COMMENT: What a bitchy world the AV industry can be.
Copied designs, poaching of staff and poor performances by distributors is all part of the comments doing the rounds at the moment.
The latest appears to involve Cogworks Wave Train and industry executive David Moseley who claims that he is one of the “most maligned” industry executives in Australia.
Recently Australian distributor Cogworks announced the upcoming launch of an Australian designed cinema speaker brand, Elementi this has led to claims that they are copies of the Pro Audio technology range previously distributed by Cogworks Pro Audio technology range of products.
Mosley claims this is “utter bullshit”.
How would anyone know we have had the product under development for a long time and anyway the web site for the Elementi range is not up yet”.
Then there is UK based Tom Garrett the International Sales Manager of Trinov who has been described by one competitor to Cogworks as a real “stirrer”.
He’s no fan of mine claims Mosely who pointed out that Garrett was the man responsible for claiming that Cogworks had poached a former sales manager at Len Wallis.
This was not the case; the only possible connection was that the former Len Wallis executive was taking on a director role at a New Zealand custom installer who has set up an Australian operate which happens to be a totally separate Company to Cogworks.
Garret according to some people in the industry has also been running off at the mouth after Cogworks walked away from his Trinov brand replacing it with Storm Audio products which Len Wallis is now selling.
According to insiders Garrett appointed Krix as a secondary distributor in an effort to grow sales in the cinema market, this was despite all the work put in by Cogworks.
Other insiders claim Trinov was shopping the market before the falling out with Cogworks.
The bitching in the industry appears to have become an everyday past time for Phil Hawkins and Peter Shamoon from Premium Audio Products, who are still trying to justify their questionable exit from Qualifi.
According to retailers they are still bagging out anyone who worked for Qualifi while also taking wild swipes at new archrival Sound United who are cutting deals with both the mass channel and specialist dealers while Klipsch is still waiting to get a sales number from Harvey Norman.
Then there is the specialist sound retailer whose actions have been described as “plain stupid” after he wrote a letter to suppliers telling them not to come to his shop until after 6.00pm because they “disturbed his sales staff”.
