paa skrev:Nattlorden skrev:Sen är det väl inte okänt att NAD delat produkt med andra märken... De gamla stereoförstärkarna delades ju med Proton eller köptes av Proton?
Stämmer det verkligen? Proton tillverkades väl i Taiwan och NAD i Kina?
Så här svarade Ken Kantor ett inlägg:
In the earliest days of NAD, Fulet in Taiwan was the OEM manufacturer. By 1984, Fulet wanted to introduce their TV product, so they formed the Proton brand, selling the 600M and 602M monitors...fabulous pieces in their time. NAD had terrible QC problems, all caused by Fulet, and in the year the 7140 was replaced by the 7150, NAD found anotherOEM manufacturer, and Fuluet /Proton introduced audio pieces ripping off NAD designs. Proton gradually went from the muddy NAD look to the style found in the 2200, and Fulet did get better with QC and overall manufacturing. This ripoff period is when the two brands seemed to be one and the same.
It's a more complex story than this, in my opinion/observation. For example:
- Fulet was a part-owner in NAD from the beginning. (Well, from the Post-AR "beginning," at least.) Also, it was one of NAD's major distributors, as were just about all of the financial founders of the company.
- Fulet invested and loaned a great deal of money to NAD over the years, including a many million-dollar bailout that essentially rescued NAD at one point.
(Various of the other original investor/distributors of NAD decided they had competing interests in other brands, or did not step up for one reason or another.)
- The ownership of the engineering designs and tooling in question is perhaps too complicated to fully unravel. Parts of these designs date back to the AR engineering lab, and its "9-D" program. Others came from a different NAD OEM vendor. Some of the product engineering was done by friends of the family that were working for yet other brands. It's all a mess of "consultants," unpaid invoices, bad loans, shared engineering resources, family and business feuds, etc, etc.
To say that Proton "ripped off" NAD's designs gives, I think, the wrong impression.
-k
