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Submitted for your perusal: (OUCH alert)
Mark Tucker posting on the Naim Forum here:
“As someone who worked for Naim, much of the time at a senior level, starting in the eighties days of the early single-box extruded case and ending just a few years ago, having been a Naim retailer for six years before this, I have been reading this thread with interest.
You good people are discussing a product that I’ve loved and used since 1979 and a company that I devoted myself to and helped to build over a span of four decades.
That a poorly worded, deliberately obfuscating and self-serving statement from one of the company’s newbie, non-audiophile directors has caused a level of confusion and angst amongst Naim’s loyal customers, plus a degree of ridicule and cynicism amongst the rest of the high-end audio industry and former Naim employees alike, is very sad and has prompted me to add my twopenn’orth.
There was never any doubt amongst those of us who worked for Naim primarily and fundamentally because we loved the product and the music it produced (the money was always very poor unless you were MD) that, having maintained its integrity by the skin of its teeth in the ten years following the death of Julian Vereker, when the majority share was sold to another audio manufacturer in 2011 the writing was on the wall for changes in ethos and company structure that may not best serve the Naim that we had all loved and invested so much time and money into.
A new owner with no acclaimed experience in manufacturing high-end audio electronics and an unenviable reputation for having lost its own way when it came to build-quality, customer service and delivery times was always going to struggle to comprehend and integrate Naim’s driving forces and legendary skill set.
Add to this too many inept new managers and ‘power players’ with no audio or hi-fi background meant the company found itself running headlong into divisions of loyalties and the destruction of very successful teams of enthusiastic, long-experienced, dedicated and world class employees.
These bungling, double-dealing new managers were, astonishingly, given even more power and were made ‘Directors’, the additional leverage allowing them to further ruin the previously successful culture that had elevated the company to almost mythical status and achievements.
Soon after, the Focal/Naim company was sold again (personal profit being the sole motive), to a venture capital group with absolutely no history in audio or anything related. More changes and misunderstandings of Naim’s market and core principles ensued.
Despite all of this, at least initially, a tiny collective of people remained in place that understood what Naim was all about; how best to run the company and keep designing, manufacturing and distributing exceptional audio products that thrilled hundreds of thousands of music lovers world-wide, whilst retaining enough profit to enable the company to invest sufficiently to remain on the leading edge of multiple new technologies and set audio standards that most others could only dream of.
Fortunately, to this day, despite the forced resignations, redundancies and retirements of many of the most valuable and lauded people, there is still, for the moment, a very small number of the ‘original’ lights, the dedicated, music-loving, quality-over-quantity minded engineers and expert, customer-oriented, sound quality driven company diplomats.
This can’t last forever if Naim continues to dance to the drums of the avaricious venture capitalists and continues to place more and more power and influence into the hands of the rapacious new breed of executive directors.
The number of people that have joined Naim, often at a senior level with new and fancy titles, especially in the sales management, brand management, marketing, distribution and customer service departments, whom have since left within a very short period of time, is literally staggering – easily more within the last four years alone than in the entire previous forty year plus history of the company. This is a sure tell that the wrong people are doing the hiring.
Dr Trevor Wilson’s departure is just another example of an otherwise clever and skilful person being selected for a job that most knew, and warned, that he wasn’t suitable for finding himself unceremoniously ejected, though all done within the boundaries of employment law, of course.
This is a man that was almost universally disliked and distrusted within the company anyway, but the knee surgeries, new projects, etc, are just a pathetically concocted smoke screen and for those of us in the know this typifies the duplicitous and mendacious nature of the current board. The ‘stand in’ MD is, allegedly, a friend of the French CEO, by the way, not a recommendation or the choice of Dr Wilson.
We can only hope that those few left with the necessary skills and integrity remain able to influence the structure and direction of the company, and that those more recent additions who lack understanding, compassion and real-world ability find themselves looking for employment elsewhere – surely such an iconic, beloved, admired and desired brand deserves better?”
(Thread edited by pfm moderation team to add full citation and out-link to source content)
Mark Tucker posting on the Naim Forum here:
“As someone who worked for Naim, much of the time at a senior level, starting in the eighties days of the early single-box extruded case and ending just a few years ago, having been a Naim retailer for six years before this, I have been reading this thread with interest.
You good people are discussing a product that I’ve loved and used since 1979 and a company that I devoted myself to and helped to build over a span of four decades.
That a poorly worded, deliberately obfuscating and self-serving statement from one of the company’s newbie, non-audiophile directors has caused a level of confusion and angst amongst Naim’s loyal customers, plus a degree of ridicule and cynicism amongst the rest of the high-end audio industry and former Naim employees alike, is very sad and has prompted me to add my twopenn’orth.
There was never any doubt amongst those of us who worked for Naim primarily and fundamentally because we loved the product and the music it produced (the money was always very poor unless you were MD) that, having maintained its integrity by the skin of its teeth in the ten years following the death of Julian Vereker, when the majority share was sold to another audio manufacturer in 2011 the writing was on the wall for changes in ethos and company structure that may not best serve the Naim that we had all loved and invested so much time and money into.
A new owner with no acclaimed experience in manufacturing high-end audio electronics and an unenviable reputation for having lost its own way when it came to build-quality, customer service and delivery times was always going to struggle to comprehend and integrate Naim’s driving forces and legendary skill set.
Add to this too many inept new managers and ‘power players’ with no audio or hi-fi background meant the company found itself running headlong into divisions of loyalties and the destruction of very successful teams of enthusiastic, long-experienced, dedicated and world class employees.
These bungling, double-dealing new managers were, astonishingly, given even more power and were made ‘Directors’, the additional leverage allowing them to further ruin the previously successful culture that had elevated the company to almost mythical status and achievements.
Soon after, the Focal/Naim company was sold again (personal profit being the sole motive), to a venture capital group with absolutely no history in audio or anything related. More changes and misunderstandings of Naim’s market and core principles ensued.
Despite all of this, at least initially, a tiny collective of people remained in place that understood what Naim was all about; how best to run the company and keep designing, manufacturing and distributing exceptional audio products that thrilled hundreds of thousands of music lovers world-wide, whilst retaining enough profit to enable the company to invest sufficiently to remain on the leading edge of multiple new technologies and set audio standards that most others could only dream of.
Fortunately, to this day, despite the forced resignations, redundancies and retirements of many of the most valuable and lauded people, there is still, for the moment, a very small number of the ‘original’ lights, the dedicated, music-loving, quality-over-quantity minded engineers and expert, customer-oriented, sound quality driven company diplomats.
This can’t last forever if Naim continues to dance to the drums of the avaricious venture capitalists and continues to place more and more power and influence into the hands of the rapacious new breed of executive directors.
The number of people that have joined Naim, often at a senior level with new and fancy titles, especially in the sales management, brand management, marketing, distribution and customer service departments, whom have since left within a very short period of time, is literally staggering – easily more within the last four years alone than in the entire previous forty year plus history of the company. This is a sure tell that the wrong people are doing the hiring.
Dr Trevor Wilson’s departure is just another example of an otherwise clever and skilful person being selected for a job that most knew, and warned, that he wasn’t suitable for finding himself unceremoniously ejected, though all done within the boundaries of employment law, of course.
This is a man that was almost universally disliked and distrusted within the company anyway, but the knee surgeries, new projects, etc, are just a pathetically concocted smoke screen and for those of us in the know this typifies the duplicitous and mendacious nature of the current board. The ‘stand in’ MD is, allegedly, a friend of the French CEO, by the way, not a recommendation or the choice of Dr Wilson.
We can only hope that those few left with the necessary skills and integrity remain able to influence the structure and direction of the company, and that those more recent additions who lack understanding, compassion and real-world ability find themselves looking for employment elsewhere – surely such an iconic, beloved, admired and desired brand deserves better?”
(Thread edited by pfm moderation team to add full citation and out-link to source content)
Last edited by a moderator:
