Mexico. Less than two years ago, Sonos decided to continue its penetration globally, covering Latin America with its products and starting in Mexico. At that time, customer acceptance continues to rise and is projected to other countries in the region, Daniel Montaño, regional director for Latin America at Sonos, told AVI LATIN AMERICA.
"Fortunately, the Mexican market has responded very well; we've started doing Sonos activities from a year and a half to here, since October 2017, a lot of things that we hadn't done as a local brand. We had distributors from before who had made different efforts to get our products to channels, some sites in stores. In these months we have made different efforts to bring our products to Mexico, to see how they worked and fortunately people begin to locate the brand more and we are interested in continuing to develop the integration channel, which is combined with audio, lighting, smart home, but also in the part of stores, where people begin to buy for their home. We want people to get to know us better so they have a better user experience."
One of its customers, the Rosetta restaurant – which has signature cuisine and is located in the central Roma neighborhood of the Mexican capital – has the best user experience opinion of the smart speakers developed and manufactured by Sonos.
Elena Reygadas, named in 2014 as the best chef in Latin America, (according to Latin America's 50 Best list) and owner of the Rosetta restaurant, commented: "I care that those who come to Rosetta or any of our places enjoy their stay. Food is a tool to touch the senses and reach enjoyment, but for restaurants it is important that the customer feels comfortable, that he enjoys, and that is achieved through the distance between tables, service, and music is a fundamental element. I love having Sonos, because all the speakers I'd had were big, ugly. I wondered, why aren't there some pretty speakers, which are aesthetic? In the aesthetic part Sonos has been a delight. In addition, each Sonos speaker can have a different volume. So for many ways it has been a delight to have Sonos products."
Montaño added: "Our products have traditional audio, and on the other hand the best of smart devices. The difference that we have, if you see us within the traditional audio, (is that) we are a good balance between giving a good sound quality, but having a functionality component that is very easy to integrate any online music service, bring all the music services to every space of a house, with more flexibility of intelligent audio. If you compare us to smart devices, definitely our main differentiator is audio quality, because most of those devices are utilitarian, so that you recognize voice, answer, but not necessarily listen to music, which is the main function of a smart speaker."
The executive highlighted the advantages of Sonos products over their competitors: "We are positioned as smart speakers with superior audio quality, which is what sets us apart. In the audio part, there are many brands that elaborate these devices, but they do not have the intelligent audio part. And in that part, how they communicate with each other, connectivity, ease of controlling them, access to music services, so we are not a Bluetooth speaker for music. We try to give the best of both worlds: we create the best experience of listening to music without losing the smart part."
He concluded by mentioning the price increase of his products: "We have equipment ranging from 3,000 pesos (about $150 USD), to 15,000 pesos ($780 USD), but they are modular, so you can start with one and grow the system."
Text written by Vlad Martínez, special for AVI LATINOAMÉRICA.
