Franklin, Tenn – Jade Design, the
ODM/OEM developer of home and professional audio products, has purchased
Sherbourn Technologies and plans to expand the home-audio brand’s selection to include
all of the components of a two-channel audio system and a home theater system,
excluding displays, said Jade president and owner Dan Laufman.
Jade has the resources to take what
Laufman called a “profitable, well-run” brand to the “next level of competitive
capabilities” while “preserving the integrity of the brand,” Laufman told TWICE.
Sherborun’s current lineup consists
mainly of amplifiers, including two-channel, multichannel, and multizone amps,
but it also offers a tuner, AV preamp/processor, and AV receiver.
Jade, which also owns
direct-to-consumer audio supplier Emotiva Audio, said it will continue to
market Sherbourn products only through custom installers.
Sherbourn president and founder Ron
Fone will remain with Sherbourn as director of sales. Fone has held key
management positions in the audio industry since the 1970s and was president of
McIntosh and Acoustic Research. Fone will continue to work out of
Massachussets, but Sherbourn’s remaining sales, marketing and technical staff
will move to Tennessee from their Billerica, Mass., offices.
In the next three to six months,
Jade will add in-room speakers and powered subs to the Sherbourn line as well
as architectural speakers optimized for home theater use. Jade is also
developing a reference CD transport and a Blu-ray player for Sherbourn. And at
CES, Sherbourn will show new AV receivers and preamp-processors that
incorporate the brains of a Control 4 home-control system. The C4 technology also
enables the components to control a multiroom-audio system when connected to an
external switcher.
Eventually, the company will expand
its architectural-speaker lineup to include distributed-audio speakers, Laufman
told TWICE.
The Control4 products were
originally shown at last year’s CEDIA Expo under Jade’s then-planned Emotiva
Professional brand, which was to be targeted to customer installers. Those
plans were shelved once Jade found that Sherbourn was open to a purchase, said
Laufman. Jade will “continue to grow Sherbourn’s presence in the custom market
while re-directing the Pro name for a different sales channel,” added Fred Hartman,
Jade’s director of OEM/ODM sales. He didn’t specify the channel.
Over the next year, all Sherbourn
products will transition to Jade-designed models.
Jade started as an ODM/OEM developer
13 years ago but ventured into selling products direct to consumers under the
Emotiva brand six years ago.In the future, Laufman said he wants to focus even
more on his own brands “to realize a product vision” rather than simply design
products for other companies.
Sherbourn Technologies will display
products at Control4 booth 21407 at International CES.
