Loud Technologies ( Mackie, Eaw, Tapco) trouble

onetooloud · Post by **onetooloud** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

Loud Technologies which is Mackie, Eaw, Ampeg, Crate, Alvarze and others is having trouble due to chinese outsourcing.

The economy has effected their chinese supplier to the point of no longer being able to produce goods. The chinese supplier is having major financial difficulties.

Loud expects to have problems supplying customers. Loud also expects sales to drop because customers will be unwilling to wait until they locate another supplier and retool.

If the above cannot be solved loud claims it may be unable to meet cash flow needs.

Greg Mackie sure gets bashed alot anymore.

Whos next everyone seems to buy from the chinese? Its also said that the chinese may suffer much more than the US, who do not depend heavily on exports.

PanzerFaust · Post by **PanzerFaust** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

MMMM.......

And to think I made fun of my dad for 43 years cause he preached "Buy American"

I knew the bastard would also live long enough to say "I told you so"....

Grrrrr.....

Time to find dad a nice nursing home......

mourekick · Post by **mourekick** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

We are a LOUD Dealer and so far have not had any problems getting what we needed. They were very prompt on our last Subwoofer order.

JackANSI · Post by **JackANSI** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

I call this haiku justice. Not quite a long enough/hurtful lesson to be poetic.

They should have just kept production in the US...

Edit: I can't find any info as to them getting a buyer or not for ampeg's old digs in the US. Maybe retooling might be quicker if the tools are still there...

onetooloud · Post by **onetooloud** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

Heres a link to the story as covered by the Puget sound buisness journal in Seattle.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stor ... ily15.html

rickw · Post by **rickw** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

Interesting topic. As a store buyer I bought Crate, Alvarez, Ampeg, Austin, and tons of accessories from St. Louis Music, a family owned business with a long history of quality customer service. Along comes Loud and they buy St. Louis Music. Then (to quote our fine webmaster) the wheel fell off. Everything and I mean everything became a complete clusterf**k from the sales dept to the service dept to the credit dept and it just kept getting worse instead of better as time went on. The sun seemed to eventually emerge from the clouds as they realized they were screwing things up all by themselves. Things were getting a bit better then all of a sudden best selling products were in short supply or not to be had at all.

The first problems arrived with Ampeg. Manufacturing was moved to Vietnam, BUT the pricing was structured as if it was still made in the states! I simply stopped ordering it. I'm glad I did because I heard from other dealers that the quality was bad. Loud must have heard the grumblings so they moved mfg to China hoping for better quality.

Secondly, problems arose with Alvarez, our best selling line of acoustics. I couldn't get the most popular models and would have to wait months to get a few trickling in. Some models that I ordered last winter have not arrived at all.

Loud then cheapened up the Crate line of amps. Bad move as they were really never regarded as a pro amp to begin with (although I like Blue Voodoo). If any of you have noticed I don't stock many Crate amps anymore.

They finally did some internal investigating and found out that every senior management member from the CEO to the CFO to the buyers were pretty much clueless and they fired all of them. The new folks haven't done any better...yet.

Lastly, we would be visited by the sales rep about six times a year when St. Louis Music was around. He rocked. Very quickly remedied any problems, created loopholes in ordering that let a small independent store compete with the big box stores, and helped in any way he could. When Loud took over he came around maybe twice a year and I could tell he was frustrated over the mismanaged company. Well, recently Loud let all of their road reps go in addition to many inside people.

Loud=Stooopid. I could go on, but I know it's time to stop.

songsmith · Post by **songsmith** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

That's really a shame. I really like the Alvarez line, and I dug how roadworthy the Crates were... before. The new Crates, made by LOUD... well, even with a crappy amp, you can usually at least get a decent clean sound... well, no. Even the clean sound was cheesy.
I'm starting to wonder which other gearmakers will drop... a few years ago, there was a big push industry-wide to conglomerate, so there are a few big players now. I did notice that Musician's Friend is hitting my e-mailbox harder than ever, they're not the healthiest corporation.--->JMS

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

How could a company that produces fairly good like Mackie and Ampeg also produce crap like Crate ? lol

tonefight · Post by **tonefight** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

f.sciarrillo wrote:How could a company that produces fairly good like Mackie and Ampeg also produce crap like Crate ? lol

From my take, one big "investment" company started buying all the individual brands up and like any buisness run by accountants they ran them all in the ground.

This sounds pretty common in the buisness world these days.

zman1200 · Post by **zman1200** » Friday Dec 19, 2008

A former guitar rep of mine was offered a job by the investment bank that bought St. Louis Music. He indicated to me they got the company at a really good price . It pretty much was just another bag of beans to be counted. Back in the 90's our sister plant in New England used to RIM high end speaker cabs and many other products. They are no longer in business. Just like Republic Window in Chicago they locked the doors but back then no TV,Internet or PAY. just the JTPA

I WISH I HAD THE $5500 THEY OWED ME

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Saturday Dec 20, 2008

tonefight wrote:
f.sciarrillo wrote:How could a company that produces fairly good like Mackie and Ampeg also produce crap like Crate ? lol
From my take, one big "investment" company started buying all the individual brands up and like any buisness run by accountants they ran them all in the ground.

This sounds pretty common in the buisness world these days.

That is a very good take on it and one I agree with.