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End of an era?

post on the Live Audio Board (LAB) was brought to my attention today, and I hope its contents aren’t true. In it, it says that Harman has announced that manufacturing will cease at the Northridge, CA facility in June. I’m working on confirmation of this from their PR agency as I type this blog post. But if this is true, in five short months from now these artisans will no longer have a job producing American-made loudspeaker cabinets.

Let me take a moment to rue about the lost art of loudspeaker manufacturing. And in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll also say that I got my start in the AV business at EAW. (Also, my husband worked there for nearly a decade and is now working at a competing audio brand.) I had left EAW by the time they closed their manufacturing, but I still heard about the heartbreak of people who had worked there for decades and whose main skill was no longer needed – anywhere.

I visited my husband at the EAW offices shortly after a wall (yes, literally a wall) was erected between the offices and the former manufacturing space. It was as if the heart of that place had stopped beating. So now with the news that JBL is ceasing manufacturing, I know there will be new outrage that more jobs are going overseas. Vote with your dollars, but please also remember the skilled artisans who built the JBL Pro cabs you have in your office, your warehouse, and at your client site. What will become of them?

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