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June 20, 2008 - 6:42am
#1
Takin' it "private"
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Public companies are too short term focused, so it's probably better to take an audio company private. Of course, that also depends on the leadership at the private company and whether they have the foresight and the capital to maintain and improve product quality.
Plus "private" doesn't mean a company doesn't have investors, a board or stockholders. It's just not publicly traded. Sometimes a public company can have as much or more ability to think long-term because of it's greater access to capital. Plus, in theory they should be a little more transparent with there procedures and operations. Obviously they can get out of control and so large as to become unwieldy and bloated.
Are Legacy and AVA publically traded?
You'd think the BEST wouldn't be afraid of going public. Unless, of course, they have something to hide...
If you don't need to there's no reason too. You add layers of complication, lose some control, and it's costly to have an IPO, with no guarantee investors will bite.
No way, man.
Only the BEST are publically traded. It's a sign of quality engineering and sound value to the consumer. All else is a sham.
(Turn on irony button -----> )
"(Turn on irony button -----> )"
Indeed. I figured Bose for instance would be public, but it's not- proving you can be bloated and make overly expensive, super-hyped junk all on your own. They are actually quite a bit bigger than I expected. $2 Billion in estimated sales? !$%^@##@!!! Their headquarters is shaped like the Wave Radio BTW- no I'm not kidding, it's about 20 miles down the road from where I live. Talk about Disney meets audio.
Year Started:1964
State of Incorporation:DE
URL: Activate Links www.bose.com
Location Type:Headquarters
Stock Symbol:N/A
Stock Exchange:N/A
Also Does Business As:N/A
NAICS:N/A
SIC #Code:3651
Est. Annual Sales:$2,000,000,000
Est. Employees:8,000
Est. Employees at Location:2,000
Mr. BLOSE is worth like $450 Million +...all private.....Legacy was private, then was bought by Allen Organ....they couldn't do it right, so Bill D. bought it all back, it's now in his hands again, to make sure it's done right. Allen Organ was gonna do things that Bill D. didn't like as far as marketing, new models....Is Allen Organ private or public, I ain't looked.
Marrantz was private, became part of different conglomerates over teh years, now part of D&M, was public, now private, lawyers and stionary companys make money on all this paper shuffling. AVA is an LLC
ENRON was public, they had nothing to HIDE, but they sure did, didn't they? The best is public?
Conglomerates can and do get too big and loose control, GE is selling off a bunch of stuff, while of course buying new, stuff. Philips sold off things like PolyGram (#1 music,recording compay in the world) Sold off Marantz into D&M, Mepco Electro, Cental Lab, Ohmite, Trailways bus, Selmer Instruments, Genie Door openers, all kinds of other brands they owned....now they bought Genlyte, which is like 32 brands of lighting fixtures, Juno, Lightolier,Alkco, and on and on) GE selling off appliances, who didn't grow up with a GE appliance in their home? Gone, to Korea or China.
Public is good for raising money to keep things moving, but it also means 3 month better show a profit or growth, or else ya get clobbered. Statying private also keeps maybe teh business controllable, but can't grow into a beast of size like Philips, GE, Siemens....Harman is public and they are enourmous, in all the brands they run, D&M is heading there, but taking it private is gonna limit funds....who knows what they are planing..... maybe they went private to keep someone from buying them out, like Harman.....
GM is public, so is Ford too big makers of crap, and losing everything...
Dynaco years ago was a div of Tyco conglomerate in it's later years,(remeber the guy with teh gold curtains, $1 Million birthday partys) that came much later in Tyco years it did them no good, when they wher private under Dave, they pioneered it all, and fluorished, Hafler it self was private until it was bought by RockFord, it faded away...the best is teh best public or private..GE, Philips, Siemens, well over 100 years of public, and still going strong. Legacy, AVA 20+ and 40 still going and going. Private.
Harley Davidson, private, then AMF now public on their own...you deicde, public or private.....which one is better, mo money mo money
MoTown Records, Berry Gordy built it up from scratch, later sold it to PolyGram for...$750 Million, well done that guy was amazing!!! Then MoTown moves from Philips/PolyGram into Universal and now it's just kinda buried Universal now teh #1 music/record company..of which Vivendi owned a bit, and Philips had a bit of Vivendi, which they sold
Move it here shake it over there, stir it here, mix and sell and buy, who owns what when and where....
"Move it here shake it over there, stir it here, mix and sell and buy, who owns what when and where...."
I remember seeing a website once that had diagrams of corporate family trees- basically told you who owned what. Crazy sometimes how long up the ladder you'd go.
Life and business hard. Some businesses thrive and others fail, that's what capitalism is about. The founders of these small companies don't live forever and they need a way to pass wealth down to their children, thus all the sales to public companies. Many fail, that's just the way things are, it doesn't matter whether they're public or private.
Lest we forget, here are some public successes:
Wal-Mart
Cisco
Microsoft
Apple
Google
Yahoo
IBM
GE
Sony
etc., etc., etc.
Unfortunately, the more visionary the entreprenuer, the harder it is for him to pass his business along to someone else, whether it be his children or some corporate purchaser. This failure rate that we see in audio is not unusually high at all for companies at this stage of their development.
Dave
http://www.twice.com/article/CA6571801.html?nid=2402