An intellectually barren company which is masquerading as a professional audio manufacturer
Pros
5yrs ago the brands & products in the portfolio were the very best of the best before chaotic and incompetent management, visions and idiotic strategies started ruining the very ethos on what these brands long history and heritage had achieved. It used to be a pleasure to work for and represent the brands, but for the last couple of years quite frankly I was embarrassed. Some of the people still left and not chewed up & spat out are, however, excellent. The pay was good, but there are literally no benefits apart from a pretty rudimentary healthcare plan, and all the negatives and working conditions along with all the stuff you have to pay for yourself such as travel, phone etc pretty much negate the benefits of a decent salary.
Cons
I liken this company to a film set on a western movie....the facade looks normal, there’s the saloon and the hotel and the store and the barbershop etc, but behind this illusion there is a bit of scaffolding and a vast expanse of nothingness, just desert and the odd tumbleweed......as an organisation they are intellectually barren, there are hardly any clever people left, just yes-men and people prepared to do literally almost anything to cling on to their jobs by their fingernails (as is evident from the many, many false positive reviews which they are forced to post on this site....6 months ago MusicTribe had a 1.5 star rating on here, but employees are forced to write good reviews and hey presto, almost 4 stars in 6 months, go figure). If you question anything, and I mean ANYTHING that the CEO and/or COO propose then your name is on a list which can mean only one thing, within a few months you’re gone. The amount of really top drawer, highly intellectual and talented people that have been forced out of this organisation over the past 5yrs is truly astounding and, to be frank, quite shameful. But the problem is that If you’re a clever person then you do question things, and challenge decisions....particularly when they’re idiotic and any normal person can see that they make no sense....but if you dare challenge then prepare for the worse, you’re out the door. Hence, there are almost no designers or creative people left. The once great brands that were the jewels in the crown of the professional audio industry are now simply dried out husks of what they once were, it’s utterly shameful and in my three decades of working with some of the very best brands in this industry I’ve never seen such a case of poor management, decision making and appalling product development, or even close to it during my career. The whole ‘Customer Obsession’ mantra is a complete and utter sham, the CEO cares not one jot about the customer, the COO has never met a customer and wouldn’t know a customer if they smacked him in the mouth. It really is laughable how they keep banging on about Customer Obsession when in reality the customers who have spent millions & millions of dollars over the years (ie, the dealers & distributors) are treated with utter contempt....the people who did deal with them on a day-to-day basis and tried in vain to protect them from the daily & weekly u-turns, loss of business, complex service & sores procedures and utterly pathetic & embarrassing fulfilment model via a 3rd party organisation in Netherlands were all fired so that the e-commerce model could be implemented, but who in their right minds are going to order a $10k amp, a $35k console or a $100k line-array system from Amazon or Thomann or Sweetwater......REALLY?? I can tell you who, NOBODY, literally nobody, it’s insane, utterly insane. So, barmy business models aside and the lack of any potential to question, challenge or add or contribute anything to the organisation, let’s take a look at just some of the most idiotic decisions made in the past couple of years...and this is just a handful: A) Use a 3rd party ‘startup’ company using 2 staff and an experimental software system for order processing and another 3rd party warehouse to do all logistics and order processing for all brands for EMEA and APAC territory’s.......this did not go well, surprise surprise! B) Decide to switch off the CRM system holding ALL customer data without performing a backup....11 months later there is still no CRM system to replace it, so post-it notes and A4 pads rule the day, analogue-tastic! C) New ‘ultra-lean’ policies put in place where all offices have to throw out all filing cabinets, drawers, printers & photocopiers......just as pieces of paper and pens have become invaluable due to the idiot who turned off the CRM, so nowhere to file (and nobody ALLOWED to file) the data that is coming in on a day-to-day basis. C) The service or CARE dept is swamped, so let’s turn the phones off.....yes, that’s right, turn the phones off so nobody can reach out and speak to a human being, all enquiries to go though a web portal......which naturally doesn’t work very well. D) Let’s get rid of the retro-bonus scheme, this rendering dealer targets instantly and utterly pointless....a target without an incentive, that’ll work won’t it? Ummmm, nope. E) Travel ban! There shall be no travel, you shall not see your customers, they don’t matter, they’re not worth it, what do they give us? Ummmm....millions & millions of dollars Uli, and whilst we’re not allowed to see the, the guys from Harman & Yamaha etc are all over them like a rash! F) Turn ALL the phones off.....so we’re not allowed to go and see the customers, which means we have to call them instead.....oh, hang on, my phone doesn’t work, guess I’ll either have to use The Force or my own phone then. Nice one! G) Remove all sales team targets & bonuses so again, zero incentive to perform or overperform.....a sales team without an incentive scheme or any idea as to what revenue they’re required to bring in, what a thing to behold! H) Abolish the loan system, thus not enabling customers to test or demo samples of product.....so we can’t call them, can’t visit them, can’t show them product, can’t incentivise them in any way......but we CAN send a 15page PowerPoint document full of utter gobbledegook masquerading as a company ‘Vision’ (but is mainly a collection of ripped off LinkedIn contributions & graphics) to assure you of our Customer Obsession, that’ll help won’t it? Ummmm.....nope. I) Send out an email to the 100 top customers stating that you will be greatly reducing (by 90%) the dealer-base and unless you were able to offer a significant e-commerce model then you weren’t invited to the party.....classic! I could go on and on and on, but just suffice to say that having had 6 line managers in the space of 4 months, it was still beyond them to explain what my job role was or what they wanted me to do having had every tool in the box systematically removed and withdrawn. The competition are literally rubbing their hands together at the moment.....not only has the heart, soul & more importantly brains of the brands been dismissed & discarded, but the route to market is now so fractured and flawed that any serious players in the industry who is considering making a tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars investment in any of these brands with zero support or feet on the ground would have to have their head examined.....and fortunately most people on this industry are very intelligent, shrewd operators.
