BREAKING NEWS
We have confirmed that Peter Tribeman, one of the founding partners and long time President of Atlantic Technology International, will leave the company at the end of this month. It is the end of a 28-year career there and, as we’ve learned, has been in the works for about eighteen months.
See more on Tribeman’s surprising exit…
Having heard from sources that big changes were in the works at Atlantic Technology, the scrappy specialty loudspeaker manufacturer based in Norwood, MA, we reached out to Tribeman for confirmation. We learned that Tribeman did in fact plan to exit the company – with March 31st as his last day.
The reason Tribeman is leaving is due to the fact that his contract with the company has expired, and he intends to focus more time and energy on his other ventures including Outlaw Audio, Transformative Engineering, and H-PAS.
Atlantic Technology was Acquired 18-Months Ago
We have also learned that eighteen months ago, a supplier of Atlantic Technology, Ace Result, LLC, an Asian company with a U.S. office in Yorba Linda, California, approached the partnership that owns AT about acquiring the company. A deal was struck and Tribeman was offered a consulting contract to help manage the transition. This is the contract that has now expired.
Of course, some of these facts may be a surprise to many Strata-gee readers as, to our knowledge, the news of the sale of Atlantic Technology was never publicly disclosed. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to look at this as an end to an era for Atlantic, which 28-years ago was launched with the Pattern 100 unique all-powered speaker system with small modular powered full-range speakers and one powered subwoofer. Eventually, the company went on to offer a full line of high-performance, high-value predominantly home theater oriented speaker systems.
An Early Adopter
Over the years, Tribeman took great pride in the fact that Atlantic tended to be an early adopter of emerging technologies, such as THX-certified speakers and more recently Dolby Atmos immersive surround. Tribeman loved to give grand demonstrations of the latest Atlantic Technology speaker system, a consummate showman working the room with dramatic demos doing his utmost to elicit “oohs” and “ahs” from the audience.
A dyed-in-the-wool movie enthusiast, Tribeman enthusiastically embraced surround sound systems as they emerged in the very early days and was often known to call up his counterparts at technology companies like Dolby if there was something he didn’t like in the latest version of some surround technology. But his constructive criticisms all came from the heart of true home entertainment enthusiast.
A Few Rough Years
But Atlantic Technology – like many specialty companies in our industry – has struggled with a few rough years bringing them to this point. Multiple competing issues swirled around them as if they were in the center of a tornado – changing market trends with consumers choosing to listen to music more often with headphones on their smartphones on the one hand…and home theaters being more and more centered around soundbars on the other…not to mention multi-room music listeners choosing “connected” solutions like Sonos.
All of this was happening so fast that smaller specialty companies, with limited R&D and tooling funds, just can’t keep up. And if they try, they stretch themselves too thin – potentially causing a cash crunch that can bring the company down.
Where He Goes From Here
Although not generally known, Tribeman was also a partner in a few other companies, including Outlaw Audio, an online merchant of audio/video gear; Transformative Engineering, a partnership with N.E. integrator Jay Trieber offering various HDBaseT extenders and other devices; and H-PAS, a technology designed to boost low-frequency response from speakers. It is these ventures that Tribeman tells us that he intends to turn his full attention to starting April 1.
For anyone seeking to reach out directly to Peter Tribeman, he can be reached via email at: peteratl@aol.com.
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