Cyrus
Size: £5m within a £100m group (post-merger)
Consumer electronics
The project
Cyrus is a British specialist audio company established in 1985, manufacturing precision hi-fi equipment. It is an excellent brand with a good reputation but was under-performing in a declining Hi-Fi market. Built around its R&D team, Cyrus is internationally recognised as a leader in audio engineering. The Cyrus design philosophy is to engineer the best performance possible within three ranges of models, all built in the UK, with increasing levels of performance, each directly profiting from the technology developed for the range above it.
The challenge
Cyrus’ business had suffered many years of decline, mainly due to not keeping pace with market changes and design technology. The company was essentially reduced to being a small business, with all the financial challenges of a small business. Yet it was operating on a global scale with a global view, but without the sales and marketing distribution network to support its aspirations.
After an initial audit, we were engaged to implement the plans, processes and strategies deemed vital for a successful business turnaround.
David has built several European and global sales and distribution teams up to £350m turnover. His wealth of cross-industry experience and skills in accelerating sales growth has paid dividends for Cyrus, with key strengths in global distribution and people motivation.
Simon Freethy
Managing Director, Cyrus
The solution
We developed and deployed a wide range of measures to help improve the company’s financial performance, including creating robust sales plans, processes, and KPIs.
A regional distribution strategy, with standard global agreements, performance measurement and accreditation reward schemes, was launched, along with a new online and workshop training academy.
We recruited, revitalised and built a comprehensive sales distribution network in 43 countries, including an annual distributor conference programme in Munich, supported by a closed group online communications portal. New sales staff in the UK, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions were also recruited.
A new product launch and market strategy was designed to support localised marketing and sales efforts among international distributors and distributor performance, training, replacement, and recruitment programmes. Finally, the new ‘Cyrus ONE’ product range was successfully launched in 43 countries.
The impact
Our new distribution strategy had an almost immediate effect, energising people and creating measurable growth, with an 80% increase in sales orders within ten months.
We achieved huge growth of five times annual revenues within 18 months in the Asia Pacific Region, while new distributors were appointed in Australia, Thailand, Canada, Israel and several European countries.
Troublesome performance in France resulted in a change of partner and a trebling of revenues, while in Australia, revenues increased from just £20,000 per annum to almost £500,000 per annum.
We rebuilt a solid retail channel in the UK and repaired the earlier damage to relationships with a key major retail chain. Cyrus’ product range benefited from new product strategies for the specialist HiFi sector and the launch of new products for the broader consumer electronics markets.