Hovland Closes

[Chas]

http://www.stereophile.com/news/hovland_calls_it_quits/

[Titanium Dome]

Sad, but not unexpected or unusual.

[Ducatista47]

"All Hovland company design rights remain in the hands of a secured creditor on whose promissory note Hovland defaulted"

That is like a racing family putting up the tools and pink slips as a bet and losing the race. At least there is a theoretical shot at resurrection; the creditor would love to sell the intellectual property for cash.

Much sadder was Sun Tour, where part of the deal of a sale of naming rights was total destruction of the tooling.

Clark

[4313B]

"Our original business model called for about 40% of our business to be domestic and 60% international," he said. "Over the last few years, sales were weighted further and further toward the international arena, until they became almost 90% international. This lowered our profit margin greatly, because while US distributors get their product at 40% off retail, international distributors receive a 52–56% discount."

"Sales in the last quarter of last year and beginning of this year were dismal worldwide. In the second quarter of this year, they absolutely died. We had a staff of 12, including ourselves, and our monthly break-even was $90,000 a month. Every time we fell short, we three company officers as well as our vendors couldn't get paid. We hung on for more than a year, but this summer it became completely untenable."

First rule of business: If it isn't sold at Walmart you're screwed... maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but at some point Walmart is gonna get ya...

[JBLRaiser]

"Our original business model called for about 40% of our business to be domestic and 60% international," he said. "Over the last few years, sales were weighted further and further toward the international arena, until they became almost 90% international. This lowered our profit margin greatly, because while US distributors get their product at 40% off retail, international distributors receive a 52–56% discount."

"Sales in the last quarter of last year and beginning of this year were dismal worldwide. In the second quarter of this year, they absolutely died. We had a staff of 12, including ourselves, and our monthly break-even was $90,000 a month. Every time we fell short, we three company officers as well as our vendors couldn't get paid. We hung on for more than a year, but this summer it became completely untenable."

First rule of business: If it isn't sold at Walmart you're screwed... maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but at some point Walmart is gonna get ya...

Walmart put them out of business.:dont-know but, slamming Walmart does sell papers.

[4313B]

Walmart didn't put them out of business. It's just a mindset. People like cheaper capacitors.

Hovland's demise is unfortunate.