Marshall business article- UPDATE

[jeffb]

Update- see post #35

Looks like they are kicking ass financially. But the last bit of the article says it all- Headphones > amps.

Link to Guitar mag article

 

[clutch71]

It is unclear to me why people would be upset with the success of Marshall doing 29% better by ventures into the headphone and Bluetooth market. Being financially strong will be necessary to keep the legacy products (IE amps) afloat. Good for you Marshall!

 

[Gunner64]

They keep charging 2 to 3k for an amp head and 1.5k for a 4x12 they're going to F the legacy products in the A.

Who's buying new at those prices?

 

[jeffb]

It is unclear to me why people would be upset with the success of Marshall doing 29% better by ventures into the headphone and Bluetooth market. Being financially strong will be necessary to keep the legacy products (IE amps) afloat. Good for you Marshall!

I've no issue with them selling Marshall toilet paper and tampons. I'm 110% Capitalist. But I dont have to like it or buy it.

I'm simply pointing out an article that affirms what many of us have been feeling for quite some time- amps are no longer where the money is, and take a back seat to the other electronics wearing g the brand name. There is nothing wrong with being upset about that, or being happy for them.

Back to the article- Also sounds like they are focusing on direct sales for the future as well as turning into a "lifestyle brand".

 

[Filipe Soares]

same as the cayenne being porsche's revenue generator. cayenne's revenue enables the 911 development. if headphones will enable new marshall amps, I'm all in!

 

[jeffb]

same as the cayenne being porsche's revenue generator. cayenne's revenue enables the 911 development. if headphones will enable new marshall amps, I'm all in!

I' not sure that analogy is quite the same. Cayenne and Macan are still high performance "suv/crossovers" from a manufacturer making high performance cars. Two sides of the same coin. Modeling vs Tube amps. Markets has separate user groups but overall the same market and products.

Now if Porsche's cash cow was boat engines and they put way more time effort and $ into them vs. The consumer automobile market (cars and crossovers/suvs) that might be a better analogy.

 

[ByrdmanFL]

I posted this over at The Gear Forum where we had the same discussion recently -

It's always easier to look the part with t-shirts, Bluetooth speakers, backpacks, than actually play guitar. Plus I would think the profit margin on said non-amp products is a lot higher.

It's, IMO, a necessary evil to keep manufacturing the amps for us. Marshall t-shirts are not going to be in high demand if they quit making amps.

 

[jeffb]

I posted this over at The Gear Forum where we had the same discussion recently -

It's always easier to look the part with t-shirts, Bluetooth speakers, backpacks, than actually play guitar. Plus I would think the profit margin on said non-amp products is a lot higher.

It's, IMO, a necessary evil to keep manufacturing the amps for us. Marshall t-shirts are not going to be in high demand if they quit making amps.

Absolutely. But as we see time and time again in the business world, Legacy products (in this case, guitar amps) eventually go the way of the do-do because shareholders want more return on investment- so more money and effor goes into those products that are making them more money, and the time, $, and effort for the legacy product gradually gets less and less.

IOW- this sounds great for right now, but does it bode well for the future?

I'm ever the skeptic and cynic. I've seen too much I love go to shit over decades and decades.

 

[thesunship]

Little Marshall Bluetooth speakers get very high reviews, just look on Amazon. For every 1 of us looking at a new amp from Marshall there's probably 10,000+ people looking at Bluetooth speakers. Good for them, it's free advertising in the home for little Jimmy and Jane who may get interested in guitar at some point.

 

[V-man]

It is unclear to me why people would be upset with the success of Marshall doing 29% better by ventures into the headphone and Bluetooth market. Being financially strong will be necessary to keep the legacy products (IE amps) afloat. Good for you Marshall!

What indications have you seen that confirm your assertion in the least?

Let’s agree that financially insolvency benefits neither the loyal consumer nor the company… on the surface. However, without a commitment on the part of the benefactor (parent company) to be a true steward of the ”acquisition,” then this benefits neither the loyal consumer nor the brand/acquisition.

We had another story of a certain legacy brand and headphones that led them to financial insolvency and ruin. Today however, that brand was acquired by an investment group interested in the “acquisition’s” original purpose and the actual consumer barely had a pause in production of Gibson guitars (pandemic conditions notwithstanding).

The same has not been true with Zzounds. So far the only winners are them and home audio consumers.

 

[ByrdmanFL]

Absolutely. But as we see time and time again in the business world, Legacy products (in this case, guitar amps) eventually go the way of the do-do because shareholders want more return on investment- so more money and effor goes into those products that are making them more money, and the time, $, and effort for the legacy product gradually gets less and less.

IOW- this sounds great for right now, but does it bode well for the future?

I'm ever the skeptic and cynic. I've seen too much I love go to shit over decades and decades.

I look at it as a complimentary relationship for now. If they quit making Amps, the hip-ness is gone and the sales on all that other shit will be gone as well.

We should be okay for a while, but IMO, what is more likely to happen is all amp products manufacturing will be moved to SE Asia to increase ROI vs stop making them all together. So hold on to those amps made in England. If you think they are worth a lot now, just wait...

 

[V-man]

I look at it as a complimentary relationship for now. If they quit making Amps, the hip-ness is gone and the sales on all that other shit will be gone as well.

We should be okay for a while, but IMO, what is more likely to happen is all amp products manufacturing will be moved to SE Asia to increase ROI vs stop making them all together. So hold on to those amps made in England. If you think they are worth a lot now, just wait...

By all evidence (so far… perhaps they debunk this in 6mos. But it’s been a year for them to have done otherwise already) this has been a parasitic relationship.

Marshall heirs were parasites to the brand, true. But all they have done (IMO) is transfer the “host” to a bigger parasite.

Marshall heirs have benefitted from the sale. Zounds benefits from the parasitic use of the brand‘s name for use with completely irrelevant products. Marshall Amplification itself and its customers of “actual Marshall products” have received absolutely nothing to date in return but in-house MAV iron at the same bloated prices.

 

[PentodeLicious]

I fail to see the problem.
They had 2 options:
1. Keep doing only guitar and bass related gear and go out of business
2. Do headphones & bluetooth speakers, be a company with positive balance and keep producing the tube amplifiers we love so dear.

The guitar tube amplifiers business will keep being strong for the next 5 years top.
Then it will plunge into a niche.

The new players are using modelers.
Us the tube amplifiers lovers will be considered as dinosaurs.

Tube amplifiers will only be at large venues and large studios.

I personally will only use tube amplifiers + cabinets for the rest of my life for any purpose.
However a Kemper/Quad cortex/Axe Fx will do a fine job for 95% of all recorded music.
5 years from now you would be barley be able to hear a difference.
And even if you could it's just simply more practical.
The same happened to analog tape.
Everyone in the industry long enough knows it sounds better.
But, it's such a PITA to maintain and edit with it so DAW's took over.

My educated guess say Marshall is working on a new modeler.
And I'm pretty sure it will be great.
Hell Marshall just make a new JMP-1 with IR option and you will wipe out the competition.

wow i talk a lot lately. probably comes with the age

 

[LordPalmerston]

The only pitfall I see is if this moves in the direction of the media business. Historically, media orgs treated news as a loss leader, but funded it with the profits from lifestyle and other more ad-friendly content.

But now we have lower ad revenue overall, revenue that has gone away completely (classifieds), and general pressure to produce increasing profits. So what gets cut out of the budget first? News of course.

If the headphones and other lifestyle merch are the profit leaders, it could lead to a gradual lessening of investment in amps as profit pressure mounts.

 

[Dogs of Doom]

although, buried, right dab in the middle of the article is this statement...



Whenever there's a corporate takeover, there's always a transitionary period, where it seems that nothing is being done...

The thing is, when someone swallows up a company, like Marshall, they have to audit everything, to see what's going on inside the company.

For the last 12+ years, the people at Marshall have been running the company, like they are rockstars. The kids flying out to concerts worldwide, hanging out w/ Slash & Yngwie. They have been spending a lot of the money on their own lifestyle (not to be mistaken for the Marshall™ brand lifestyle)

So, Zound has had to look into where all the money is coming in & going out. They've looked at the mfgr'ing plant, etc. They are looking at how (in)efficient the processes are & how to improve things for the bottom line (bean counting). The note above says they've been investing "heavily" into the mfgr'ing plant & studio.

This should be good news, because they saw somewhere, that they thought investing in the plant at Milton Keynes would make the process more efficient, rather than aborting it & moving everything out of the UK.

Only time will tell, but, in every industry, they make & sell boatloads of beginner/consumer line products to carry the more expensive pro lines that, typically do not have much profit.

Up to the change of ownership, while the Marshall team have been living like rockstars, they also conflated pro line w/ consumer lines & were hiking up the prices (in the US anyway), charging everybody pro line prices across the board, even for consumer line products.

Hopefully Zound will fix that & make some distinction between the lines, rather than blurring them, like the previous ownership did, at the end...

Hey, did I read "digital"?

Does that mean digital guitar amp's? or digital bluetooth speakers/headphones? or both?

We need to give them time.

When Yamaha bought out Ampeg, they didn't do anything for a couple years. Luckily, they had a couple years of product (parts/materials) left available for production, unlike Marshall, who seemingly made things on a week-by-week basis. Why were they always on backorder? poor management...

 

[V-man]

I fail to see the problem.
They had 2 options:
1. Keep doing only guitar and bass related gear and go out of business
2. Do headphones & bluetooth speakers, be a company with positive balance and keep producing the tube amplifiers we love so dear.

Interesting… and yet we have Gibson guitars produced for the last half decade under their “option 1” [do it wrong to failure] scenario. 40 years from now could be a different story altogether (maybe even 20) but at present, the Marshall brand is too important to fail. Fender, Ernie Ball, somebody would have inevitably acquired it and these “out of business“ scenarios people paint are ridiculous.

although, buried, right dab in the middle of the article is this statement...

View attachment 147171

This is at least lip-service to be optimistic about given a time line and some “general” specificity about some upcoming products in development. Perhaps they will yet debunk the skepticism -we can all hope at least.

 

[LCW]

Marshall died with Jim.

 

[Matthews Guitars]

And then there's Mesa, which has never gone down market or abandoned their commitment to building gig worthy, road ready amps for working musicians. To this day they don't make an amp that lists for less than 1500 dollars and they don't sell "lifestyle" products or do more than minimal merchandise branding with their logo. The company is extremely healthy even under Gibson's questionable management, at least so far. Their order book is always backlogged for months.

This proves that there's value in sticking to a formula based on quality and performance. And innovation. Mesa rolls out new amp models
fairly regularly and retires the older ones when sales go stale. The only "reissues" they've ever done were slightly altered versions of the
Mark 1, such as the SOB, and later, the King Snake. They're not dependent on rehashing the past to stay in business today.

What a difference good management practices make!

 

[nortiks]

Marshall died with Jim.

Same with Hiwatt and the passing of Dave Reeves.

Time will tell what happens with the Marshall brand name, but so far it looks like the new owners see the amp business as "legacy" and have opted to go after the disposable income crowd who are willing to pay for "big boy toys", and not to focus on the working musician and innovation where costs are higher and profits are lower. I'd probably do the same thing in their shoes tbh.

 

[Filipe Soares]

I' not sure that analogy is quite the same. Cayenne and Macan are still high performance "suv/crossovers" from a manufacturer making high performance cars. Two sides of the same coin. Modeling vs Tube amps. Markets has separate user groups but overall the same market and products.

Now if Porsche's cash cow was boat engines and they put way more time effort and $ into them vs. The consumer automobile market (cars and crossovers/suvs) that might be a better analogy.

every porsche enthusiast felt sick when they released the cayenne. Porsche history was all about rear engine, boxer, mounted nimble cars to race and the cayenne was a gigantic suv with a v8 in the front, for family. ok, it is fast, but it is the opposite idea, and the usual gang just hated it, there was a shit ton of butt hurt back then. but it funded the development of the GT2s and GT3s we love.

in that sense I don´t see anyone here openly hating marshall´s headphones, if their success will fund new amps for us it is a win win situation. companies needs money, they are made to be profitable, being profitable and keeping the tradition is a win win