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Yes, that’s the current thinking and plan – certainly from myself, and to a strong but slightly lesser degree with Keith. I will elaborate.
It’s most likely very apparent that my life has changed over the last 5-6 years since closing down LifeStyle AV. Watching the business I’d loved and spent almost 20 years building follow B&O as a company down the wrong side of the hill really took the wind out of my sails. My visits to BeoWorld are now few, my enthusiasm is low to say the least, and even though I’m still dealing in Bang & Olufsen my love for the brand is negligible at best.
I’m done. I’d like to press the stop button and get off the ride now.
Add to that the fact I’m working 7 days a week most weeks to pay all the bills and try to move forwards it leaves me little to no time for BeoWorld. What used to be the most wonderful “well paid hobby” in the world dealing in B&O has become an all-consuming struggle to make next to nothing. Really good used B&O is becoming increasingly difficult to source, people simply don’t want to pay the money for it any more, brand awareness amongst anyone under 35 is almost zero – and the biggest nail in the coffin was Brexit literally killing my European business overnight.
In complete fairness, and with total transparency, this website is only here because of the work Keith has done, and does on an ongoing basis. He runs the server from his own home, he fixes any bugs which appear, he has ramped up security to a point we get almost zero spam, and he spends hours developing on the back end. I do nothing apart from the Prize Draw (well, negotiating fees and appearances with PrizeDrawBot etc. *cough*)
So, personally I’m at a point where I don’t have the time (or money any more) to casually throw huge sums at complete revamps like I did all those years ago, and Keith is reaching a point where he’d actually like to enjoy his retirement as opposed to locking himself in his office for hours on end writing code.
So, after literally months (possibly a couple of years all told) of discussing that this day would eventually come, it’s our intention to put BeoWorld up for sale.
We don’t want huge amounts, just something which reflects what a long-established site with high Google ranking and an excellent reputation is worth, alongside the hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds put into it.
BeoWorld needs new enthusiasm, new blood, someone (or a group of people) who can take it forwards from now and beyond with drive and flair. Yes, it can also be monetised and most likely turn a good profit if it’s done well – but it’s not something Keith and I have the time or motivation to do. Keith has no ties to B&O from a business perspective, and I’m slowly layering out of doing it for a living.
What if BeoWorld doesn’t sell? Then it’s going to be a decision wether to just leave it as a chat forum and delete all the archived forums and reference sections (these are the areas which are costly to store on servers) or just take down the site altogether. I feel Keith would be happy to keep just the forum going, but that would be his decision alone and is certainly not guaranteed.
So, there we are. This website is absolutely prime for development and monetising if you have the knowledge and enthusiasm to do so. It could be a great advertising vehicle for a business related to B&O, or it could be a truly excellent hobby-site for someone who wanted to build closer ties to B&O as a brand and/or company. I’ve had some wonderful VIP experiences with Bang & Olufsen as the owner of BeoWorld which I will never forget.
So, there we are. I cannot really add anything to this. I posted it on the Moderators Forum first and it was felt no edits were needed. If you require any further information, please let me know.
Kindest Regards
Lee
It’s all said.
I sympathise.
Do what’s the best for you, we’ll do along.
Thanks for everything You and Keith.
LL Beoworld, whatever it’s form.
M.
Hello Lee, I was very happy to see that the site came alive after the change. Thanks a lot to you and Keith. I hope you will find a good solution/buyer. BeoWorld is a rare and wonderful community.
Johan
@Lee
Sad news indeed, although this does not come unexpected.
First and foremost a big thank you to you and to Keith (and the moderators, too).
I certainly hope that site will contininue in one form or another.
And I hope that someone (or maybe a group) will ‘buy into’ new opportunities and challenges…..they certainly will need some courage too.One thing (amongst others) that I like about the Beoworld Forum is that it basicly is accessable for everyone with an interest in the World of B&O without obligations – you can Google Search the themes.
I hope this can continue so – in one form or another – even if that means investing.
The wish for some kind of ‘monetising’ is legitimate…..after all there is a lot of work to do running such a site.All the best for you….and Beoworld.
MM
Hi Lee (and Keith),
May I extend my thanks for the time, money and enthusiasm that you have both generously given to the site over many years. I think back happily on the many Beoworld prize draws, events and get-togethers that we have enjoyed, including the Beoworld party at the Kensington Roof Gardens nightclub in London (2010?) and the big Beoworld group visit to B&O in Struer in 2012 where we met the then CEO of Bang & Olufsen, Tue Mantoni.
I fully understand your reasons for wanting to move on and I wish you both the best for the future. I will, of course, be happy to continue offering financial support to Beoworld and any help required by the new owners in the day-to-day running of the forums, whoever they may be.
May I take this opportunity to wish Lee and Keith the very best for their future projects and to stand publicly in support of Beoworld going forward.
Kind regards, Steve (BeoWorld sponsor since 2009).
First of all, thank you Lee and Keith for all the work in the background over the years.
Whatever the future holds for Beoworld, I just hope it would NOT mean (secondly after a total closure of course) another new forum with new accounts and a third archived forum. It’s already way too hard to search for stuff (on all the three forums) and the current forum is -sorry to say- very basic.
I do see the possible issues, but partly I am hoping that perhaps B&O themselves could somehow help here. Surely they see the community value that Beoworld has for the brand.
Dear 9Lee, for about 15 years I am a member in this forum.
Many thanks for the great support I got by many members, for great entertainment in the Wednesday group, for the prize draws (with my Christmas present in 2017: BeoSound 5!) and for the Beoworld tour to Struer in 2012.
Sorry that I am not the guy to take over.
But I hope that this forum will prevail the next decades.
And I hope to see some members in real life again, for example maybe in August near Deal where I am going to watch the Recumbent Bicycle World Championship in Betteshanger Park. It doesn’t look too far away from Eastbourne.
At last again: Great thank you!
Surely they see the community value that Beoworld has for the brand.
I honestly couldn’t see B&O running an official ‘community’ forum where anyone can say anything about the brand and often do. They do, of course, receive a tonne of negative comments on Facebook, but generally speaking that doesn’t affect the SEO link permanent links off a public forum.
Besides, they also have their own website support section and could easily expand that if that was their attention.
I hope Lee does manage to sell the website. I’m very rarely on BeoWorld anymore since the new forum – if I’m being brutally honest – simply as I find the forum to be hard to visually follow and use. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the ‘modern’ brand B&O wishes to portray either. It looks old-school. 90s even.
Thanks for all the support over the years, I think there must be some group (or individual) who can keep the site and forum up and running?
Maybe good to put up some general info, like running costs and number of paying members?To Lee specifically, thank you for all the hard work and I’m sorry that recent years have not been kind to you for various different reasons outside of your control.
for Beoworld generally, there is value in the older forum information that has been archived, but I do worry the world has moved on to other systems and forms of knowledge sharing and the foot fall to the forum just isn’t what it was.
It will be interesting to see how this progresses.
Lee you have done your bit and created a great community of B&O fans over many years. Time and circumstance is making you call time but thats life.
Thank you both for everything.
Eddie
Thank you Lee and Keith for making Beoworld the invaluable resource that it is.
Thanks also to anyone else that made Beoworld such a special place. It may have been through supporting the site with sponsorship, by other financial means, or by providing useful content and camaraderie.
Beoworld certainly makes owning vintage B&O equipment much more enjoyable.
I wish you the best of luck in selling the website. It would be a shame for this treasure trove of information to be lost. If a new owner can’t be found, is there a possibility of archiving the “entire” website somewhere? Something like the “Wayback Machine” (but without all of the broken links).
Glitch
I am a new member, even though I have been following Beoworld for many years (since around 2015), the forum has made me love and understand the brand.
I thank you for everything you have done and I understand your reasons.
However, I hope that all this treasure is not lost, because I also think that the success of Vintage B&O is linked to the Beoworld Forum.
Thank you!Michele
As a founding and on-going gold member of this community this bring me only sadness and loving memories. Lee, Keith, Steve, all moderators and friends here a huge thank you. I hope that this vast source of information that is in our archived forum can stay “alive”.
Dear Lee, dear Keith
I understand the reasons that drive your decision perfectly, nevertheless it makes me sad to see you leave a service that has rendered me support and advice for many years.
I share your impression that the B&O brand is aging with its users, and we will see where the changed consumer / buyer behaviour will lead the brand to.
To you both I wish the best for the years to come, remembering the good times you had with the BeoWorld community and not wasting a thought on the less favourable moments.
Best regards, Stefan
Sad to hear that it ha come to this point although I fully understand the reasoning behind it from your perspective Lee. Good luck on finding a buyer.
I just hope that the forums can continue to exist in some form in the future.
Regarding the Archived forums, the product pages, the FAQ’s and the Beotech sections, and also the current forums those can actually be acessed through the Wayback machine on archive.org.
However none of the search, and/or filtering functions seems to work in these archived versions of the pages, so a very manual process to find information that way.
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