Emotiva to acquire Bob Carver LLC

[djdube525]

Interesting development...

http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/emotiva-audio-to-acquire-bob-carver-llc

[sleepyguy24]

I'm now cautiously optimistic about this acquisition. I read quite a bit of jabbing back and forth on the Audiogon forum about the acquisition. I'm hoping that Bob Carver's tube designs become more affordable but still maintain decent quality. I'm thinking this Carver/Emotiva combination will take on Jolida and Rogue Audio. Part of the reasons why I'm not totally optimistic are:

1) Emotiva has bad track record with their QA of products as well as some execution issues. (XPA-1L problems, UMC-1 problems, delays with XSP-1, XMC-1, ERC-1 playback problems).

2) Personally I think they are spreading themselves too thin across so many different product lines. They have all their various HT stuff, amplifies, different levels of speakers, preamps, DACs and CDPs, various accessories, pro audio studio type speakers, pro Home Theatre amps. Just way to many things to keep track of for a small company. I'd like to see them do away with a bunch of products TBH.

3) Too many acquisitions very quickly. How will it all be integrated? I think they acquired Sherbourn and now Carver LLC.

What makes me look forward to this relationship is the potential of Lonnie Vaughn collaborating with Bob Carver on amp designs.

[Carlman]

Sounds more like a mini-partnership than an acquisition... It is an acquisition, but of Bob Carver, LLC, a little startup created for 1 type of product, some new tube amps... not big-Carver... whatever that corporation is called.
Bob probably isn't interested in growing a new business... In fact, he probably was looking to get out of this new endeavor gracefully. Maybe he saw Emotiva as a good company that's progressive enough to see where audio is going?  That's what I think.. Basically hand the ball to someone with younger legs.

[ampdesigner333]

Sounds more like a mini-partnership than an acquisition... It is an acquisition, but of Bob Carver, LLC, a little startup created for 1 type of product, some new tube amps... not big-Carver... whatever that corporation is called.
Bob probably isn't interested in growing a new business... In fact, he probably was looking to get out of this new endeavor gracefully. Maybe he saw Emotiva as a good company that's progressive enough to see where audio is going?  That's what I think.. Basically hand the ball to someone with younger legs.

Tube amps called "Cherry"?  Does anybody remember that one?  Ha ha......

-Tommy

[Carlman]

No idea what you're talking about Tommy.. 

[Response Audio]

My recommendation is "don't believe everything you read about this". Believe me when I say there is quite a bit more to this story than what has been posted on forums. What consumers have written is largely just assumptions. Even most dealers don't know the whole story. Unfortunately, the inside story and all the true facts are irrelevant now.

The downfall of this situation is that in the beginning, everyone, including dealers, were told that Emotiva would continue with the large dealer network Carver acquired over the first year. There are a LOT of dealers out there. Now that Emotiva has completed the acquisition, they have taken Carver products back to direct sales. This is good for consumers as the pricing has been lowered considerably. The $12,900 Black Beauty mono blocs are now being sold direct for $8,000. For dealers??? Well, what are they to do with their inventory of Carver products. We took a huge hit on ours. Moaning and groaning about it is not going to change anything. We simply move on. That's business.

The only thing I do not know at this time is what they will do in the future with production. Right now, they still have the original manufacturing/assembly staff from Bob Carver LLC doing this work. Will they take it overseas? What does the future of these products hold 

[Hugh]

Personally, if I were a Carver dealer and as soon as I heard Emotiva's going to acquire Carver, I'd try my best to unload the products.

Think about it, why would Emotiva agree to let the then existing Carver dealer network to continue once the acquisition is completed?

It's against their business model.

I knew for more than 2 years they're trying to add tube based products to their business.