DS: Were you still working for another company at that time?
HD: Yes. I still was a civil servant for the city of Geneva and in this job you don't have a lot of trouble. Your work is secure, and you can have some free time. I used this free time to develop my amplifiers. And they were ok, they were really good. Around the year 2000 I was building the first amplifiers and planed to exhibit them on a show. But I wanted to go to the US because for me that seemed to be the right place for us. If started in Geneva, Switzerland, it wouldn't be possible to become known. So in 2002 I exhibited in New York at the show organized by Stereophile. I remember the show took place at the Hilton Hotel in June in. I brought a lot of of stuff to make sure I had everything except speakers because they were too big. Two really nice American guys offered me to put two pairs of speakers in the room, I could listen to them and could keep to ones I preferred to to make my demonstration. The American guys are really nice.

When I came to the room, I saw two big wooden boxes. What was it? I didn't know that they put the speakers in a wooden box. I was used to speakers in a cardboard box. I didn't have any tools to a open the boxes. I needed an electric screwdriver. I went into the corridor and somebody borrowed me a screwdriver. I made the setup and there were quite a lot of people interested to listen to my system. I used a Nagra Preamp because I didn't have my own preamp at that time. And I also had a Goldmund Studietto turntable. I brought almost one ton of material there. That was incredible and it was a great show. The year after, in 2003, I had my first distributor. I started with him in the US and he was my distributor for more than 20 years. He died last year because he had cancer. And then we had to find a replacement. Now we have a new man in the US.

But it all started in the U.S. For me U.S. is just the best place for High End, because people know what it is. And they can understand the difference between supposed High End and the real High End and appreciate the quality of the products. I'm not saying that there aren't people like this in Europe, but far fewer. But in the U.S, it's more common for them to make the difference between Hifi and High End. I still make my my biggest sales in USA even though Asia is quite a competitor because they buy a lot too. In Asia the people still buy more because they want something expensive than something good. Yes, that's a bit short-sighted and It's changing, but that was the case in the past.