It took the brisk Copenhagen air and honest feedback from a trusted colleague to teach Benji Rappoport the lesson he should have already known.
In early 2017, Rappoport was several months into his first assignment as a Product Manager at Sonos[1]. His task: re-imagine the Connect:Amp[2], a decade old plastic box that hit shelves when the iPod Touch was bleeding-edge tech. Unlike newer Sonos products[3], it wasn't a smart speaker. It was an amplifier that tethered to a pair of "dumb" speakers, creating a more traditional-looking stereo system with all the wireless multiroom bells and whistles one would expect from Sonos.
The original Sonos Connect:Amp from 2007.
Sonos
Rappoport and lead industrial designer Philippe Vossel gathered in a conference room in the company's small Copenhagen office along with Cristoffer Arensbach, the CEO of Danish high-end audio dealer and installer Hi-Fi Klubben[4]. Like other installers Rappoport had met with—and more than a hundred his team surveyed—Arensbach liked the aging Connect:Amp, but felt it wasn't as powerful or capable as it could be for robust speaker installations. After a decade on the market, it was long in the tooth.
Professional installers will be able to buy the $599 Sonos Amp starting December 1, months before its February 2019 public launch.
Next, Rappoport pulled out three distinctly shaped cardboard boxes. One looked like a shoebox, and another resembled a personal-size pizza box from Pizza Hut. The last was taller and thinner, like a rectangular liquor bottle box standing upright. All three of these shapes were being proposed as the form factor for the next Sonos Amp.
Rappoport's cardboard mock-ups.
Jeffrey Van Camp...