers can cater with their better service and attention to ICE enthusiasts.
3. Competition will bring out the best. Service, prices, attitude... Everything will improve I hope.

[navin]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Their prices are lower, and they give bill and warranty.
Will that kill the small installer market, atleast for budget installs.
In the west, bread and butter installs go to big name brand stores, and specialist installs go to the specialists etc.,
In India, most of the installs are bread and butter installs, so does that mean that the days of the small ICE installer are over?

on the contrary. in the long term I think Autozone and it's competitors will extend the audio market. about 5% of those who get those basic installs will eventually want to upgrade. as any hardened ICEer will tell you the audio bug is hard to shake off.

I expect Reliance and co to further extend the market atleast in the long run if they can just do simple installs well.

what i fear is that these guys attempting and making a hash of larger installs. that will give all of car audio a bad name.

understanding and eliminating engine whine, eleectrical noise, etc.. is not something you learn on your first day on the job. Car audio is not rocket science (sorry B&T, Gunbir, LBM, Raven) but you do need to apply a good deal of common sense.

[headers]

Originally Posted by navin

understanding and eliminating engine whine, eleectrical noise, etc.. is not something you learn on your first day on the job. Car audio is not rocket science

Navin, you took the words out of my mind! BTW, is there a reliance autozone around Chennai - just thought will check it out.

[ultimatechamp]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

For example Sony HU, MRP 10,000. Grey is around 6K I think, they offer it for 10K and give 4 speakers(sony) for free and this includes installation.
So user things "Wow with bill and warranty installation under 10K"
This class of user does not care about specifications, if it plays mp3 and is sony, its good enough.

Couldn't have been said any better,kudos to tsk for the insight .

[phamilyman]

They have everything, but this is my review:
- Sunfilms - They beat everyone down. Highly painful when someone spends 2100 on Llumar 50/70 (or whatever) and sees similar (too pained/confused to compare) for 1637 bucks.
- Seat covers - Limited but decent variety. Slightly above the market thou - no shade on Kashmere gate/KB rates but matches regular installers ok types. 4k for decent art leather from Elegant brand(?)
- Tyres - CHEAP. 175/70/13 XM1s for 2520, which is quite comparable to some of the good shops. Plus some offers (tee shirt and arbit gifts) make things sweeter.
- ICE - Overpriced. A bit. They have Blau, G-Hanz, Sony, Pio. Sony i didnt bother - Pio was ok range, BUT overpriced. The 5090 one gets for 8k, comes here for 9k (post discount). Decent range in speakers again.
- Shampoo/Polish etyadi - Very competitively priced. Microfiber cloth for 89 bucks - holy cow. Not good news for someone who thought he got a steal from BigBazar in 150 bucks - the regular big installer had microfiber in like 300-400 buck range. Ditto for shampoos/polish etc but cant comment till one has used really (bought formula one from Convenio earlier). Got cheap rates on GPS, on phone mounts (119!), car perfumes and all. Neck pillows at 351 are expensive. Buy as good ones from BigBazar for 199.

Worth a visit/dekko.

Quality of install is okay - for seat covers - chose the cheapest I could Very courteous, but a franchise model. Given their mall location, don't think they can edge out other decent installers anytime soon. Yes, they'll grow big, but can they kill the market, no way.

[condor]

tsk1979 : Of course quality of installation is anybody's guess.?

May not top notch, but will match run-of-the-mill installations. And with better prices than outside, I think RA will be quite successful.

I doubt they want to be "ICE specialists". Mass market is their mantra, and their stocks & area of work will be in line with that. For any installation, the boys doing the actual work may be skilled at what they do, but these boys dont understand car audio & it's finer points - that area belongs to the installer. And a good installer would not really want to work for a (RA) salary.

But, RA will be the place to go if one is going for replacements. Tyres (as mentioned by phamilyman). If you know which brand you want, you go there, ask for a replacement. One-off consumables/accessories - 3M products, mats, micro-fibre cloth, perfumes etc .. Prices of these will definitely be attractive.

p.s: Is RA an ADAG company ?

[topedgemonk]

Originally Posted by nitrous

Now, that solves it.
Reliance must have gone to Sony and picked up the entire old stock at 20-25% of its value.They have this entire country to feed.So, one can imagine the volume. Sony would have happily obliged for sake of liquidity.

Since reliance aims at the masses who go for entry level systems, would it really make a difference to the consumers audio experience if they listen to an older system.

Would there by a quantum leap in sound quality from one generation to the next in entry level ICE? In that case, wouldn't this be good for the customer?

[hillram]

What kind of GPS models are available?Can some one throw more light on this?

[phamilyman]

They had the SatGuide systems for like 13.x k versus 15.x k MRP. Didn't bother about it.

The kickass was a llumar film that was 870 bucks (upto 3k types). Seriously felt sick having spent more than twice a coupla hours back. But yes, 2100 was okay considering AC now works at 1 even in afty crawl traffic.

the better thing is they give a kickass letter besides warrantyfor compliance with law etc. My "high end" installer is yet to give me a letter - he would gimme a certificate from Garware, not Llumar!! Autozone is definitely ahead.