Specialty Consumer Electronics is a rude French waiter.

Lots of Americans who love food will never venture into a nice French restaurant.

Lots of Americans who love music will never venture into a specialty electronics store.

For nearly the same reasons.

They think that, in the restaurant, the waiter is going to roll his eyes and sniff if they mispronounce Terrinede Foie pour Deux or order the “wrong” wine pairing.

They’re intimidated about going into the CE Specialist store because they don’t know what a “120 Hz refresh rate” is, and are afraid the salesperson will discover their ignorance, then roll his eyes and sniff.

Who needs it? Especially when there’s unlimited bread sticks at Olive Garden and a Hannspree HDTV ready to load onto your cart at Costco?

They bite their tongues when their neighbor invites them over for dinner and proudly shows off his new Bose system.

Sure, the food at the Le Café élitiste is terrific and the Runco PlasmaWall nearly sucks your eyeballs out it’s so good, but the fact is, most people, even most of the people who can easily afford the good stuff, are never going to taste the good French food or see the good plasma TV.

Because they’ve been scared away.

Too often, I see specialty retailers wringing their hands as even their regular customers are lured away to Audiogon and eBay. Dealers click their tongues (and roll their eyes) as they lament the fact that “today’s young people don’t care about good sound.” They bite their tongues when their neighbor invites them over for dinner and proudly shows off his new Bose system.

Maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Savvy restaurateurs know they can’t rely forever solely on the patronage of their regular customers. Regular customers move away, get bored or die. Staying in business means always attracting new customers (who hopefully become regulars). Recognizing the folly of an exclusionary reputation, most ethnic restaurants now print their menu descriptions in English.

I haven’t seen many examples of specialty CE dealers (or, to spread the blame fairly, specialty CE manufacturers) doing the equivalent.

I think they should. And I’ll present some specific recommendations in my next post.