Heads up for all North Creek customers..

[ThomasW]

This has been posted on other forums but is worth repeating

George is shutting down his kit and parts business for the DIY builder. This shut down will occur the end of Sept 2006. After that parts will only be sold to OEM's who have a tax number and buy a min of 25 pics...

http://www.northcreekmusic.com/North_Creek_Kits_Discontinued_Statement.htm

[oxcartdriver]

I guess I'll have to order those heavy gauge inductors for my future m8ta project now.

[Amphiprion]

"Hi, my name is Mark, and I'm a rubber chicken...."

[seattle_ice]

"Hi, my name is Mark, and I'm a rubber chicken...."

OK, that made me snort my coffee...

[jdybnis]

It's an interesting read. George offers some interesting history. He seems a bit bitter now (not that I wouldn't be too if I was shutting down a 15 year old business).

His rant about people not being willing to pay for quality was contrary to the facts. And it's a weak excuse for falling sales. The fact is that there are plenty of successful, profitable loudspeaker businesses in the high end kit market. And plenty of people out there paying Northcreek level prices for kits. Northcreek hasn't adapted it's marketing to attract these customers. I see George shaking his fist at those customers and closing up shop instead.

Also, he seems frustrated that people on the internet don't all automatically acknowledge his expertise. I'm not sure if the rubber chicken thing was just a rant or he was listing it as a contributing factor to his drop in sales. To me it seems that he has not changed his message to keep up with the times. For example his marketing speak may be pretty mild by Stereophile standards, but current day DIYers naturally distrust it.

[Amphiprion]

[Feyz]

The fact is that there are plenty of successful, profitable loudspeaker businesses in the high end kit market. And plenty of people out there paying Northcreek level prices for kits.

My experience from a few years back, DIY market was way too SMALL for any business to stand on its own, unless you are something like PE or Madisound. It looks like it has gotten even smaller. Consider this, look at all the diy website forums, look who are attending. Then from there look at who are really building speakers than just talking. It is a very small number of people. Some of these people are one time builders who don't want to risk too much money on something they are not comfortable but want to try. Their best bet actually would be to go with some kit like north creek's, which to this day I am yet to hear any negative comments on the sound qualiry of their kits. I haven't heard any myself, but really never heard any negative comments on their kits sound quality any where. And the review of their Borelais at AudioXpress was very high. But the people who are on this for the first time usually don't want to pay as much as NC asks, so they go with some free or other thing. They may end up with something good, or not. Some other active speaker builders are repeat ones who are doing this as a hobby, but are not at a very high technical level with information or tools, or understanding. They again don't want to buy the best drivers for the job if they are expensive. They just want to try things which they are not sure of the results, so they go cheaper route. Then there are some people, which are of very small number, that have the ability and capability to build something real good with selecting some real nice but expensive drivers. But those are very small number in the already very small DIY market, and they don't build speakers every year, since what they build usually ends up good, they live with it for a while. And they don't go for kits, cause they don't need to.

Anyway, I doubt there are many successful profitable loudspeaker kit businesses out there. May be some that do mostly custom work. I won't count part time businesses as success. The scale of market required to sustain a full business with insurance, health insurance etc is not there IMO and short experience. Heck it wasn't enough for me to even to justify the cost of obtaining a merchant account which I could swipe customer's credit card info. If you are too judge the market size of DIY from all the talk on these forums, boards, you would be very much mistaken. Much of those are talk of a group of same people. And some of those people are not that knowledgeable than what they purvey themselves to be, I can agree with that with NC also. And it is really easy to hurt a product offering by some carefully crafted comments on forums, which may not be true at all, but serves its purpose. These intentional posting individuals are small in number from what I see, but they do exist. Then there are other people who pose to be experts but are not, whose remarks can also hurt some businesses.

[noah katz]

"If you are too judge the market size of DIY from all the talk on these forums, boards, you would be very much mistaken."

Curious how you account for lurkers who are building but not talking.

[jonathanb3478]

"If you are too judge the market size of DIY from all the talk on these forums, boards, you would be very much mistaken."

Curious how you account for lurkers who are building but not talking.

I believe there are a lot of builders that never post unless they run into a problem they need help with, and they do not see a solution in the original thread. I can understand that.

[seattle_ice]

I am one of the people that buys Kits from places like North Creek.

I am a skilled woodworker with a small amount of electronic knowledge, a medium budget and a large desire to own very good speakers. I recently built the North Creek Eska MTM Mini-towers and am extremely pleased with them. The quality of the crossover was second to none. They sound very, very clear without being overly bright.

I love to build things, but my lack of knowledge regarding crossover design and construction makes it difficult to just build stuff right from many of the DIY threads, and many of the threads have so many permutations that it is ponderous to follow. Given my druthers, I would build something like the TMWW Towers, WMTW Center and some kind of surrounds to match for my new Theater I am building. Or maybe the Dayton 3-ways. But not really knowing what I am getting, and lacking the budget or the WAF to just build 10 different speakers makes it difficult to pursue. And it seems that when I ask a question here, I get 'oh go look at the thread...'. I do that, and just get lost again, whereas when you pay for something, you don't feel badly about asking for a little time to answer questions.

I think North Creek just didn't market their stuff effectively enough, as the 'bang for the buck' was certainly there.

[Feyz]

Curious how you account for lurkers who are building but not talking.

To give some history, I had once attempted to import Usher drivers to US, and provide them to the DIY market through my website euphase.com. Even though it was a small and short experience, I think I had the chance to look into what the market was. There may be much big numbers of lurkers who are not talking, but much of them aren't building either, that was my conclusion. And people go for cheap stuff, that was my conclusion at the time also. When I had decided to sell off all what was left at price to my cost seeing it was no where worth the time spent on this venture, I had an email conversation with NC and had told George I have no idea how you can afford to run a business in this small market. Lo and behold, a few years later he decides to pull the plug.

Go deliver pizza at your spare time or something like that, you will make more money than trying to serve the DIY speaker market, that was my conclusion.

[jdybnis]

All these companies sell kits. Some of them are less expensive than Northcreek and some more expensive than Northcreek. Given the value of Nothcreek's products, I think that George is failing to market his kits as well as others do theirs.

http://www.ellisaudio.com/

http://www.gr-research.com/

http://www.rawacoustics.com/

http://www.selahaudio.com/

http://e-speakers.com/

http://pispeakers.com/

http://www.creativesound.ca/

[jkrutke]

These intentional posting individuals are small in number from what I see, but they do exist. Then there are other people who pose to be experts but are not, whose remarks can also hurt some businesses.

You know, I wish someone would make a list of who these individuals are. Then guys like me would know if we should be offended or not. After all, I do fit part of George's profile of all that is evil in DIY land:

• I give free advice (on my web site)
• I poo-poo'ed ribbon performance (commonly declared as misinformation)
• I don't support big dollar crossover components (more misinformation)
• Many of my designs are very cheap to build
• And a few other things he mentioned

The only part of the profile I don't fit is being a "self-proclaimed" expert. I never, ever, have claimed to be an expert. Yet, I get quite a lot of people calling me an expert and seeking "expert advice" from me (for free, no less) so maybe that's close enough for George. Or, maybe just having a web site is enough to make someone think I'm trying to be an expert.

So, George is keeping it a secret who's on his list of offending DIY'ers, though I'm sure he talks openly about it within his circle of friends and to potential customers who he declares have been fed misinformation. What are the rest of us supposed to think about his comments? I've emailed George a couple times and he seemed like a nice guy. He even sent me some evaluation drivers to test which I thought was very cool. Still, I don't know what to think.

A few of the things he said could go the other way. There's certainly enough "industry experts" around filling people's heads with BS in the hopes of trying to sell something.

George's original comments (rubber chickens, wal-marting of north america, free advice, experts, etc) have been deleted. But for those who want to know what he originally said, it's available in Google's cache.

[Dennis H]

Those are all good companies Josh but most of the owners have other jobs besides the DIY thing. That said, since George is staying in the OEM business, I don't see that it would be THAT much harder to continue to sell to the DIY crowd and pick up a little pocket change. Maybe the tech support just got to be too much for him and he'd rather deal only with pros.

[jdybnis]

It could be the tech support is too much work. I don't doubt he spends half his day answering email. What casts doubt on that theory is that he's also exiting the parts market. Compared to selling kits, parts require minimal support.

[Feyz]

http://www.ellisaudio.com/

http://www.gr-research.com/

http://www.rawacoustics.com/

http://www.selahaudio.com/

http://e-speakers.com/

http://pispeakers.com/

http://www.creativesound.ca/

Look how many of these can accept credit cards directly (not through paypal). And why is that? And how many of these are the only income of the owner? How many of them really live on DIY kit business only, or even only DIY driver and part sale? If they didn't have any OEM, or small manufacturer sales, could they afford to stay live?

[noah katz]

John,

"You know, I wish someone would make a list of who these individuals are."

I seriously doubt you were on his list; what came to my mind when he said that was those who think they know what they're talking about, but don't, and spread their lack of knowledge around.

[MJKing]

I read George's long winded explanation of why he is going out of the DIY business. He seemed to be blaming everybody but himself and came across very bitter, if his sales are falling off or remaining flat he needs to boost interest not complain about the competition.

I think his discussion of "rubber chickens" was both arrogant and amusing. Since by his definition I am probably a "rubber chicken" it is somewhat amusing since some of the most uninformed and downright technically incompetent people I have met and discussed audio with are people in the industry itself. There are many different skill levels inside the industry just like in the the DIY community, a blanket statement does not do justice to either group.

As for sources of information, if you only rely on printed texts and journal articles in this day and age you are going to be way behind the current latest technology. The Internet has changed the way information (both good and bad) is distributed and you need to adapt. My personal opinion is technical society publication is going to become the tool of only the academics and ont the engineers, not much applicable output. At the one DIY gathering I went to a few years ago, I was really impressed with the technical knowledge, dedication, and efforts made at producing some very fine speaker systems (I guess those people are some of his competition and also "rubber chickens"). Having something published in the JAES is does not necessarily make it gospel or the final word on the topic.

I lost a lot of respect for George Short after reading his reasons. Why not just state that the economics are not there for his DIY line and move on and not look to blame everybody else? If he has not succeeded the reason looks back at him every morning in the mirror. Bottom line is that there are many thriving businesses, just like his, and he could not compete. People buying speaker kits or parts are all motivated towards individual goals, sometimes price dominates the decision and sometimes it is quality.

Not trying to be harsh but that is my opinion and reaction.

[tktran]

I read the original post, and there are just so many inconsistencies to name. But in the end it's just a rant. It doesn't have to make sense.

It was probably posted in a fit of passion. I'm sure we've all written stuff that we look back and thinks.. Whoops.

The revised version calls it the way it is.

"...the fact of the matter is that the rising costs of raw materials and increases in the fixed expenses required to run a business have forced North Creek’s kits and hobbyist components division into a position where it is no longer economically viable."

ie. PROFIT TOO LOW.
I'VE GOT BIGGER FISH TO FRY.

[Feyz]

As for sources of information, if you only rely on printed texts and journal articles in this day and age you are going to be way behind the current latest technology.

Though I don't have time to read them in detail, I am still getting AES journals. In the Audio/Speaker world, I think it is just the opposite, comparing to what is available on the 'net. An example, how many individuals on the 'net are currently doing experiments on head transfer functions and multi channel audio to provide the best 3-D sound? How many individuals on the 'net are working on car audio transfer functions and to convert them to regular room functions to provide a listening level in car that is comparable to in room?

It was always fun seeing some of the subjects that are being "discovered" on the online communities, to have been well published years back available in the AES archieve. And I don't even have access to sources like JAAS and probably some others, which must contain a big wealth of information also.

On the 'net people will tell you stuff like 44Khz sampling is not good, because it can only reconstruct 22Khz SINUS wave, but music is not composed of SINUS waves only. 'Net is littered with stuff like that, which an average person can easily lose his way. Granted not all published at JAES or text books are always correct, but they are much better than most of the online info. That all said, your website and the information and tools you provide are some of the exceptional ones IMHO.

P.S JAES preprints are not peer reviewed AFAIK, those are likely to contain marketing and not substantiated claims and information. JAES journal articles are supposed to be peer reviewed.

[MJKing]

I guess it depends on what information you are looking for with respect to speaker design. I have been getting the JAES for almost 20 years and have found that the number of articles I save is diminishing each year. If you look back at the anthology volumes I find that the older the article the more interesting and useful the results, the math and explanation makes more sense. But maybe I am limited, I find the current articles to be kind of out in left field. I get more information from the Internet. That is my perspective and definitely not everybody's perspective.

But in general, I find that the technical engineering journals and professional societies are publishing more academic studies than work that can be used by the engineer. The JAES is better then the others I read regularly but in my opinion the trend in articles is following the others.