Staying true to the passion

Steve Jain, cofounder and managing director of Fidelity Imports, has been busy since launching the company six years ago in the Philadelphia area.

- BY JULIE MULLINS

In recent months, Fidelity has added two brands to their roster; they now represent 16 high-performance audio companies. Maintaining his early passions helped fuel his drive to start a business and continue its expansion and innovation—aspects Jain believes differentiate Fidelity Imports from the competition. “I constantly want to keep trying to innovate and keep us ahead,” Jain told me in a recent conversation over Zoom.

At the time of our conversation, Jain and company were preparing for AXPONA, where Fidelity was hosting 10 demo rooms, nine plus a ballroom.

Like quite a few others in the hi-fi business, Jain’s passions started with cars and car audio. “I was a car stereo installer, and I was tremendously passionate about it. I was working on my car all the time, playing back music.”

As he worked his way into and upwards in other companies, including some hi-fi brands, he came to feel that passion often took a backseat to bottom line. “I spent most of my life working at audio companies,” Jain said. “The further I went up the ladder—the more I got to companies that were owned by banks and private equity and venture capital—the less the people around me were talking about music, the less they were talking about the experience, the more and more they were talking about the number of units.”

Eventually this situation—along with some burnout and the loss of family time—led him to go out on his own. He and his business partner started with a blank slate, asking themselves questions. “It was really silly, but we opened up a Google Doc and asked ourselves, ‘What if you could design the ideal company? What is it? What is our business going to be?’ We were thinking very small back then.”