Strategy in TECH...
Sonos Inc. and Lenbrook Industries announced today that they have reached a settlement agreement bringing the patent litigation brought by Sonos to a close. The agreement is confidential, so no terms were disclosed.
Strata-gee reported yesterday that late last week Sonos had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Lenbrook Industries Limited and Lenbrook America. This suit, which is almost identical to the one Sonos had successfully pursued with D&M Holdings and Denon over its HEOS line, was resolved in Sonos’s favor a little over a year ago.
Now we have Lenbrook’s response to this development – the company says it will “defend vigorously the claims of patent infringement made by computer audio company Sonos…”
Strata-gee reported just yesterday that Sonos, Inc. has sued Lenbrook Industries Ltd. & Lenbrook America – the maker & marketer of Bluesound – for patent infringement. Undoubtedly emboldened by their near-complete victory over Denon’s HEOS brand a little over a year ago, Sonos appears to have targeted Lenbrook to be next in line.
However, Strata-gee has learned that Lenbrook is not the only company targeted for such potential actions by Sonos. There are more – perhaps many more – in our industry lined up for this “hit” parade.
It was clearly one of the most explosive stories I wrote back in May 2011 generating tons of email and phone calls in response. The topic? Lenbrook, darling of the specialty A/V channel that for decades had been selling specialty products through specialty reps to specialty dealers – had decided to terminate their entire network of independent specialty sales representatives. Dean Miller, who had just joined the organization, would go on to construct a dedicated full-time staff of salespeople that would represent only NAD and PSB products.
Now, almost exactly eight years later, Lenbrook has decided to return to utilizing independent sales representatives in their sales network. But why?
From the High End show now taking place in Munich, Germany, Bluesound and NAD, two specialty audio lines leading the charge into high-res and high quality audio, made several interesting announcements about their efforts. Both brands are marketed here in the U.S. by Lenbrook America.
Bluesound, a division of Lenbrook America, has cut a deal with Best Buy that will result in a national roll-out of the company’s line of high-quality digital multi-room music systems through Best Buy’s Magnolia Design Center locations. The agreement will begin to take effect later this month in a phased introduction into the first 25 locations.
This week in New York City, executives from Lenbrook America and Bluesound conducted a media presentation informing them of a major update to the Bluesound brand, which is distributed in the U.S. by Lenbrook America along with NAD and PSB. It is the first major line update since the brand was first launched in 2013. With this update, called “Generation 2,” the Bluesound brand appears to have gained solid momentum – or at least enough traction for the company to justify a significant investment in further product development.
Bluesound, a line of high performance wireless multi-room music components offered by specialty supplier Lenbrook America, announced this week that it has added iHeartRadio to the list of streaming services its line offers. iHeartRadio, one of the more popular Internet radio solutions, joins a growing list of cloud-based music services offered by the industry’s first high performance wireless multi-room system.
Lenbrook America held a media event last week in Manhattan where they announced the birth of a new brand of multi-room wireless (and wired) music streaming systems called Bluesound. Bluesound is designed to be positioned above brands like Sonos in terms of price and performance…but tuck underneath some of the higher-end solutions such as those offered by NAD and others. The company hopes to create a profitable step-up market for higher priced, better performing solutions in the digital domain – as once existed in the analog realm years back.
Industry veteran Bob Brown, known to many from his long tenure as President at Lenbrook America, has joined Thiel Audio as a member of their board of directors. Brown will also, effective immediately, begin serving as the company’s interim Chief Operating Officer (COO).
Thiel, as we recently reported, is in the middle of an exciting revival as the result of its recent purchase by a consortium of Tennessee investors led by current CEO Bill Thomas.
