B&O is a survivor.

It is not the first crisis in the soon 90 year old history.

MM

StUrrock wrote:

Paul W wrote:

 

Butch 1 is 100% correct on his thinking BUT I remember that we were all arguing the very same thing way back in 2011 and 2012.

 

When it is a super expensive product costing 4 or 5 or 10 times more than a quality mainstream brand like SONY or Panasonic, Country of Origin is vital. B&O should kept everything in Denmark. As far as I can see, it is obvious that it was pure greed on the company by making thing in China. An A8 that's made in China selling at £950 is hardly cheap by todays standards for a basic pair of speakers and a little amp! The company became fat and greedy and lost direction and their problems really serves them right as they lost their DNA in pursuit of pure greed and answering to fat cat shareholders.

 

 

 

A8 being sold for £950 then apparently being sold off in John Lewis for £620.

 

 

Wherever it's made, that price fluctuation is a big problem for a premium brand.

Indeed.

Louis Vuitton for example never has a sale, if a model isn't selling it's taken off the shelves and most likely destroyed. Can't precisely compare, someone making leather goods to an electronic company, but heavily discounting premium products seldom works. 

While new models are *sometimes* fun and needed, it's also IMHO important to save and build on future successes. Someone mentioned the new Avant as an example. To be honest the new avant does not do much for me. The screen is beautiful, but the design of the product isn't really striking to me. Now we can come to the old argument, "a TV is hard to design". Perhaps so, but the BV9, BV5 where revolutionary designs. Much better than the original Avant. The style has been kept with the BV10 and BV11. However making these pencil thin made 50% of the TV bad, the sound. The BV9 is absolutely amazing in it's Full HD version, as it's packs punch, design wise, sound wise and screen wise. 

I don't need a pencil thin TV, as a "fatter" TV makes it possible to hide a lot of stuff that would other wise require other means of hiding them. 

@ Chris Townsend  Yep I Agree keep updating things like the Bv 11 Panel to 4k ect and also the Bs System 4 to a 4k output!

I would think the following 3 scenarios are most likely to happen.

1 . B&O gets bought up by an audio or luxury brand, say Harman international or LVMH, brands that are close to B&O regarding key values ( Design, Style, Luxury". This would be a best case scenario, B&O would stay almost the same, some of the most unprofitable stuff would get sold off or just discontinued, besides that it's same same.

2. Venture capitalist , they may see some value and would most likely break off some parts and sell it or best case just dump some money in B&O in hope of selling it as whole 5 years down the road...

3. Big manufacturing probably Asian, and I'm not talking about a brand but more wholesale/OEM. So $2 headphones re branded to sell for $80 and that sort of crap... bye bye B&O.

Hi Tomas, let's hope it's number 1!

I'm confused about the selling, what exactly is there in sale?

- The whole of Bang & Olufsen brand?

- Or just the Audio-TV division.

If its only the Audio-TV division, what happens with the Aluminium division, and the Medical division.

Could somebody please explain, I can't find the answer nowhere on the net.

I'm amazed that some think this is some sort of temporary blip!

In brief B&O can't sell enough of what they have to offer in the AV arena, either too few people want them, too few can afford them, or else they cost B&O too much to manufacture.

How well do you imagine B&O have done in the TV market since they started with flat panels ~ 2006, they've struggled to keep apace with the accelerating technology while the competition have released really quite decent TV's (some of which even look quite decent), and how do you see that changing in the near future?

In the audio sector, the traditional CD system in the corner has disappeared, many moved to Sonos type systems, some Mac or PC based. B&O released a £5K PC with a posh (small) tethered display and scroll wheels. While some of the speakers are excellent no one buys them if they don't have a B&O system - refer to points above!

Before you reply with "my BV's brilliant" or "the Playmaker is relatively cheap", refer to point one above - not enough people agree with you!

As no one here wants B&O to take measures to seriously reduce their costs, perhaps the way forward is to increase their product prices??

They really need to concentrate their design effort and money on a market they can definitely identity and quantify - maybe it means dropping TV's, who knows, they need laser focus.

All this while the Euro looks like it could implode at any time, China is having (for them) a bit of a blip and Russia could shortly be taking money home in wheelbarrows!

Not much more than rumours and speculation yet. Let's see what happens.

Chris wrote:

I'm confused about the selling, what exactly is there in sale?

- The whole of Bang & Olufsen brand?

- Or just the Audio-TV division.

If its only the Audio-TV division, what happens with the Aluminium division, and the Medical division.

Could somebody please explain, I can't find the answer nowhere on the net.

Noone knows!

They are all just speculating - journalist, financial analysts and of course the Beoworlders.

Keep it cool!

MM