Rumors surfaced today that Kenwood USA is closing their home electronics business. Contacts at Kenwood and their PR firm were not available for comment at the time of publishing.
Email correspondence confirmed by sources inside the AV industry imply that the brand manager for Kenwood's home audio division, Dean Hutto, was let go by the company today. Kenwood is likely to stay the course in its car audio business where the company owns a much larger portion of the electronics market.
Kenwood is a legendary Japanese audio brand with tremendous brand equity. They were first to the market with many technologies. Most recently, they were one of the first home theater brands to incorporate Faroudja's internal video processing chips inside a DVD player at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, their Sovereign line was never the success the company had hoped for. With $49 DVD players lining the shelves of Costco, it is easy to see how an added-value brand like Kenwood could get lost in the din of consumer electronics in 2005.
Other sources have suggested Kenwood Home Electronics could be sold to other international companies. With a brand that most consumers know and respect, don't be surprised to see Kenwood make a comeback someday soon.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the $49.00 DVD players at Costco statement. People nowadays have a WalMart mentaility. Just buy it cheap because it is disposable. People are not willing to pay for quality sound as they used to. Look at how tons and tons of Stereo Shops have closed their doors in the last 20 years. But don't worry, the Kenwood name will be back soon. Someone will buy the name and use it to sell cheaply made goods from China or Korea. This is what happened with Dual (of turntable fame). The name and logo was bought out by a Chinese company here in America and used to market Chinese made automobile audio products. Last I heard WalMart stopped selling their equipment due to reliability problems. When you are dropped by WalMart, you have truly hit bottom! Anyone remember Soundesign?
Don't forget that Kenwood was also Trio - a highly respected audio brand with as much market share as Luxman in the 70s. The company (inexplicably to my mind) went with the Kenwood brand in the 80s. It's a shame to lose Kenwood since they offered good value for money to customers who displayed a lot of brand loyalty (the best customer type). Denon and - to a lesser extent - Marantz don't curry the same brand loyalty.
Interesting. Frank, I am only 30 and my knowledge about Kenwood is restricted to my father's Kenwood set bought in 1992. And I have a friend who is pretty happy with his KR-V7070 receiver. I know that Kenwood has a very reputable car audio line. What higher-end products that Kenwood made for home audio you would regard as historical gems?
Trio was a major competitor to Fidelity etc in the 60s and 70s. I'm 41 years old so it was also just before my time and I can't tell you about specific models.
Regards, Frank.
Scorpius
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i am also 31 and have always had a loyalty to kenwood!!! my current set is a kenwood that was top of the line in 89 when i graduated from high school and got it as a graduation present...of course i was the one that chose it but didnt knwo it ws for me!!! my family was clever that way!!!!
i am also looking into their 5900 series and some of their amps with some ideas for my new home theater...but now i read the brand name is dead...at least no new stuff is gonna come out...i mean think about it 320 bucks for a vr8070 THX multichannel amp??? that is a great value specially when they were close to a grand last year!!!
but i am also thinking of seperates and been looking into the likes of NAD,Integra,outlaw,parasound and some of the other stuff...i m really set on a high end pre amp and a nice rotel multi channel amp!!!
i still dont knwo what i will do..but seriously if i manage to find their top of the line sovregn stuff at a nice bargain..of course i would go for it,
hense i agree with the brand loyalty syndrome that BMW and abela wree talking about!!!
Driven by curiosity I compared a Kenwood KR-V7070 (1995) to Denon PMA-700V (1990). I use Kenwood for watching movies (for surround sound) and Denon for music (it is a stereo amp). They are in the same power output category (100 WPC). But the Denon sounds much brighter and more detailed, and definitely more powerful. I opened both and did a comparison, in terms of material and build quality, Kenwood is nowhere close to Denon.
Though known to the rest of the world as Trio, the audio name Kenwood has been familiar to Americans since the mid 1960's. The name Trio was too familiar to American GI's returning from WWII. (There are still a few Americans who harbor ill feelings toward companies such as Mitsubishi, a company that made fighter planes in the 1940's. It is a history Mitsubishi has long sought to diminish.) Kenwood, along with Pioneer and Sansui, came in on the heels of Sony's success in the US market in the late 1950's and early '60's. The KR-9600 was the king of the high powered receivers in the mid 1970's. Marantz was at that time owned by SuperScope and, though possessing a sizable market share, was a poor shadow of the American made gear that competed with McIntosh and turned out products such as the 7C, 8B and 10B. In my opinion, Kenwood embraced and held on to the love of Darlington outputs far too long; not a good thing for a major audio company. The name change to Kenwood in the European market was one of consolidation. By this time Kenwood/Trio had lost much of the market share it had held in the States. Disruptions in the manufacturing locations and poor customer service had ruined the reputation of Kenwood as they became another also ran in the Home Theater market. Despite generally positive reviews for their higher end products, Kenwood never established the brand identity of the mid market off shoots from Sony ES or Pioneer Elite. Marketing mistakes finally doomed Kenwood in the American home audio market.
Trio has, to my knowledge, continued on as a well respected name in the HAM radio fields; a testament to the quality of the Kenwood/Trio tuner technology. It will be interesting to see what happens with one of the few technology driven Japanese companies from the post war period.