Gibson sells off brands

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sawdust123

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Nine years ago, Gibson acquired the Stanton Group and Cerwin Vega among many other businesses. Gibson lost focus and went bankrupt. It was purchased by investors that brought in new management to refocus the brand. Part of this is selling off non guitar businesses.

InMusic (Numark) has picked up what was left of the Stanton brand. Stanton had some good products on the vine that Gibson never allowed to ripen. I think they lost a lot of key talent though over the years. I'm not sure if the Florida office still exists or if that was closed years ago. Interestingly enough in the early 90s, Numark's current CEO was working for Stanton and tried to convince them to buy Numark (who was struggling at the time). Stanton wasn't interested so he quit and bought Numark for himself. InMusic now has Numark, Akai, Alesis, Denon DJ, Rane and M-Audio.

Cerwin Vega was actually bought by Cerwin Vega Mobile (the car stereo company). The two businesses had split up about 13 years ago (before Gibson acquired CV). The KRK brand (studio monitors) was also part of the CV fold for many years and the same speaker designers had worked on both product lines for the last few years. The KRK brand is still owned by Gibson. In fact, it was really the only pro audio brand that Gibson didn't allow to fall into ruins under the previous management. However, when Gibson moved KRK/CV to Nashville, they lost some good people. The primary speaker designer though did make the move. I was ready to buy some KRK monitors for the home a few weeks before they canned my contact there. His replacement was so disorganized, I went with another brand.

The consolidation of the DJ business has been interesting to watch. There are not really many independent brands anymore. Gemini still exists but they are more focused on their consumer products (branded Altec-Lansing) these days. Pioneer DJ was sold again just this year. The new owners, Noritsu, are still in Japan. Their main business has been photo-processing so it will be interesting to see what happens with Pioneer.
 
Like the computer industry went through 20 years ago ..
 
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Interesting to hear what's going on with Gibson and these other companies. Gibson was originally in my home town, Kalamazoo, MI. My grandfather worked there in the early 1900s.
 
If this is true, InMusic has now picked up the rights to their own DJ software - Deckadance. They can now either kill it, or get it to play well with Engine Prime.
 
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I know they bought out CV and it went from sugar to s***. Their brand went in the toilet. I heard a pair of tops from them in GC and it looked nice. The sound was beyond ugly. Especially for the price. They stopped selling that speaker. Gibson had a specialty and they should have stuck to what they were successful with. Stanton had some stuff that was ok but not super great stuff. They remind me a cut above Gemini.
 
The consolidation in DJ manufacturers has been wild. It's basically InMusic vs. Pioneer.

Early in my career I used a Stanton piece (Next by Stanton to be exact). Then a couple Denon units like the 2600F, and 5000 with Serato Itch.

The first club I got to play an opening set at (Peabody's Virginia Beach) had Denon gear for their early CDJ competitors. But then Denon seemed to abandon that market. Pioneer took over.

And as CDJs have become ubiquitous... if you want to work in a club, there is basically no other choice. In recent years, Denon has come out with some great tech in the SC5000 Prime series. But they have lost so much market share - it's hard to be better enough to win it back. Clubs don't upgrade unless they have to.

If I were talking to a beginner today I'd advise them to learn on Pio gear because it's what they're likely to encounter if they ever choose that channel. If InMusic brands can't get get back into major clubs again... I think they'll have trouble winning market share no matter how good the Rane 70 or SC5000 Prime are.
 
Pioneer was at $200M/yr and InMusic was close behind at $130M/yr. I wonder how the pandemic is impacting each. InMusic has consumer brands like ION that sell well in Costco and may be less susceptible to the DJ market. The club market has dried up unless wannabes are spending their unemployment checks on toys. We may see InMusic come out with more money left over to innovate on next gen products. Pioneer has always targeted the high end DJ. InMusic has historically targeted the mainstream DJ until their purchases of Rane and Denon. However, I'm not sure they kept the engineering talent and product management that drove the higher end products. Oh well, it doesn't impact me here on the sidelines.
 
Pioneer has always targeted the high end DJ.

I agree with you that they started there. But I think they sell a lot of $250 controllers to beginners because people want to use the brand that the big guys use at festivals.
 
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The consolidation of the DJ business has been interesting to watch.
Like the computer industry went through 20 years ago ..

And the radio industry since the early 2000's.
Any time the desire to reduce costs, gets in the way of the passion to create a good product...
 
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I walked through a Guitar Center last week, and the shelves were the bearest I have EVER seen them look. The displays were HORRIBLE looking, and even the "recording studio" demo room was near empty.

The DJ industry has big problems ahead in terms of Equipment. I think that the manufacturers were honestly just barely hanging in there before Covid. NOW, they are SCREWED. Manufacturing is going to slump in our industry. That is my opinion. It's going to take a HUGE hit. Also RETAIL in our industry is in serious trouble.

Wait until after this Christmas season. We will find out how bad it is. I think a lot of retailers associated with the music/DJ business are going to be closing shop. Distribution is going to become smaller. ...THere are going to be less DJs working this business in the coming years as well. We are shrinking as an industry. Covid accelerated it big time.
 
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Everyone has barely anything on the shelves. Kinda hard to have a fully stocked store if you're not selling anything. Even harder when you can't restock / can't get it in. As you know, most audio equipment is built overseas - and other than the seeds from China, little else is getting through customs efficiently. As a vendor, have you bought anything since Covid? If not, why would you think other places would? It's easy to say how bad things are when people aren't allowed to go about their normal activities. Will some places close their doors? Absolutely. As things open up, shelves will be restocked and businesses will once again flourish. Until then, it makes no sense to keep my shelves full if very few (or no one) is coming in to buy anything - and if someone does come in / wants something and I don't have it, I can have it shipped directly to them.

Just like everywhere else and everyone else that's being affected, these stores need our support if we want them to survive.
 
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Talk about empty shelves...

I recently tried buying a new A/V receiver. They were almost as hard to get as disinfectant wipes for a few months. The first model I chose was out of stock everywhere. So were its siblings in the same product line. I thus assumed the manufacturer was having problems and figured it was related to their somewhat recent change of ownership.

I found an alternative receiver from another manufacturer. Even better, I have a contact with that company and could get a deal on it. Stores had it in stock but my deal had to come through corporate. A few weeks later I am told corporate is back-ordered and when I check online retailers, they too are now all out of stock. I then noticed nearly all the mid-level AVRs from all companies were out of stock. My guess is that some common part like a video decoder chip was out of stock worldwide.

A few months have gone by now. The first model I was interested in is back in stock. The model I ordered is beginning to come back in stock at some retailers. However. because I got a special deal through corporate, I am at the bottom of the wait list. Maybe another week or two to go... I hope.
 
My question is simple. At this time do you need any gear considering the situation we're in? Not a want but a need.
 
My question is simple. At this time do you need any gear considering the situation we're in? Not a want but a need.
If you are running a "business", then you look at downtimes as a time to clean clean, replace, and manage your gear. Lots of sales now, so if your business plan calls for new stuff in the near future, now's a good time to buy.

Look at the wireless mics .. ones in the 600 MHz band are getting pretty useless since the spectrum takeover. You SHOULD be replacing those now with the gear money you've put away for such purpose.