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Crest hears a new tune

Cellnet loses Sony headphones business

Cellnet has lost distribution rights to supply Sony's headphone range to retail partners. The lucrative and exclusive contract has been picked up by fellow Queensland-based sound and vision accessories distributor, Crest Electronics.

Sony Australia national sales manager, David Hargreaves, said the vendor had had its eye on Crest for a while.

"Crest was being highly recommended from our retail partners as a very competent distributor of audio accessories," he said. "This is an area we really want to drive in retail because it offers good margins on the floor."

While other Sony distributors, including Ingram Micro, Multimedia Technology and Electronic Concepts, all have access to the headphones range, only Crest will take it into retail stores. They include Harvey Norman, The Good Guys, Retravision and Myer.

Crest general manager, Greg Randle, said the win was quite an achievement for the distributor and was already gaining the approval of time-poor retailers.

"The biggest attraction of getting Sony is that because we already do Philips, we now go to market with the two leading brands," he said. "Retailers have viewed this very positively as they want more brands but fewer points of contact to get them."

Randle said the headphones market was a particularly good area to be in at present. Noise-cancelling and Bluetooth technology were both emerging within the field and driving interest among consumers.