• by Aaron Baar , July 13, 2016

While television makers are trying to demonstrate seeing is believing, wireless and Internet-connected speaker company Sonos is out to prove hearing is believing by opening a flagship store in New York City. 

The store, which will officially open in SoHo next week, is meant to show off Sonos’ unique product attributes, which include the ability to pair or separate speakers to enable synchronized or separate play throughout a living space. 

“We are trying to sell an experience you cannot see when you look at our speakers,” Joy Howard, Sonos’ chief marketing officer, tells Marketing Daily. “Most of our customers have come to us by experiencing Sonos in someone else’s home.”

The 4,200 square-foot store includes seven listening rooms, each of which has been designed to replicate a home listening environment (and are shaped like small houses). Each listening room includes acoustic sheet rock and a one-ton steel-framed glass door to isolate each room from the other. 

Upon entering, each room greets visitors with an explanation of how the room works and an invitation to experiment with the Sonos system, with access to many of the company’s streaming music partners, including Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal.

The store also includes decor reflective of SoHo’s music history, including a collection of rare cassette tapes owned by musician Thurston Moore and a collection of New York music ’zines, including several out-of-print titles.

“SoHo is an important place in the history of music and in pioneering new ways of living where creativity and self-expression reign,” Howard says. 

While the store is the first of its kind for Sonos, Howard hinted at the possibility of more popping up in other markets, to solidify the “hearing is believing” ethos of the Sonos brand. 

“The whole idea [of the store] is to open a door into a world in which we live and experience it,” she says. “We believe in the power of that experience. The brand has done a lot of experimenting in different spaces. We are definitely going to build on what we learn here.”