10 minute read
Real World Retail
Devil in the Detail
Apicella Autosound aims to provide detailoriented perfection in integration and tuning, which has led to fast-paced growth year over year.
WORDS BY ROSA SOPHIA
FAST FACTS
Main Location:
Stony Point, NY
Number of Locations:
ONE
Square Footage:
2,200
Type:
Garage / Boutique
Number of Employees:
FOUR
MAIN FOCUS
90% Car Audio 8% Radar and Laser 2% Remote Start
KEY STAFF
Owner: Nick Apicella Technician, Fabricator: Damian Kevin Mullings Technician, Fabricator, Laser Design: Matthew Kim Apprentice: Kyle Dunn
Stony Point, New York-based Apicella Autosound began by catering mainly to hobbyists, according to owner Nick Apicella. Now, the shop is drawing a wealthier clientele which he noted tends to have full confidence in the team when it comes to letting them guide the project. While the shop still does custom work with competition-style sound quality builds, the majority is now focused on OEM integration.
Until about two months ago, the staff consisted of only Apicella and technician Kevin Mullings. The shop now has a staff of four. Apprentice Kyle Dunn started out as an enthusiast who often called the shop for advice. The newest addition, Matthew Kim, moved from Oregon to join the team. About 90 percent of the business’s projects consist of car audio, with smaller percentages in radar, laser detection and remote start.
“We do a few remote starts a week,” Apicella said. “Kevin is very skilled at remote starts and alarms, but we don’t make an effort to do a ton of them.”
Tuning is the shop’s main money-maker.
From High-End Cars to High-End Sound
When he was younger, a journey to purchase a high-end subwoofer from a dealer in Manhattan opened doors for Apicella. “One of the employees was also into skiing and snowboarding,” he said. “We knew some of the same people. I went home and emailed the owner to ask if they were hiring.”
Although the business didn’t want to hire someone who lacked experience, the owner offered to bring him in as an apprentice and teach him the trade. He soon discovered he was more interested in creating high-end sound than he was in the type of car he was working on.
“I spent winters filming snowboarding,” he said, adding that he would snowboard every day and get paid for it. Usually, he would find work by the springtime—but in 2017, he said, he didn’t have a job lined up. As a result, he decided to install out of his parents’ driveway. Apicella posted
on forums and Facebook groups using photos of previous work. Fortunately, he added, a lot of people already knew him and had confidence in his abilities. Although his parents weren’t happy with the setup, he forged ahead.
That spring and summer, he said, “I only had three days off in six months.” Finally, in November of 2017, he found a warehouse location and rented the front half. The owner was using the other half for storage. The space was quite small, he said, adding, “I could only fit a basic tool box, a router table, a table saw, and one car.” The business started with a client base of hobbyists and large builds that took two to three months at a time. “At first,” he added, “I was just a kid renting out a space and getting paid to have fun.”
But as the business grew, he rented more of the available space, and hopes to eventually expand further by renting more space in the current complex. Then, he would build an area in which he could demonstrate DSPs, as well as a place for customers to sit, watch television or make
Zero ROI From Facebook and Instagram Boosting
coffee. He added that he hopes to have a “more traditional shop feel,” while focusing on high-end work. “Or maybe we’ll just be more well-known. Recently, that’s how it seems to have gone—and very quickly, too. There’s no end in sight.”
Reaching Clients On a National Scale
Apicella’s posts on social media led to a business that tends to attract clients from hours—or even states—away. Even while working out of his parents’ driveway, he said, clients came from a minimum of two to three hours’ driving distance. Some of Apicella’s clients have come from California, South Carolina, Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, Connecticut and New Jersey. “But very rarely,” he said, “from the local area.”
Posting on social media, forums, and maintaining a Google listing are the shop’s main avenues for marketing. The business no longer boosts social media posts, instead relying on organic growth to reach a target demographic.
“We take a lot of high quality photos of our work and we do a build log for each install,” Apicella said, adding that he’ll post this online and go into detail about the process and the purposes behind some product or design choices, so potential clients get a sense of the staff’s capabilities.
Almost all of the business’s clients say they found them on social media, on their website, or they’d been following the work for some time.
Building a Demo Vehicle—and a Solid Reputation
Currently, the shop has no showroom. Apicella has an office that’s about nineby-twelve feet. Until a few months ago, he said, most of the business’s sales were based on customers’ already-instilled confidence in them. The sale begins with either phone or email discussion, and a consultation starts in the office and continues with looking at the client’s car. The shop’s demo vehicle, a 2019 Volvo S60-R Design, is relied upon for showing customers what’s possible.
Apicella decided to make the installation in the demo vehicle versatile so it could be tailored to each type of client the shop generally attracts. The demo car offers two separate sound systems that can be utilized depending on the client: an OEM-style sound system, and a separate custom high-end system.
Both systems, he added, incorporate a Helix DSP Ultra with “two outputs to a Helix D12 DSP amp that will power the OEM-style system. It’ll power the door speakers, rear speakers, rear deck speakers and then a set of six Mosconi pro amps will power the kick panel, tweeter, midrange in the pillar as well as the center channel and subwoofers.” He added that the shop’s been closing more
The shop’s demo car, a 2019 Volvo S60 R-Design, with custom A-pillars housing Focal Utopia M drivers. The demo car has two different fully functioning systems.
Matthew Kim’s Tesla Model S is also used as a demo car at the shop. It features a custom fuse holder, amplifier and DSP rack, custom A-pillars and sail panels with Focal Utopia M speakers, all of which Kim installed himself before moving to New York.
sales since they began using the demo car.
Because there’s no showroom, sometimes a customer visit appears more like a hang-out than a sale. While Apicella is the main person the customer first interacts with on the phone, Mullings is involved once the customer arrives.
Recently, a client who owns a highend landscaping company in Greenwich, Conn. brought in a Range Rover. “He looked online and said our shop was the only one that made him feel comfortable,” Apicella said, adding that this was directly related to the business’s website. “I have built a brand which reflects my ideal client. I suggested he sit in my car and listen. It was an install style that looked and sounded like what he wanted, so I think that sale was a direct result of the demo car.”
Focused on Tuning and Continued Growth
Apicella Autosound continues to grow. In the business’s second year, revenue doubled from the first year. “This year, the third year, has been almost doubling from the second year,” Apicella said. Despite the impacts of COVID-19, business has been very good.
He noted that he feels the industry should focus more on improving tuning quality, and advised industry
professionals to “do some searching” if they feel they need to work on their tuning skills.
“A lot of people in the industry seem to want to learn. They train and study,” Apicella said, adding, “But do they apply the information?” He underscored the importance of a willingness to ask questions. Having money saved and maintaining a wait list of clients is important to him. “Right now I’m booked out for the next few months. I still worry at night.”
However, he said, a long wait list can also pose problems because customers might shy away: “They don’t always want to wait that long.”
While members of the staff all have the same skills, he noted, each of them specialize in different areas, such as wiring or fabrication.
Recently, Apicella Autosound’s biggest accomplishment was its increasing demand. In the coming year, Apicella hopes to devote more time to marketing and keeping up with sales and client follow-ups.
Because of the increasing workload, he noted that small tasks sometimes slip from his grasp: “I might forget to send something to the accountant, for example.”
Nevertheless, he said he feels strongly that “what we’re doing is working—I just want to do it better.”
High Output and Quality Sound
Apicella Autosound relies on two main vendors: Audiofrog and Audiotec Fischer. “Both put their faith in me before I even had my own shop and allowed me to be a dealer because they saw my potential,” Apicella said, adding that he can call their sales reps— including Doug Dobson and Frankie Mark—at any time for assistance. The first year Apicella went to KnowledgeFest, he noted Mark “introduced me to a ton of people.”
For each and every install, the shop uses Audiotec Fischer’s Helix DSPs or DSP amplifiers, according to Apicella, who added the products’ “capabilities are unmatched in our industry.” The V EIGHT MK2 and V TWELVE are favored products which are space-efficient, he said.
Inoperable Website Contact Form Results in Less Clients
Last fall and into the winter, Apicella said the website’s contact form wasn’t working, and he wasn’t aware of it. Work dwindled. “One day in February, I got a Facebook message from someone who wanted to know why I wasn’t answering my emails,” he explained, adding that the potential client said he’d used the website’s contact form to reach out.
In the past, clients contacted the shop at least twice a week using the form. “We had nothing lined up. I couldn’t sleep. I was panicking,” he said. “What would I do if I didn’t have a job booked?”
Apicella’s website technician corrected the problem, only to discover at least 50 emails had been held up by the problem. And by this point, the majority of those clients had gone elsewhere.
ResoNix Sound Solutions Provides Added Income
As the team honed in on making builds as perfect as possible, Apicella refused to settle for anything less than exactly what he was looking for in highend sound deadener. When his preferred source closed its doors, he decided to create his own product and find a suitable manufacturer. Apicella’s side company—ResoNix Sound Solutions—was born, and he’s owned the company for about a year and a half. When the product comes in, he has a special area in the shop to store it, and hires someone to come in and package and ship the orders.
His intention, he said, was never to start another brand. To his surprise, the company has been growing. Orders vary, he added, noting, “One week we might have no orders. Another week, we’ll have 12. It varies, and winter is slower.” On average, the business receives about six orders per week. But most importantly, Apicella said he has the ideal sound deadener to provide to his clients.
