| The return of Altec Lansing to
the
professional market
by Andy Wood
For
related coverage on the return of Altec Lansing, go to:
Official
announcement
Keith
Clark's live NSCA Expo coverage
Altec Lansing Professional, one of
the oldest and most respected names in commercial audio, is set to make a return
to the market with a new range of installation products that will be unveiled
at the NSCA Expo in Denver later
this month.
The new company was formed on Feb 1 and is a wholly owned subsidiary
of Altec Lansing Technologies, who purchased the name, trade marks and goodwill
for $13.5m from Telex Corp.
in 2000.
Headed by well known ex-Altec and Telex figures Dave Merrey and
John Sexton, the new division also includes industry stalwarts such as company
chairman Ed Anchel, director of business development Duke Dukoff and Steve Upchurch.
“We're
not giving away too much information on new products until the NSCA ... we like
to heighten the suspense,” said John Sexton, vice president. “However,
these are exciting times for us. Five years on from the closure of the Oklahoma
City plant we get to start with a clean sheet of paper and with no embedded corporate
culture. Our emphasis will be on the fixed installation market and on relationship
selling. It's what we do best.”
The Altec Lansing Corporation was
born out of the Western Electric Company, (the R&D arm of the Bell Telephone
Company), and the “loudspeaking telephone.” In 1941, and renamed the
All-Technical Services Corporation (Altec), the firm purchasing the assets of
the Lansing Manufacturing Company, with a certain James B Lansing joining as chief
engineer.
(For more about the history of Altec Lansing, click
here.)
Lansing left soon after to form JBL,
leaving his surname behind with a company that for over forty years would become
synonymous with professional and consumer audio. However from the mid-80’s,
the story becomes at the very least confused and at the most disastrous.
By
1984, the consumer division had been sold off to the former Sparkomatic Corporation
who now, under the Altec name now focus primarily on multimedia products, and
in 1985, the company's remaining assets were purchased by Gulton Industries, the
then owners of Electro-Voice.
By
1986 Mark IV Industries had taken over the fold, with Altec joining EV and other
audio companies (Vega, Klark-Teknik, Midas, DDA, Dynacord, University Sound) under
the Mark IV Pro Audio Group umbrella.
Altec was sold, along with the other
Mark IV brands, to Greenwich Street Capital Partners in 1997, and a year later,
some of the Mark IV companies merged with Telex Communications. By April 2000,
Telex had sold off the remaining trade name rights to Altec Lansing Technologies.
And
now they begin again…
(Our many thanks to Mr. Andy
Wood for contributing this report.)
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