Rain Computers Reinvents Its Business to Increase Revenues
Bucking the trend to compete with big box retailers, Rain Computers partners with Best Buy to sell its workstations in the chain’s DJ experience centers.
By Alison Diana
While some system builders compete directly with large electronics retail chains, Rain Computers is partnering with retail behemoth Best Buy to expose its audio and video workstations to a much broader audience of creative professionals and amateurs.
“We don’t sell computers as much as we sell creative empowerment that just comes with a computer,” says Kevin Jacoby, CEO of the Ringwood, N.J.-based custom computer builder. “If you find yourself in the creative zone, the last thing you want is a technical glitch.”
Rain manufactures computer systems and peripherals optimized for high-performance audio and video applications, including recording, mixing, mastering, post-production, and performance. Initially, the nine-year-old company sold direct to such clients such as Aerosmith, Cirque du Soleil, the Walt Disney Company, the Pentagon, Microsoft, and Public Enemy. Seeking to reach smaller organizations and individuals, Rain developed a dealer channel as well as the relationship with Best Buy.
“We started a relationship with Best Buy and some bigger names in the musical instrument channel,” he says. “We understand that’s part of the [company’s] growth. We do concentrate on keeping costs as low as possible and margins as high as possible. It’s a trick with the dealer channel. It’s a constant balancing act, and that’s another thing our technology partners help us with.”
To sell some products indirectly, Rain had to reconsider some of its designs, because consumers have different technical and support needs than do professionals. So partnering with Best Buy “was a wake-up call in terms of design,” he says. “They were using a different set of third-party hardware and software. They wanted a certain value that wasn’t necessarily what a Disney or the Pentagon would want. We needed to segment our product offering.”
What grew out of that segmentation is collaboration on the retailer’s new DJ experience centers found in about 200 stores. The centers include Rain’s LiveBook and LiveBook Zephyr mobile audio workstations preloaded with popular disc jockey software and hardware from Native Instruments.
Jacoby says Best Buy chose Rain because it wanted a powerful, stable, and reliable workstation for the DJ store within a store, and Rain’s solutions are easily connected to add-on products such as digital DJ mixers and turntables. “DJs truly understand why failure is not an option,” says Jacoby. “When you’ve got a club full of people thriving on every beat, you want to just concentrate on making great music. The last thing you need is to have the music stop when you don’t want it to.”
The DJ equipment joins Rain’s existing line of desktop, rack-mount, and portable computers designed and built by the company and sold through Best Buy.
