Monday, February 25, 2008

Happy Birthday and why are you still here?

NHT turned 21 on December 18, 2007.  Oddly enough, it was also the same month that I and another employee "lifer" bought our company back.  It has been bought and sold now 5 times since 1990.  Each buyer got caught up in the brand's reputation for great sounding products. Each had their own vision of how they could make us a big commercial success.  Each of them failed.
No company can withstand that many different strategies.  NHT should be dead and gone, but here we are... the cockroach of speaker brands lives on. There are lots of people that think they know the reason.  Some say it's the passion of those working here, some say we are the most stubborn folks on the planet.  Personally, I think it is because NHT is a craft.  We love music here in a big way and designing each new speaker is like making a new instrument.  We let our hearts and hands guide the development. This is not a recipe for big business and we "get" there is no chance of us ruling the audio earth.  That's ok though.  When it's all over for us humans, the cockroaches will be checking their tunes out on their NHT's.