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Bloomberg News reported late on Monday that Apple is dropping Sonos [NASDAQ: SONO] and other non-Apple branded products from their stores. The news of Sonos losing such a major customer caused their stock to derail in after hours trading, down almost 7% in value at one point. On Tuesday, Sonos stock price closed down 3.2% as Wall Street digested the news.
As part of an internal restructuring to accommodate their recent acquisition of the distribution rights to certain Onkyo brands, Voxx International Corporation announced this week that it has renamed the existing Klipsch Holding LLC to the rather generically named Premium Audio Company LLC. This is just the first change, as I’ve learned more announcements are just around the corner.
As we hurtle headlong into the a new decade – the 2020s – it’s a good time to pause and take stock of some of the major events of our industry’s recent history by ranking the Top 10 Strata-gee stories of 2019 based on total page views. This ranking shows just what stories drew the most attention of Strata-gee’s eminently intelligent and inquisitive readers.
Onkyo USA announced this week that it will become a retailer of Sonos wireless music systems – selling the company’s wireless music systems on Onkyo USA’s website. The company also says it will distribute the brand nationally as well.
We seem to be in a week of big deals. First, we learned that SnapAV had acquired Control4, then we learned that the original founder of Paradigm has acquired back the Paradigm, Anthem, and Martin Logan brands from the private equity company that had bought the company from him some time back. Now we learn that Sound United, owner of Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, HEOS, Classé, and Boston Acoustics has entered into an agreement with Onkyo Corp. to purchase Onkyo’s premier lineup of brands, including: Onkyo, Integra, Pioneer and Pioneer Elite.
The European Commission, the EU’s antitrust regulatory unit, after a 17-month investigation of online price fixing and other illegal anti-competitive practices has levied a fine of €111.2 million ($130 million) against four prominent consumer electronics brands, including Pioneer Corp., D&M Holdings Inc. of Japan, Koninklijke Philips NV of the Netherlands, and AsusTek Computer, Inc. of Taiwan. The companies were alleged to have imposed fixed or minimum online prices for their products.
All the way back in 2012, Onkyo Corp. and Gibson Guitar Corp. came together to partner in what both hoped would become an entity where the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Just months after their announcement, Onkyo forged ties to another Japanese audio brand, Teac/Tascam – just as Gibson stepped in to buy a majority share of them…and the combined entity began to grow.
Little did they know that just six short years later, Gibson, the investor in Onkyo, would implode into bankruptcy – forced to extricate itself from its Onkyo aspirations. Onkyo was hit as well, losing its Gibson investment – forcing them to reassess their direction. We now learn that Onkyo has sold off its entire European operations to an accessory distributor known as Aqipa GmbH.
Gibson Brands, a major provider of musical instrument and consumer electronics products, is in the midst of a widely reported liquidity crisis. With more than $500 million dollars in notes coming due late this summer, the company is seeking a knight in shining armor to ride in on a white horse with a big bag of money to refinance the company’s crushing debt.
To make the company appear attractive to a lender or investor, at the end of February the company sold off its shuttered Cakewalk division and laid off about 15 employees from its famous Custom Shop. Now we learn the company is planning more substantial layoffs across the board.
The news and events surrounding troubled guitar and consumer electronics company Gibson Brands, Inc. seem to be moving at a rapid pace with almost daily revelations as the company struggles to survive ahead of a massive debt due-date just a few short months away. We learned over the last few days that Gibson has sold their recently shuttered Cakewalk Inc. division and laid off staff in their famous Custom Shop operation.
Gibson Brands CEO Henry Juszkiewicz continues to profess confidence that the company will be able to successfully refinance their over $500 million debt before a mid-year maturation comes due. Telling the Nashville Post that the company is going through a little “spring cleaning,” Juszkiewicz says the company already dropped their Cakewalk music software group, and other brands in their portfolio are next to go. But a financial report to bondholders shows continued deterioration of both sales and profits, suggesting that simply pruning a few brands from the portfolio may not be enough to attract new investors or lenders.
