Strategy in TECH...
The judge hearing the matter of the bankruptcy filing of Guitar Center, Inc., parent company of custom integration company Audio Visual Design Group (AVDG), has accepted the organization’s plan to reorganize operations in order to emerge from bankruptcy. With this move by the court, the stage has been set for Guitar Center to exit from bankruptcy proceedings soon, perhaps any day now.
Most manufacturers in Tech have been reluctant to discuss the impact on the supply chain – and on the availability of their key models – as a result of the recent Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM) factory fire in Japan. However, Sony – especially Sony Europe – has admitted to customers that it’s camera and video division, is “facing a severe shortage of key parts” for its compact cameras and video cameras. Although Sony did not specifically correlate their problem to the AKM situation, a large number of camera and photography media are saying that this is most likely the cause of the shortage to which Sony is referring.
Just last week I was an invited guest to an event that I wasn’t entirely sure would be all that exciting – yet another Zoom meeting in a year full of Zoom meetings. Or so I thought. My invitation came from industry powerhouse Savant, who wanted to host me on a virtual tour of their new Experience Center in Manhattan. Boy!…am I glad I agreed to participate….
Earlier this month Bluebird Music, an upstate New York-based distributor of fine, high-end audio products, announced that it has been appointed as the distributor of Canton loudspeakers for the United States and Canada. Canton, a well-respected speaker brand by audiophiles around the world, is said to be Germany’s largest seller of loudspeakers and a perfect addition to Bluebird Music’s assortment of the fine audio brands.
On Tuesday, SnapAV announced that it has inked an agreement with Onkyo Corporation to become the exclusive distributor of the company’s Integra brand for the countries of Australia and New Zealand. SnapAV says this new appointment will take effect on February 1, 2021.
A hearing before a California federal judge brought an ugly exchange between attorneys for both Sonos and Google – with each side pointing their finger at the other and accusing them of bad faith. That attorneys got ugly against their counterparts is not in itself surprising. However, the speed with which this dispute devolved to that point was a surprise.
High end audio manufacturer Rega Research has appointed The Sound Organisation as its authorized distributor for Canada. Based in Arlington, Texas, The Sound Organisation is a well-known distributor of fine high-end, high-performance specialty audio brands and has been Rega’s U.S. distributor for two decades.
Sonos, Inc. [NASDAQ: SONO] released their fourth quarter and full year financial results for fiscal 2020. Their performance pleasantly surprised Wall Street and their stock value exploded well over 20% in Thursday trading as the company exceeded analysts’ estimates for both revenue growth and profits. But is everything as it appears here?
When we last visited with Velodyne, it was all the way back in 2014 when the company quietly laid off audio staff, and suddenly – without warning – fired all of their manufacturer sales representatives and their dealers. Shortly after this, the company hired a high-powered retail executive (who would go on to eventually go to prison) to launch a direct-to-consumer business. Our coverage drew the attention of then Velodyne President Marta Thoma Hall, who is wife of company founder and chief engineer David Hall, leading to an interview with her on the many dramatic changes taking place at the company. Whew! That was a lot of action in a very short period of time.
Ultimately, it appears that David Hall got bored with audio and moved on with his new prized invention – an improved Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) sensor technology that is important to the autonomous vehicle market. According to a report by Audioholics, Ford and China’s Baidu partnered to invest $150 million in Velodyne’s Lidar technology and Elvis…er…Hall…has definitely left the audio building. Velodyne split into two companies (Velodyne Lidar is now a $100 million public company [NASDAQ:VLDR]) and for a time last year, it looked like curtains for the audio division.
Kicking off their first ever virtual dealer event called Snap Pro Live, SnapAV unleashes a broad array of new products covering their wide gamut of product and service segments. Snap Pro Live runs for three days and kicked off today (Tuesday) afternoon with a keynote from CEO John Heyman – and this major product launch.
