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Brand Dilution?

twiiii said:
It seems like the smaller companies can't survive on their own. Development costs are so high now that in order to keep up with the competition of the big boys like, LG, Sansui, the smaller companies have to forge together to stay alive. Even Harmon International was bought out recently. Lets see there is, VPI, Magneplanar, Audio Research recently and some smaller independents. Even Mark Levinson is owned by Harmon which is owned by Sansui , or is it LG? I have no clue who Owns Ortofon, Thorens. KEF is owned by some else too as is Tannoy. Is Clear Audio a Stand a lone now? Magico and Wilson are their own companies. Mcintosh Groups was just acquired by a group in Dallas. Seems like every time a group is acquired some of the smaller brands disappear. Snell for instance.

Other forms of entertainment have taken monies away from the Hifi industry, too. Especially the gaming market and HT systems. If the Stereo companies don't do HT they have a much smaller following to depend on for sales. We lost Telarc because of Streaming and the CD killed Sheffield. Reference Recording specializes on talented groups but most are not at the top of the list. Will they survive? I hope so. I wish our Congress and President would do something to scale back the big Conglomerates and Monopolies in order to allow smaller companies to survive and new technological ideas to be nurtured instead of being stymied by the bean counters.

I maybe all wrong about this, but it won't be the first time.
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Samsung
 
NW1 said:
I’ll use Masimo as an example. So a medical technology company bought Sound United, who previously owned Bowers & Wilkins, Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio, HEOS, Definitive Technology, Classé, and Boston Acoustics. All were once separate and to various levels, were marketplace competitors. Through the proclivities of business and economics, they didn’t survive as independent and autonomous. One can’t help but think that there would be management's desire to standardize resources such as personnel, facilities, manufacturing, materials and suppliers to the point that whatever unique strengths or product identity these individual companies once provided has or is becoming weakened.

I just wanted to solicit opinions as to whether you all believe these brands and their products have benefitted or suffered because of the evolutions in their ownership.
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What is happening is that the market is collapsing. Too many manufacturers trying to sell to too few customers in the real surround receiver market. The sound bar market is hot. Development costs are skyrocketing to stay competitive. I'm thinking this is a big game of "chicken."
 
Most people aren't that into audio.
Home theater kind of kept things going for a while.
Most people seem to listen to music in the car or
On earbuds off their phone. In the end most of the
Makers out there are going to be out of business.
Look at the headphone market. It's booming right now.
That too will drop off in a couple of years.
 
If you look at what is considered music these days it's pretty easy to understand why the audio market is dying, or dead. Something for TV audio might be the last product the market will support since most TVs have horrible SQ.
 
twiiii said:
Even Harmon International was bought out recently.
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This was a strategic move by Samsung. Automotive market is about 30% computers and electronics and Harman is a Tier 1 supplier. In the next dozen years or so the market will be about 70% electronics and Samsung will be right there in the middle of the supply chain to major US manufacturers because of that Tier 1 position. Audio, Control systems, Self-driving, self diagnostics, including maintenance scheduling, computer controlled suspension systems and more will be what they provide.
 
I feel like it is good and bad that manufacturers get bought up.

Some surely would not survive if not bought up. In these cases, it’s either they get bought up of they go away. So it’s good that they get bought up. It’s better than them going away.

On the other hand, once bought up, they are not quite the company they used to be. So, it’s a bad thing in that way.

Also, depends who is buying who….but most of the time the above is my observation. There are those instances where a company gets bought up, reinvented and turned into a huge success, more successful than prior to the acquisition. Not common, but even in these instances, I would prefer to see a new start up rather than an acquisition and reinvention.
 
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tom3 said:
If you look at what is considered music these days it's pretty easy to understand why the audio market is dying, or dead. Something for TV audio might be the last product the market will support since most TVs have horrible SQ.
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I keep being reminded of Demolition Man where old ad jingles we're songs because people had no attention span.
 
tom3 said:
Something for TV audio might be the last product the market will support since most TVs have horrible SQ.
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And 99% of people don't care. For most of the rest of the 1% that do care, sound bars are plenty good enough. Honestly they have a lot going for them; they're easy to set up, they're compact, and they work ok in rooms where traditional surround would be tough to implement. I went 3.2 with an AVR (my TV room is one of those ones where there's really no place to put surround speakers), but if I was doing it over I would probably just get a nice sound bar.
 
z-adamson said:
I feel like it is good and bad that manufacturers get bought up.

Some surely would not survive if not bought up. In these cases, it’s either they get bought up of they go away. So it’s good that they get bought up. It’s better than them going away.

On the other hand, once bought up, they are not quite the company they used to be. So, it’s a bad thing in that way.

Also, depends who is buying who….but most of the time the above is my observation. There are those instances where a company gets bought up, reinvented and turned into a huge success, more successful than prior to the acquisition. Not common, but even in these instances, I would prefer to see a new start up rather than an acquisition and reinvention.
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This makes me think of Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq Computers, and HP. Digital was bought by Compaq, and because Compaq didn't have any real competing enterprise presence, the two combined to become better. And then, the CEO wanted to make a big pile of money, so he made a deal with HP. Or Carly. Not sure which. HP killed all the competition in the new Compaq, and ended up with no more innovations or invent.

RossW said:
And 99% of people don't care. For most of the rest of the 1% that do care, sound bars are plenty good enough. Honestly they have a lot going for them; they're easy to set up, they're compact, and they work ok in rooms where traditional surround would be tough to implement. I went 3.2 with an AVR (my TV room is one of those ones where there's really no place to put surround speakers), but if I was doing it over I would probably just get a nice sound bar.
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I have to agree that most people really don't care. It doesn't mean they don't like good sound, but it isn't important to them.

Years ago, I tried to go with a sound bar. It was not satisfying at all! I ended up going 7.1 instead. Now I am going 2.0 for the same system. ie) Bedroom System. I wonder how much they have improved?
 
Digital equipment split up and was sold off because they stopped innovating.
I know that story way too well. I was part of a division sold off. Years later
I was part of a group bought by HP. And I had a pension that was passed around into
Hp. It's a weird world.
The biggest issue is companies pay way too much for these buyouts. Then they have
To do a lot of stupid cost cutting that ends up killing off the product line they bought.
A bunch of these audio companies will be phased out at some point. Too hard to
have multiple divisions competing with each other.
 
There's always major changes when any company gets absorbed but the first press release is always "Nothing will change (for now)." Brands getting bought out is the least of my concerns, the country of manufacture has a larger impact since the decision to move can be based on making a similar product for cheaper.

I'll search out "Made in Japan" but tend to think twice with equipment outsourced in the late 70's on, sure there are some duds but they usually outsourced the entry-level equipment.

Personally it's the craft beer market that really kills me, the big guys are snapping up the craft beers to get back that lost market share. I've been in large factories and small factories, the process can be very different, some of the signature taste will change when they upgrade or move the equipment, I know I can taste it and it usually isn't good.
 
Price sells. Companies want sales and big margins.
So cheap is good, right? At some point it falls off into
really bad quality and sales stop.
Anymore, a brand name is pretty meaningless.
It's only as good as the last thing I bought.
 
Make the Sherman Antitrust Action great again. The upshot of these conglomerates is that they can produce goods cheaply through economies of scale and being able to exploit cheap labor in the developing world. The downside is that they stifle competition and innovation and squeeze local economies by depressing wages and shuttering factories. Our demand for cheap crap is unceasing; we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
 
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