It’s late on Sunday evening, and as I’m trawling Facebook under the illusion and delusion of working, I came across some rather excited chatter from DJ Fumo, accompanied by the Technics logo. Hmmm I thought, this is worth breaking out Google Translate for, and after having to sign up to the Nikkei Japanese electronic edition (that was fun), I was greeted with a reasonable good translation that allowed me to get the gist of what was being said. It essentially said that the Technics brand is coming back.
The information that has my buddy Fumo excited comes from Otairecord’s Facebook page, a Japanese retailer. Brandishing the head image above, they listed a couple of older stories, but right in among them was this one from the Nikkei Japanese site. Dated today (or possibly yesterday depending on timezones), it translates fairly well thus:
Panasonic revive luxury audio equipment brand “Technics”. We launched in Europe and Japan and component in the Technics brand during fiscal 2014, to capture the consumer with a commitment to sound. Changed its name since the ’08, the Company has been carrying out a unified brand, Technics was also completed production in ’10. Is converted to a multi-brand strategy to expand the optimal brand depending on the region and demographics.
To release the two products of the component and luxury system to be configured in such as amplifiers and speakers in the second half. 4 million to 5 million yen and premium system, the price is expected to be about 400,000 yen to component. And apart from the spread products use state-of-the-art digital technology, such as to faithfully reproduce the original sound.
Former Matsushita Electric Industrial has launched in 1965 technics. Voice, such as record players and speakers gathered support from music lovers, sparing the brand ends were many both inside and outside the company. Is shrinking, such as the spread of smartphones, but audio product market is determined that it is expected to demand a constant, such as wealthy luxury machine.
Through Panasonic Electric Works ’11, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sanyo, Panasonic promote the unification of the brand. I was raised a certain level of results in the group integration and penetration of the brand “Panasonic”. Fine-grained response to consumer needs of each region will be required to accelerate the global strategy for the future. It has set a policy of aggressive M & A foreign companies (mergers and acquisitions), to review the brand strategy.
So this is classed very much as breaking news and not to be taken as definitive fact. Not having Japanese as my first language (or any language for that matter), it’s hard to get the nuances of the Nikkei press release, or to be 100% sure of what exactly is being said. But it does appear that Technics is getting brought back as a high-end professional audio brand. It was always perceived as one in Europe and the US, and it would seem that people still buy pro audio in quantities that might call for pushing out expensive separates.
400,000 yen translates to £2300 or $3900, which is some way outside the realms of turntable prices. And given that Panasonic couldn’t sell enough turntables even at a lower price, it’s unlikely that we’ll see a return of the iconic SL-1200 series any time soon. It certainly isn’t mentioned in the Nikkei article. But bearing in mind the current buzz around turntables that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. And this could be a preemptive marketing move against turntable sales for other manufacturers.
We must be clear — Technics isn’t entirely dead, and is still a headphone brand. You can get assorted RP-DJ12** headphones around the world, but in limited quantities, almost as if they were kept in circulation to keep the brand alive.
So while facts and detail are thin on the ground, I just wanted to bring a little clarity to what is seeping out online. Obviously, there will be a lot of knee-jerk “OMG 1200S ARE BACK” posts happening, but right now that does not appear to be the case. The Technics brand may be coming back, but that’s all that seems to be clear. We’ll keep you updated as and when anything more is known, or a better translation is available.