Melbourne based distributor Westan, who are fed up with building market share for overseas brands only to have a brand taken off them, has developed new way to go to market in the premium and affordable premium audio market.
According to Westan management the business has cut a deal to take over the Australian Whatmough audio brand and is currently developing a new range of speakers, that in the future will include new WiFi and Bluetooth enabled speakers.
Whatmough Audio was established in 1976 by Colin Whatmough who died recently.
Colin Whatmough the founder of Whatmough Audio.
The brand quickly established itself as a key player in the premium audio market selling via specialist dealers.
It was seen as a value for money brand that was designed and manufactured in Australia.
Now the brand is set to make a comeback via Westan, who has access to Whatmough audio technology along with some of the people who worked with Whatmough to develop the audio technology that Whatmough became famous for in Australia.
CEO of Westan, Kamil Aghtan “We looked at several overseas speaker brands, but the quality was not as good as what we were hearing from the Whatmough speakers” he said.
“We now have the rights to the brand, and we are confident that our new bookshelf speakers will be highly competitive in the market.”
Last year Westan lost the rights to the Polk audio range in Australia but retained it for New Zealand following the acquisition of Melbourne based distributor Qualifi by Sound United the owner of the Polk, Bowers & Wilkins, Definitive Technologies, Marantz and Denon brands.
Recently they were appointed to distribute the Sonos audio brand in Australia.
“We have the knowledge and a long history of growing audio, CE and Pro AV brands in Australia. We are extremely excited at the opportunity that the Whatmough brand delivers for us. The audio quality is excellent, and we believe we can deliver a range of speakers based on Australian audio technology and designs that will appeal to today’s consumers” claims Aghtan.
ChannelNews understands that there will be a range of Whatmough speakers for both the mass CE channel as well as specialist dealers.
