BACK TOGETHER AGAIN

Bowers & Wilkins Australia’s announcement of a ‘new’ range of electronics from Canada’s Classé Audio is what UK magazine Private Eye would call a ‘reverse ferret’ move. If you had been sleeping quietly since 2017, then this release might be no surprise — Bowers & Wilkins had owned and distributed Classé Audio from 2001, and for years the Canadian power amplifiers were the standard recommended products to drive the legendary B&W 800 Series loudspeakers. But in fact both companies have been through a whirlwind of relationship changes in the last three years, travelling very different paths before ending up back together again.

We should note that we are great fans of Classé electronics here at Sound+Image; one of our references is the company’s Sigma 2200i, which incorporated HDMI inputs in a high-quality stereo integrated amplifier — just the kind of AV-friendly hi-fi amplifier we think should be more prevalent for those seeking a high-quality audio solution for both TV and music. Another example of the breed is Marantz’s NR1200, which wins our award for what we have termed ‘Stereo AV Amplifier’ this issue (see p70). Marantz, of course, has been owned since 2017 by Sound United, a portfolio company under holding company DEI Holdings, itself owned by Boston-based private equity firm Charlesbank Capital Partners. Sound United has been building a strong set of audio brands under its umbrella — starting with Definitive Technology and Polk, then in 2017 acquiring D+M Holdings to bring on board Boston Acoustics, Denon, Marantz, and the HEOS wireless multiroom platform.

By 2017, Bowers & Wilkins also had new owners, the rather mysterious EVA Automation, a Silicon Valley start-up owned by Gideon Yu, a former CFO of both YouTube and Facebook, also then (and still) a co-owner of the San Francisco 49ers American >>>>

>>> football team. It was a most unexpected takeover, subsequently marked by an upheaval of B&W staff in the US, but the deal was always seen as a path towards getting a wireless multiroom platform to market. Later information confirms that at the time of the EVA takeover, the Silicon Valley start-up was already working on a wireless platform that could “change how people interact and think about the home.” And according to Bowers & Wilkins’ Andy Kerr, later reported in Engadget,

“We kind of went ‘well, actually, that seems extraordinarily in line with our own thought processes and what we want to do’.”

Sure enough, 2019 saw the launch of the B&W Formation range, for which the company’s ‘Home’ app, when originally viewed on the iTunes store, listed its developer as EVA Automation, the only time we ever saw EVA’s name on any actual product. (It’s now listed as B&W Group Ltd.)

But meanwhile Classé had became a casualty of the new EVA-B&W company. In 2017 Ted Green’s website strata-gee.com reported that the Canadian operation had been all but closed and most employees laid off in a sudden and unexpected exit of B&W from separates electronics.

Then who should come along on a white charger to save the Canadian electronics firm? Step forward Sound United, which scooped up Classé Audio in 2018 to join its own stable of brands, resuming design operations in Montreal, and shifting production from its former home at B&W’s factory in Zhuhai, China, over to Sound United’s Shirakawa Audio Works factory in Japan.

In 2019 Sound United also made a bid to take over Onkyo’s consumer audio division, including the Onkyo, Pioneer and Integra brands — but that acquisition fell through at the 11th hour.

Meanwhile at the end of 2018, EVA Automation had brought on board as CEO Gregory Lee, former Global Chief Marketing Officer of Samsung Electronics and CEO of Samsung North America.

But over the next year the EVA-B&W relationship somehow fell apart. In March 2020 Bowers & Wilkins VP for the Americas James Krakowski wrote to B&W dealers announcing that “going forward, Bowers & Wilkins will have a Board which is independent of EVA Automation, although the businesses will continue to cooperate with each other where mutually beneficial”. Yu and Lee were out, while in came one David Duggins as ‘sole Independent Director’. As What Hi-Fi? reported at the time, Duggins described himself as a “restructuring professional available for Board or Advisory roles in companies undergoing restructuring, re-financing or sale”. And with Sound United’s failed acquisition of Onkyo so recently in the headlines, it seems obvious in retrospect who Duggins would have turned to for new ownership.

Sure enough, in June 2020 Sound United announced “a preliminary letter of intent to acquire Bowers & Wilkins”, and by October the acquisition was completed — Sound United became the proud new owner. And in the process, of course, B&W is back under the same roof as Classé Audio. So Bowers & Wilkins Australia has clearly wasted no time in securing and resuming distribution of the Canadian electronics.

“We just received our first pieces of the new Delta series amps and are truly excited about having Classé back ‘in house’,” we were told by John Martin, B&W Australia’s Director of Sales. “The new Delta Gen 3 designs represent a huge advance on the earlier Delta models, and initial listening impressions of all three new products — with B&W 700 and 800 Series speakers, of course! — are beyond positive.”

Let’s end with some pure speculation as to what might be next in line for synergistic reinterpretation under Sound United. Our best guess (and earnest wish) might be for the Australian-developed HEOS platform to replace the Home app as the control interface for B&W’s wireless Formation series. The Home app has been criticised for being overly minimal, with B&W admitting that a revision is already under way to add control of music services and other improvements. Using HEOS would fix everything, and also bring compatibility with a wide range of Marantz and Denon products from standalone wireless speakers to AV receivers. But hardware changes would likely be required, so we wouldn’t expect such a switch until Formation MkII makes an appearance in a few years time. We reckon someone somewhere in a research department will already be plugging those breadboards together...