Even if you’re not familiar with Bang & Olufsen, you may have gawked at its high-end electronics before. Master of product placement, the brand has appeared beside both Batman and Bond, James Bond that is.
Still, with much of Europe mired in a financial bog, the Danish company has not escaped from the region’s struggles unscathed.
According to a Slashgear report, the luxury electronics purveyor has opted to shut-down up to 125 stores over the next 12-18 months, most of which are operating in the embattled continent. This despite the fact that the company managed to net a 5.5 percent uptick in sales from September 2012 to November 2012, when compared to the same stretch of 2011. The company also saw revenue move in the right direction, from 776 million to 819 million Danish Krones. According to B&O, the increase was mostly due to in-car-audio tie-ins with luxury automotive companies and overall earnings were down during the highlighted period.
B&O will be shifting its tactics in response to waning profits, shutting down under-performing outlets and picking strategic locations to open new stores. Ironically, the company’s revenues increased in Europe in Q2 2012 to the tune of 12 percent, but swooned in the rest of the world, falling by 22 percent everywhere but in the US, where it experienced a small bump, jumping two percent. These numbers don’t tell whole story, though, as B&O attributed its success in Europe to the release of “new, innovative products,“ and its struggles in much of the rest of the world to a delayed introduction of those same products.
