Marshall Amplification, the 60-year-old company that produces iconic guitar amps used by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Slash and Kurt Cobain, is being acquired by Zound Industries, the Swedish company that previously licensed the Marshall brand for its headphones and speakers. The exact financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but the resulting company will be the privately held Marshall Group. The Marshall family will become the largest shareholder with a stake of 24 percent.
Jeremy de Maillard, who is currently CEO of Zound and will be CEO of Marshall Group in the future, said in an interview with The edge that the deal is as much about acquiring Marshall’s technical expertise as it is acquiring the brand name. “The way I like to think about it is that Zound has made products for listening to music, and Marshall has made products for making music or playing music,” says de Maillard, who call them “very complementary companies” calls.
“We have not made any Zound product that has not been approved by the Marshall Amps acoustic engineer.”
In the near future, the CEO does not expect much to change for either company. All of Marshall Amplification’s brands and subsidiaries – including Natal Drums, Marshall Records and Marshall Live Agency – are part of the deal, and the CEO says they are “100 percent committed” to both the company’s existing UK premium amp and manufacturing facility and their factory in Vietnam.
Victoria Marshall, who served as Marshall’s CEO from 2002 to 2008, and Terry Marshall, who built the first Marshall amplifier with his father, Jim Marshall, in 1962, will serve on the Marshall Group’s board of directors to drive strategy at a high level of the company.
There won’t be any immediate changes to the way Zound’s headphones and Bluetooth speakers are developed either. “We have been working closely together for 12 years,” says De Maillard. “We haven’t made a single Zound product that hasn’t been approved by the Marshall Amps acoustic engineer… It’s a complete continuation of what we do, except we’re one and the same now.”
“Since my father and I created the original Marshall amp in 1962, we’ve been looking for ways to deliver the groundbreaking Marshall sound to music lovers of all backgrounds and tastes around the world – and I’m convinced that the Marshall Group that will do. elevate this mission and encourage love for the Marshall brand,” Terry Marshall said in a statement.
“Having worked with my father in his later years, I know he would be excited about this direction and its potential to reach a larger global audience,” added Victoria Marshall.
Although the Zound name is disappearing in favor of Marshall, the Swedish company has no plans to give up its other product lines such as Urbanears. But de Maillard tells me that Marshall-branded items account for more than 90 percent of Zound’s existing sales, so doubling down on the brand makes sense.
De Maillard says he hopes the long-term merger will help accelerate development, help them take a “more holistic” approach to their product range, and ultimately share the manufacturing and product development knowledge they’ve gained working in two very different industries. to work. “What we’re buying is really the ability to make one entity greater than the sum of its parts,” says de Maillard. But he adds that “nothing has been decided yet” about the long-term goals of the newly formed company.
When Zound first started licensing the Marshall name in 2010, it was an unknown startup that had only started shipping products the previous year. It was the iconic Marshall brand that helped put it on the map. But now, more than a decade later, de Maillard suspects that Zound’s Marshall-branded speakers and headphones might just be the advertisement for Marshall’s guitar amps.
“We have brought the Marshall brand to over 90 countries through the headphones and the speakers. So it became a much better known brand to the masses than before,” claims de Maillard. “Before, it was the connoisseurs, the musicians, people who really loved music who knew the brand. But through this collaboration we have been able to touch many more people.”
“I don’t have the song, but I’m pretty sure it inspired a lot of people to take up guitar too,” he says.