Moog Purchased by Inmusic ?

[carles]

They broke the news earlier today: Inmusic has just purchased Moog. Moog is now property of the same people as Akai, Denon, M-Audio and a few other global brands. I am always anxious when reading such news, as I have seen so many companies loose their very soul through such moves. But maybe this time will be different ?
I will sure miss the "An Employee-Owned Company" mention on the boxes.

[MaxFerency]

There is another thread for this here too.

viewtopic.php?t=36584

Yeah, its very unfortunate.

[HookedOnSonics]

Soooooo I like the fact that IM provides firmware updates to their current product lines. They have over six hundred employees. I would hope their development division is strong. They might now have access to the source code to the synths especially the Moog One. From a development side, might be pretty straight forward for them to update the firmware on that synth and keep that moving successfully forward.

I understand the chip and parts shortage, but never understood the lack of firmware updates and fixes for a beast like The Moog One, for me, this was really disappointing.

It's weird, I can't help but feel like my studio just became a Moog Museum. One day original hand crafted Moog synths could be in the same conversations as a hand crafted Stradivarius.

[carles]

I have read further into this buy-out, and a few interesting (and somewhat troubling) things came up.
In particular, I bumped into the following video, which at first looked like the rambling of a niche YouTuber, but which really turned out to be very well documented and informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTkrXYjiHwE . I advise you to go and check it, it is very enlightening.

A few take-away facts of interest, based on what I read:

* We knew Moog was in a dire financial position after the Covid years and the related component shortage (the latter of which seems to have been hit the company hard). Apparently, management had been looking for ways to raise cash for some time.

* I, for one, used to feel strongly about the fact that Moog was "an employee-owned company". It turns out that Moog's marketing use of that phrase (it is printed on all Moog boxes) was somewhat misleading. Indeed, it appears that among employees, higher management owns 51% of shares, and all the other employees own the remaining 49%. It is a bit of a stretch to boast that your company is employee-owned when one person among these (who happens to also be the boss !) retains the absolute majority of voting rights. Shareholding employees seem to have had little to no leverage over business decisions.

* In recent years, Moog's higher management allegedly made explicit efforts to prevent the creation of a union among Moog's employees. Management's open reluctance and active opposition in such matters generally sends a very bad signal in terms of working atmosphere.

* There seems to be little hope that the recent buy-out will change things for the better in terms of such practices. The owner of InMusic apparently has a record of legal intimidation practices against critics, stake-holders or unhappy employees, and his legacy regarding the evolution of the Alesis and M-Audio brands (which he purchased too in the last decades) is less than stellar.

All in all, this is quite worrying.

[MaxFerency]

@carles It's definitely quite possible that the company wasn't quite as employee-centric as its it appeared (49% is still better than the more common 0%) but as you said, "There seems to be little hope that the recent buy-out will change things for the better in terms of such practices". While cash flow issues are understandable, being acquired is often a deal with the devil.

I think @hookedOnSonics said it best with "It's weird, I can't help but feel like my studio just became a Moog Museum. One day original hand crafted Moog synths could be in the same conversations as a hand crafted Stradivarius."

[carles]

@MaxFerency, let us hope it does not come down to that ...

[ummagumma]

If I owned Moog the first thing I'd do is hire/assign people to fix firmware issues on existing products, to firm up ( no pun intended ) existing customer confidence & solidify the brand's quality standard.

Then moving forward new products would be received better & with more confidence that they're not just flash in the pan with no longterm support.

[oscarclark]

I have read further into this buy-out, and a few interesting (and somewhat troubling) things came up.
In particular, I bumped into the following video, which at first looked like the rambling of a niche YouTuber, but which really turned out to be very well documented and informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch . I advise you to go and check it, it is very enlightening.

A few take-away facts of interest, based on what I read:

* We knew Moog was in a dire financial position after the Covid years and the related component shortage (the latter of which seems to have been hit the company hard). Apparently, management had been looking for ways to raise cash for some time.

* I, for one, used to feel strongly about the fact that Moog was "an employee-owned company". It turns out that Moog's marketing use of that phrase (it is printed on all Moog boxes) was somewhat misleading. Indeed, it appears that among employees, higher management owns 51% of shares, and all the other employees own the remaining 49%. It is a bit of a stretch to boast that your company is employee-owned when one person among these (who happens to also be the boss !) retains the absolute majority of voting rights. Shareholding employees seem to have had little to no leverage over business decisions.

* In recent years, Moog's higher management allegedly made explicit efforts to prevent the creation of a union among Moog's employees. Management's open reluctance and active opposition in such matters generally sends a very bad signal in terms of working atmosphere.

* There seems to be little hope that the recent buy-out will change things for the better in terms of such practices. The owner of InMusic apparently has a record of legal intimidation practices against critics, stake-holders or unhappy employees, and his legacy regarding the evolution of the Alesis and M-Audio brands (which he purchased too in the last decades) is less than stellar.

All in all, this is quite worrying.

There appears to be little optimism that the recent buy-out will bring positive changes in terms of these practices. The owner of InMusic, the acquiring company, allegedly has a history of legal intimidation against critics, stakeholders, and dissatisfied employees. Moreover, the reputation of the Alesis and M-Audio brands, which were also acquired by InMusic in recent decades, is not regarded favorably.

[bigcat75]

My biggest fear is that in 2-3 years the Moog brand will be competing with Behringer. I hope that IM doesn’t flood the market with “gadget” synths. There has always been an “exclusive” perception with Moog, and I hope that IM doesn’t sacrifice that perception for volume.

[carles]

If I owned Moog the first thing I'd do is hire/assign people to fix firmware issues on existing products, to firm up ( no pun intended ) existing customer confidence & solidify the brand's quality standard.

Then moving forward new products would be received better & with more confidence that they're not just flash in the pan with no longterm support.

You are definitely right. Something that still baffles me regarding Moog is the stark contrast between the extreme quality-control they apply to all physical components that go through their doors (they have full-time employees doing just systematic tests of every single knob, key and and switch of every single synth they produce), and at the same time the almost total disregard for firmware updates, even when blatant issues are identified. Pretty much every single one of their most recent synths has one or two irritating firmware bugs and/or interface issues, and yet almost no updates are ever offered. Us clients are just expected to deal with these through whatever workaround they were kind enough to publish on their website.

When you compare these practices with what some companies like Arturia do ... it reflects poorly on an otherwise mythic brand.

[analogmonster]

Yes, that's right. Moog does not want to invest in firmware updates and / or warranty processes because it's costs only without any revenue.
And - firmware bug analysis is just a pain in the a$$ - I know this because I was after a bug in my 960 Sequencer Clone in the graphical VCO functionality, which now works perfectly, but assembler code analysis is not the easiest

When I saw the old company pics on moogarchives.com (I don't reach the site any more) I whished I had a time machine to go there and ask for a job. But since then the world continued rotating, as Stephen King sais in his books, and Moog is something different.

[ummagumma]

Yeah you would hope the new owners care about support for existing products, since Moog is positioned as a premium brand. Brand loyalty is a big deal: Moog customers tend to buy multiple devices over time. And they don't become obsolete; people use them for years.

I guess we'll find out?

I've always had great dealings with Moog support fwiw

[carles]

Unofficial (but massively confirmed) information from local employees at Moog headquarter in Asheville confirmed today our worst fears: The egg-heads at the top of InMusic, mere months after putting their hands on Moog, have massively laid off employees today, apparently focusing primarily on the production teams in North Carolina. The best-case scenario (which is already a stark bummer) will be if they maintain design teams in Asheville and externalise production in Asia (rumours so far mention Taiwan), but even that less-than-stellar perspective is not for certain.

So it finally happened: InMusic, as many feared, has finally hit the last nail in the coffin of the last historical synthesisers premium brand that still operated entirely from the US. Which, as a European long-time lover and recent customer of Moog (it took me 30 years to be able to afford those pieces of gear !), more or less equates to their abandoning any ambition to maintain Moog as a credible premium (and reasonably fair-behaved) company.
I have exactly ZERO interest in buying expensive knock-off products posing as coming from a high-end brand, but really assembled in Asia by workers with terrible working conditions and indecent wages. Behringer already does that very well, thank you: we do not need Moog to forget who they are. Or, rather, who they were

This is all very sad, and to be frank, I am very much NOT SURE this will help in any way the future of the company. As I said above, there are ALREADY companies that are better at playing the game of cheap externalisation than Moog will ever be. What worth is the brand going to become, under such premises ? This sounds like both a pretty short-sighted and culturally blind decision, made by people who care more about finance than music or engineering.

RIP, Moog.