“What we really sell is fun,” stated John Madden, one of the owners of Contemporary Audio Co.

“And entertainment,” added Gavin Sanders, his partner.

If your idea of fun includes having a home theater with an 100-inch video screen, a video projector that drops out of the ceiling, and top-of-the-line audio equipment that allows you to hear everything in your favorite movies from creaking doors to crickets chirping, all contained within finely designed cabinetry, then Contemporary Audio is just the place for you.“If somebody wanted it, we could supply them from what they sit on to watch their movie to everything in between,” said Sanders.

“We’ve got all the pieces and parts to the whole,” added Madden. “If you want to buy a VCR, we’ve got that. If somebody wants a CD player, a pair of speakers, or to spend $30,000 on a projector, we’ve gone to the extreme.”

That extreme includes working with furniture and cabinet makers to create just the right look and comfort in home theater, in conjunction with designing the audio and video equipment. Moreover, when customers walk into Contemporary Audio, they are hardly greeted with the conventional electronic equipment shelves.

“When we first did this store, it was the first of its kind, with individual rooms devoted to one automated system,” said Madden. “Our representatives told us that it was the first that they saw of it, and they still come in here and drop their jaws.”

If jaws do drop, it is because of the individual detail to the rooms at Contemporary Audio. These rooms are decorated by interior designers and include various equipment combinations.

“For example, if you’re a hockey fan, you know you can’t afford to miss any of the action, so we have the refrigerator and the bar right here in the cabinetry,” Madden explained about one system. “We have motorized shading on the windows. Also, you can operate everything, including the lighting, by an infrared signal. So instead of trying to adjust six different switches, you touch one button and turn it all down. It’s very convenient.”

The focus of Contemporary Audio is to provide clients with custom home theaters that will best meet their individual needs.

“What we pride ourselves in is taking the time to find out what they want in their house and how they want to operate the system,” Madden explained. “We design and engineer for simplicity of operation. We are full service: We design it, engineer it, sell it, service it, and train on it.

“We turn the system on with a touch screen which is set up individually for each customer,” he continued. “What’s intuitive to us, may not be to you. So we say, ‘Here’s the starting point. What do you think?’ It’s the ultimate of custom.”

Madden and Sanders originally met in the mid-1970s, when they were both selling shoes. Madden went on to work in audio while Sanders went to GM.

“John and I always shared a dream of owning our own business and it really developed into this,” stated Sanders. “This was our dream.”

“Almost since day one, Gavin and I have been looking in one industry after another for the right entrepreneurial opportunity,” said Madden. “We got together early in 1990 and started putting together the plans for doing this business. We started out on the corner of Waverly and Saginaw with a 1,000-square-foot store inside Video Express. We moved to [Okemos] in 1993 and focused exclusively on the custom side. We remodeled that store four years ago to have more showrooms, and had a separate facility for our office and warehouse. In November 2004 we moved to are new location in East Lansing.”

When the partners first opened in 1990, one of the early alliances they formed was with the Greater Lansing Homebuilders Association. By joining the association, they gained access to installing their home theaters in new construction jobs.

“When it comes to what we do on the custom side, we’re the choice of virtually every builder in the market,” noted Madden.

But home theaters are not limited just to newer houses.

“We retrofit existing houses, running wires through attics, floors, wherever necessary,” Madden explained.

Contemporary Audio is doing more work in existing homes, and its home theater systems are becoming more accessible to the middle class.

“We are more and more into middle-income housing, and that’s great because that is a larger market,” said Madden.

But they definitely can still serve the upper end. The pair estimate that a customer could easily spend $80,000 on a custom home theater and that they have even done jobs over six figures.

“Gavin likes to say we haven’t done our most expensive job yet,” noted Madden.

To date, most of their customers are in mid-Michigan. “Our sales focus point is Lansing and Jackson, but we’ll go anywhere,” stated Sanders. “We’ve done jobs in all four corners of the state,” added Madden.

Like any successful business, their market share continues to grow because of word-of-mouth. “The referrals coming in are incredible,” said Madden. “Our first customer in Jackson gave us a half-million dollars in referrals from that initial contact. ”Currently, Contemporary Audio is installing about 80 systems at any given time. Both Madden and Sanders estimate that they’ve completed at least 1,000 jobs so far.

Interestingly enough, one hurdle the pair continually face in selling home theater systems is apprehension on the part of some women. “Most of the time, we start with the husband coming in,” said Madden, “then he’ll bring his wife in here. “As a general rule, women are the most apprehensive until after they’ve walked in,” noted Sanders. “After that, it’s completely acceptable to try. Their perception is that they’re walking into an appliance store; but after they see it’s done right, they’re much more open to what we do and how we do it.”

Sanders and Madden pride themselves on spending the necessary money to do extensive research on products before offering anything in their store. “We pick products not just because they are popular, but also because they are going to work and people are going to be able to operate them,” Madden stated. As for the future of home theater, Madden is excited about the newest technological joint venture.

“It is the convergence of electronics and the computer industry,” he said. The new electronic equipment will include a computer hard drive and wireless keyboard which will allow users to search the Internet while they are watching television and even to interact with their favorite shows. “This is the most incredible piece to be introduced in the last couple of years,” said Madden. The new system will be priced at only $5,000, which is about half of what the individual components cost now, he added.

As for the store itself, he and Sanders have one more goal. “We are trying to eliminate being Lansing’s best-kept secret,” stated Madden. “There is not a person that comes in that doesn’t go, ‘Wow.’ There is no other place where they can experience this. “There might be one or two other places in the state that could give a similar experience and there are a ton of other fine establishments,” he continued, “but we’ve been on the cutting edge in this industry. We’ve got the corner on cool.”

(reprinted from the January 1998 issue of Greater Lansing Business Monthly)