Garmin announced Wednesday it has completed the acquisition of JL Audio.
JL Audio will continue to operate at its headquarters in Miramar, FL, and in its facilities in Portland, OR, and Phoenix, AZ. The company employs more than 600 associates who will become part of the global Garmin team. The JL Audio brand name will be retained, and its products will be integrated into Garmin’s marine segment, said Garmin.
“We are thrilled to welcome JL Audio to the Garmin team. JL Audio has a strong reputation for providing premium audio quality, and we are excited to integrate these highly regarded features into the Garmin ecosystem. Together, we look forward to providing a best-in-class audio experience for new and existing customers around the world,” said Garmin President and CEO Cliff Pemble in a press release.
Garmin Ltd. is incorporated in Switzerland with principal subsidiaries in the US, Taiwan and UK. Its press statement says, “Engineered on the inside for life on the outside, Garmin products have revolutionized the aviation, automotive, fitness, marine and outdoor markets.”
See the press release here.
See Garmin’s Q2 results here.
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On the past 3 years, Jl Audio started shut down small dealers and warehouses that were occasionally purchasing their products as they did not see a good profit out of these dealers or did not have enough personal at JL facility to support them.
On 2023, We saw JL Audio opening up dealers too close to each other, without considering any other dealer that was already in that area for a long period of time, and being a loyal JL dealer for over decades; Unfortunately, this action hurt these long time dealers to a short period of time and put on a thought on their minds that something unusually was happening at JL management department; Making many dealers very unhappy to start a pattern to bring in other car/marine vendors into their shelf and no longer using JL Audio as a priority brand; This move brought a lot of benefits to these Car Audio shops to unlace the JL Audio commitment as a main brand at the shop and expand their ways to a different technology products supplied by JL Audio competition.
In a long term, JL ideas of show more JL dealers to Garmin,potential JL buyer, will hurt badly JL numbers and will open the opportunity to many other companies that are coming into these marketing of Car, marine and home Electronics! JL will definitely see the numbers dropping badly in 2024!
Dont jump the bandwagon too soon. This might only strengthen JL Audio in the industry, both JL and Garmin
Are large respected companies that both developed quality products. An both are based in the USA.
Garmin gets its foot into markets it didn’t have and JL gets into markets it did not have.
JL Audio already did an experiment trying manfacturing
In china it didn’t go very well with Total Mobile audio.
Look at New cars the aftermarket has all but been pushed out of the market. Your limited on what upgrades can be made now. As automotive industry gets more complicated you have fewer options.
JL seen this years ago going back into home audio
The next step is marine and light crafts like motorcycle
And atvs and even farm equipment.
Many farm tractors have creature comfort systems like hvac system and nav its virtually an untouched market.
Same with comercial heavy construction equipment and the trucking industry.
Both JL Audio and Garmin can bennfit from these markets.
I dont feel good about this.
R.I.P. JL
September 2023
So what’s the situation with Clarion Marine and JL Audio? Did it change?
I thought the very same thing there. The choice of words at the end are interesting.
Congratulations to Lucio and Andy et all, for this truly remarkable, landmark achievement! Bravo! Time will tell how this all plays out, as there is simply is no precedent for any premium 12V audio brand really thriving, post acquisition. But potentially there can be a ‘first-time’ for everything…
The key statement I take away from the announcement is:
“The JL Audio brand name will be retained, and its products will be integrated into Garmin’s marine segment “