FORT COLLINS — A enterprise that has been constructing attractively encased audio audio system for practically a half-century is shifting from its Outdated City Sq. location onto School Avenue in downtown Fort Collins.
Harms Labs will shut its location at 1 Outdated City Sq., Suite 104, on Wednesday after which open Nov. 1 inside All Gross sales Vinyl, a report retailer at 120 S. School Ave. that additionally has a location in Longmont.
“He’s open twice as many hours, and he’ll be serving to present my audio system,” mentioned proprietor Steve Harms, including that “I’m shifting my restore store as much as my dwelling north of Laporte.”
Harms, 70, started constructing audio system “again in Chicago after I was 14,” he mentioned. “I had an uncle who had a woodshop, and I discovered about how one can construct audio system. I took programs in electrical engineering however dropped out after three years and went again to constructing audio system.”
He moved to Colorado at age 17 and opened Harms Labs in 1974 in a home he purchased for $23,000 a couple of mile from downtown Fort Collins.
“At one level, we had 30 staff and constructed a 9,000-square-foot constructing that went underwater within the flood of 1997,” Harms mentioned. “I’ve had 9 areas, and I’ve been on this location for seven.”
When Harms first opened in Outdated City, he mentioned, “90% of the individuals have been from Fort Collins. Now lower than half. They’re all vacationers. We’re having a a lot greater inflow of tourism. It helps me as a result of I can promote my audio system to individuals and I can ship them. However we additionally had an inflow of homeless individuals. The homeless challenge has gotten worse down right here. Everyone I speak to says it’s a difficulty in every single place in Fort Collins, and I assume it’s worse in Denver. However that’s an element.
“I feel shifting on School Avenue, we’ll get extra publicity,” Harms mentioned. “This location is so much quieter than it was after I moved in seven years in the past. Ever since COVID, it modified the dynamics of individuals going out, I feel. Being on School, you get much more individuals who stick their nostril in. Right here, individuals stare in at my retailer, and I admit it’s not the smartest place on this planet, and get type of freaked out by it.”
Nonetheless, “most of our enterprise is out of this retailer,” Harms mentioned. “A man got here yesterday visiting from Santa Barbara and mentioned ‘I’ve obtained some outdated JBLs from 1980. They’re fantastic. I don’t want new audio system.’ Inside seven minutes, he ordered a pair of audio system that I’m delivery to him as a result of he heard what ours gave the impression of and he mentioned, ‘You’re proper, your audio system sound so much higher.’ They’re smaller, so his spouse appreciated that, and so they seem like furnishings as a result of they’re coated with linen.”
His speaker-design philosophy could also be lower than politically right, nevertheless it works for him.
“I construct them to seem like furnishings so I can get them into girls’s homes,” Harms mentioned. “A number of stereo tools’s ugly, and girls need one thing that appears cute of their home. Guys simply care what it feels like. Ladies care what it feels like and what it seems to be like. That’s why I’ve had a girl operating my woodshop for the previous seven years, and that’s why we actually have expanded a lot.”
He mentioned he can encase audio system in any shade and any materials.
“We’re going to begin going across the nation exhibiting our product at commerce reveals, as a result of I feel persons are going to be blown away,” he mentioned. “That’s a $750 pair of audio system. I compete with audio system within the $3,000 to $4,000 vary as a result of I construct it and I promote it. I don’t should make all the additional markup. You purchase one thing at Greatest Purchase, it was designed within the U.S., made in China, shipped over right here, they should pay delivery, they should pay manufacturing, and so they should pay Greatest Purchase to promote it. I don’t.”
Harms mentioned he embraces some technological advances and rejects others.
“I’ve a small computer-controlled cutter. You principally say ‘I desire a gap this deep on this piece of wooden’ and it does it,” he mentioned. For speaker design, nonetheless, he added, “so far as the digital stuff, no, however the digital stuff isn’t the place the most effective sound comes from.”
