EXCLUSIVE: Powermove ‘Not For Sale” Claims CEO

Powermove, is not for sale according to CEO Crawford Giles.

Despite industry rumours, Giles has told staff and parties interested in buying his business, that the Adelaide based Powermove that has revenues of approximately $60M is not for sales despite the loss this week of the Klipsch brand, which generated revenues of around $10.5M.

ChannelNews who exclusively revealed the Klipsch loss and the appointment of Melbourne based Qualifi to distribute the brand in Australia, understands that Powermove is already talking to a major audio brands to replace Klipsch.

In an exclusive interview with ChannelNews, Giles said that during the 10 years that his Company has held the Klipsch brand they have “consistently grown the brands presence in Australia”.

He said that the decision to axe Powermove came completely “out of the blue”.

He said “We are still talking to Klipsch and we have meetings scheduled with them next month. We are still confident that we can rescue something from what has been an excellent relationship”.

Both Powermove and Klipsch have denied that they asked online web site StereoNet to not publish a story about the exit of Klipsch from Powermove. 

“This never happened” said Klipsch management.

ChannelNews understands that 78% of the Klipsch business came via Harvey Norman, who were not informed of the planned move to Qualifi Ahead of ChannelNews breaking the story on Wednesday.

Giles said “Powermove is not for sale, we are a growth Distributor who is good at our job, we are one of the few if not the only one to deliver full representation in every state for brands”.

He added “We are ahead of our sell in targets for several of our brands including both Philips and Toshiba. Our accessory business is growing and we are expanding our ranges in this category”.

“we are committed to our brands and we are achieving excellent sell through, significantly more than our forecasts right across the board” he said.

“We are achieving this because we have staff that are passionate about the brands they represent, and as a Company we have very low staff turnover and some of my staff have worked for me for 15 to 20 years”.

According to Crawford, both the Toshiba and Philips brands are secure, Philips is believed to have signed a two-year contract extension last year and the Toshiba brand is also under contract.

Sources have told ChannelNews that one Powermove brand that may come under threat is Pioneer, with management from the Sydney based Amber Technology believed to have approached Pioneer management about shifting the brand to Amber who also have the distribution rights to Onkyo.

In 2015, Pioneer Electronics announced that it would sell its home theatre entertainment business to audio equipment maker Onkyo.

The only problem for Amber is that Powermove has already held discussions with Onkyo about taking the Onkyo brand rights for Australia.

ChannelNews understands that there is only six months left on the Onkyo contract with Amber.

According to Giles Powermove has grown sales of Pioneer products since picking up the Japanese brand.

“We have grown sales of Pioneer branded headphones and we are bringing on new retailers for this brand” he said.

Both Amber and Powermove have at this stage not commented.