Well, 2008 is "in the books" so to speak. Looking back on it, I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for helping make it our best year by far.
This was a watershed year for us. Our sales doubled, our production space doubled and we brought on some very talented people to help us keep up. Not that it was without challenges, large and small.
This year saw TC Sounds, our HT3 woofer supplier, file for bankruptcy, leaving us without a woofer supplier. Early sales of SongTowers exceeded our production capacity. On numerous occasions we bought out the entire US and Canadian supply of certain drivers and crossover parts and still came up short. We totally outgrew our production facilities and had so many cabinets under construction it became hard to move around the shop. The list of challenges went on and on. Fortunately, we were able to work through these and other issues, but I'm sure we'll face more in 2009.
Prior to 2008, although we had requests, we never submitted speakers for review. This year we sent out two pairs of SongTowers for review. The reviews in both cases were very positive and in both cases (enjoythemusic.com and audioholics.com) we received "Product of the Year" awards. This is very gratifying for a small company like ours. I guess we should have done it sooner.
2008 saw a few new faces around the shop. Teresa Allen had spent over a decade finishing fine furniture. She came on board to help sand a prep cabinets for finishing and her fine work has contributed greatly to our finishing quality. We met John Fallows at an audio show. His past experience has allowed John to apply many production techniques both increasing cabinet quality and enhancing shop productivity. John was an early believer in the SongTowers and served as a catalyst to move this project forward. Juan Luis worked with his father in a wood shop in Mexico and joined us last spring. Juan is a extremely talented wood worker and an genuine artist working with veneers. I met Ammar Dabesh at a local 7-11. He seemed a little too sharp to be working at 7-11 (it turns out his brother owned the store). Ammar joined us and creates a literal cloud of dust cutting panels and assembling cabinets. Sam Zeoli has been working with us for a few years now hand-building our crossovers. This year we have pushed Sam to the limits, but he has continued to come through for us delivering well-built crossovers when we need them.
Of course, none of us would have anything to do without great speaker designs. When we first began building speakers, I emailed a gentleman named Dennis Murphy with a question I had. Over the years, we have traded literally thousands of emails working on scores of speaker designs. It is safe to say we wouldn't be here today were it not for Dennis. When Dennis says he has completed a crossover design, I know, even before building the first pair, that we will have a speaker that deserves to be listened to. Jeff Bagby, another very talented speaker designer and author of a number of speaker design computer programs, has also contributed greatly to our success. Jeff's technical prowess is unsurpassed and we are very thankful for his contributions. 2008 also marked the beginning of our association with Paul Kittinger. Paul was responsible (along with Martin King and his MathCad formulas on which Paul's work is based) for the transmission line cabinet design for the SongTowers. We are currently working with Paul on a number of new TL projects and look for great things from these new cabinet designs.
I consider myself to be truly blessed having the opportunity to work closely with these talented individuals. I have learned a great deal from them (and others) and only hope they enjoyed the experience as much as I have.
I also want to thank Frank Van Alstine for his contributions. Frank (Audio by Van Alstine) builds some of the finest source gear around and shares our desire to offer value - the absolute best performance for the money. We have had the good fortune of attending many audio shows together and look forward to many more. (How ironic. As I am writing this, the phone rings. John Fallows informs me that on page 38 of the February issue of The Absolute Sound, our room at the 2008 Rocky Mountain Audiofest was singled out for "Best Sound for the Money." I haven't read it yet, but I guess that sums it up quite nicely.)
Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank everyone who placed their faith and trust in us this past year. We realize that there are many quality speakers choices available today. And we also realize that a speaker purchase is a major decision. So we are extremely grateful to those who have chosen to give us the opportunity to build the speakers of their dreams. The feedback we receive from owners is really what keeps us going.
To all of the above and the countless others I have neglected to mention, here's wishing you a very Happy New Year!
On to 2009...
- Jim
