He sold Qualifi one of Australia’s leading audio distributors recently to Sound United, now Melbourne based industry executive Michael Henriksen is expanding his HDMI networking business Bluestream, which is already a global Company and growing from a humble beginning in Melbourne.
This week the business that designs and manufactures advanced HDMI networking products and is set to do over $20M in revenue this year, cut a deal with a Japanese distributor to break into what is seen as a difficult market for networking products due to local player dominance.
Earlier this year Bluestream appointed RTI (Remote Technology Inc) in the USA as distributor with former CoreBrands (Nortek) director Joe Roberts appointed to drive the US business which is seen as one of the biggest for HDMI cable management and AV products in the world.
The biggest holdback for the Company, that also, recently opened an office in Madrid Spain to service the European market, getting chipsets.
Hendriksen said that the business has recently invested in the “Buying up of huge amounts of chipsets to see us through the next 12-18 months:
One of the key executives in the business is Martin Shirly the Director of Sales and R&D.
He was the one who opened up the UK market and was the inspiration for the Blustream product range back in 2013 when he was working as Sales Manager at Qualifi across their CI division.
After selling Qualifi to Sound United Hendriksen is now toggling his time between both Sound United business and Bluestream.
He said that the decision that was taken late last year to open an office and distribution centre in Madrid Spain “After Brexit, with shipping into Europe from the UK becoming difficult, cumbersome and expensive”.
Bluestream Pty Ltd was set up as a separate company and the brand and the IPs were transferred from Qualifi to Blustream P/L allowing the business to operate as a separate entity to the Qualifi business that was sold to Sound United earlier this year.
Today Qualifi is the distribution Company for the Sound United Bowers & Wilkins, Denon and Marantz brands in Australia.
Shown for the first time by Qualifi at Integrate in Sydney in Aug 2014 the first 20 Blustream products proved a major hit in Australia with local CI dealers snapping up the product.
Employing 22 people the business whose products are now sold in 50 Countries is looking to International markets to grow the Bluestream business with Hendriksen confident that global growth is achievable as consumers turn to streaming and expanded home entertainment and AV systems.
