Otari Will Adapt Retailing Modes

Otari Will Adapt Retailing Modes

By EARL PAIGE

LOS ANGELES—Manufacturers aiming at the professional studio and duplicator markets and finding them soft are adapting sales techniques more commonly associated with the retail market. At least this is the belief of Brian Trankle, sales manager for Otari Corp., which is offering a new recorder at the Audio Engineering Society show in New York, on conditional sale.

Otari, U.S. arm of the giant Japanese tape duplicating equipment manufacturer and located at San Carlos, Calif., is making its initial move into high-end audio equipment for studios and serious audiophiles with the MX-5050 open reel "Mini-Pro" at $1,345 in two-channel version.

The firm which attempted to penetrate the U.S. market a few years ago, sees the 5050 as a new generation series of pro and semi-pro machines. It is also showing its in-cassette duplicator at AES.

Otari is also seeing reps at AES and setting up a network of franchised technical service centers to handle Otari. Reps will coordinate the network.

"The professional market is not only more competitive," says Trankle of the mood he expects this week at AES, "but there is a resistance to spending money on the part of dealers in the professional field. We are trying to help the dealer by offering units on a 30-day trial, or conditional purchase order. This is something that just hasn't been done by the major companies, at least in my 17 years experience (Trankle was with Ampex for that period of time).

"Our situation is different also because we're new in America. Our customers want to know what technical support we will offer. They know Otari is huge in Japan but this is a new market in America."

The 5050 has what Trankle claims to be highly unusual features for this type of machine. He lists synchronous playback, balanced input and output and 2,000 hour mean time between failure as three outstanding features.

Otari will next show the 5050 and other new items Sept. 18 in Los Angeles at a rep open house.

⤢ zoomFEATURE LOADED—Otari's 50/50 professional recorder has front panel edit control, IC digital motion sensing, cueing and monitoring in fast forward and rewind, many other features commonly found on higher-priced units. Suggested list: $1,345 in two-channel version.