Audio Research in Receivership.

#bluorion

The I/50 is already like 1 year old. Reviews started coming out last Spring.

In August 2020 Trent Suggs who was a sales manager bought the struggling company (Nobody seems to know where he got the money).

It appears ARC/Trenton Suggs, borrowed the money from Minnesota Bank and Trust, a division of HTLF Bank. It appears as of a court filling on 04/28/2023 ARC/Trenton Suggs owed the Bank $1,750,00.00 and counting.

This is from a post on SH Forum. (click on second PDF posted by "The Computer Audiophile", Wednesday at 9:22AM.)

Audio Research is gone?

From what I understand about the operating business model of ARC is that ARC builds very little inventory held at the factory. ARC’s inventory for years was held by the ARC dealers. FWI, the Dealers buys and pays up front for the equipment before it is shipped to the Dealer. Worked that way for years from my understanding. Pretty good business model for ARC. ARC didn’t have their Capital/money setting in a warehouse collecting dust.

The ARC Dealers chose what equipment they wanted to purchase from ARC. That included what equipment they bought for demo equipment displayed in the store. Therein a smaller ARC Dealer could carry store demo equipment of his choosing and if a customer wanted to buy a piece of equipment the dealer may have a new one in stock or tell the customer the dealer would order it from ARC. (From my understanding the piece of equipment would be built or finally assembled after order was placed and paid for.) Customer paid for the equipment up front. Dealer then placed the order with ARC. Money paid up front to ARC for the piece of equipment.

Things seemed to work ok between the Dealers and ARC under this agreement for years.

Then, from what I was told, ARC/Trent Suggs changed the business model. At least for the ARC dealer in my area. New policy, to be an ARC Dealer the Dealer would have to carry the full line of ARC equipment. Remember the Dealer buys, owns, the ARC equipment on display in his store paid for up front before it is shipped. At the prices of of ARC equipment for a Dealer to carry, buy, of all of the ARC line to display in his/her store would be a considerable cost for an average, or bigger than average, size Brick and Mortar Dealer. The Dealer in my state dropped ARC. There is not any ARC Dealer in my State anymore. I wonder how many other Dealers dropped ARC after Trenton Suggs purchased ARC.

ARC Dealers in North America. Not sure if this list is current today.

https://audioresearch.com/north-american-dealers/

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#jea48

Sorry but its not true that to be an ARC Dealer you must carry every product. Ive had 3 ARC dealers within 30 minutes of me over the last decade and NONE of them had more than 1 ARC system in the house. Another dealer friend of mine just signed up to be an ARC dealer within the past few months and while the situation isnt solidified I can guarantee you 100% that he wont be carrying a full line. Think he's only getting the Mid Tier - Lower priced gear and not the M160 Mono/Stereo etc stuff

Per the previous discussion, the following new sale may be a sign of hard times in hi-end audio, for other companies than Audio Research. Big HE manufacturers selling off high-priced items at major discounts. For instance, a 5m pair of Audioquest Wind RCA interconnects (list $7300) selling off at $2399. A lot of other examples of fire-sale pricing on uber-priced equipment, such as: AudioQuest 2m XLR Wel Signature Interconnects (retail $10,200) selling off at $2,999.00.

https://www.musicdirect.com/search/?sc_lid=237651901&sc_llid=100554&sc_src=email_3470468&sc_uid=kgPjcS8a0E&utm_campaign=musicdirect%20soundbytes%20issue%20%231093_6_05-06-23sc_eh%3D4590af3f68eb09b91&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Emarsys#/+/0/score/desc/?tab=product&brand_name_na_str=AudioQuest&category_names_na_str=Cable,Equipment&specials_na_str=On%20Sale
   

This could be the end.