Don’t Just Do Something; Sit There…

[Beck]

…and send an email to the powers that be at Quantegy. I’ve gathered the contact info, which is below. I wrote them, suggesting they were going in the wrong direction and they should not indiscriminately eliminate all tape products just because some aren’t moving. In recent past Videotape was a staple, but that’s over now.

Open-reel digital and ADAT are becoming obsolete before their analog predecessors. There is a lot they could drop and still keep analog. Look at the focus of RMGI. It’s all analog and only the most viable.

I also pointed out that analog advocates were their largest cheering section in April 2005 when tape began rolling again.

IMO, they haven’t the right to throw in the towel until they’ve done all they can. I also pointed out that I felt their marketing, including the web content, failed to reach new users and address issues important to the curious. In fact there was not much marketing at all. They appeared to be counting on the old customer base, (some of which they lost… US Recording Media as one example). The new Quantegy had such a low profile some people didn’t even know they were back in business. They didn’t aggressively market their product. Perhaps it's because at first they were the only tape maker left. If so that was a huge blunder.

Anyway, Whatever you say if you choose to drop them a line, they need to know we’re out here and that we want analog tape formulations to continue. You can rest assured they are hearing from the same people they heard from in ’05… The AES, SPARS NASA, and countless Steve Albinis of the world.

Let’s be sure they also know the wishes of smaller studios and analog home recordists! Please feel free to link to this post on any other recording forums you frequent.

The people at Quantegy to contact:

Frank Foster
CEO
frank@quantegy.com

Josh Herron
Marketing and Communication manager
josh@quantegy.com
334-749-7685

Larry hughes
Larry@quantegy.com
334-749-7697

I’m not sure what Larry’s title is, but he has Peter Hutt’s old phone number. Peter Hutt who was President and CEO and Foster's partner is no longer with the company and hasn't been for some time. Obviously a lot has transpired there behind closed doors leading up to this that we may never know.

They may be so far in over their heads there’s nothing we can say to change things. But at the very least they need to understand that they can’t sit on those analog formulas… they must make tape or pass it along to someone who will. (By the way, anyone got 6 million dollars they don’t need right now… I promise I’ll get it back to you eventually).

Tim

 

[cjacek]

I'll drop them a note. Thanks!

 

[cjacek]

Whomever does the same, just let them know the strong home recording base they have but never catered to, something along the lines of an earlier (edited) Tim Beck post:

"I don't think they fully understood the market potential of people buying pre-owned semi-pro machines on eBay. Every reel of old sticky Ampex on eBay that sold was a sale lost for Quantegy. In short they had no marketing drive, depended on an already established Pro consumer base through word of mouth... absolutely no outreach to people that didn't know they existed."​

 

[MCI2424]

…and send an email to the powers that be at Quantegy. I’ve gathered the contact info, which is below. I wrote them, suggesting they were going in the wrong direction and they should not indiscriminately eliminate all tape products just because some aren’t moving. In recent past Videotape was a staple, but that’s over now.

Open-reel digital and ADAT are becoming obsolete before their analog predecessors. There is a lot they could drop and still keep analog. Look at the focus of RMGI. It’s all analog and only the most viable.

I also pointed out that analog advocates were their largest cheering section in April 2005 when tape began rolling again.

IMO, they haven’t the right to throw in the towel until they’ve done all they can. I also pointed out that I felt their marketing, including the web content, failed to reach new users and address issues important to the curious. In fact there was not much marketing at all. They appeared to be counting on the old customer base, (some of which they lost… US Recording Media as one example). The new Quantegy had such a low profile some people didn’t even know they were back in business. They didn’t aggressively market their product. Perhaps it's because at first they were the only tape maker left. If so that was a huge blunder.

Anyway, Whatever you say if you choose to drop them a line, they need to know we’re out here and that we want analog tape formulations to continue. You can rest assured they are hearing from the same people they heard from in ’05… The AES, SPARS NASA, and countless Steve Albinis of the world.

Let’s be sure they also know the wishes of smaller studios and analog home recordists! Please feel free to link to this post on any other recording forums you frequent.

The people at Quantegy to contact:

Frank Foster
CEO
frank@quantegy.com

Josh Herron
Marketing and Communication manager
josh@quantegy.com
334-749-7685

Larry hughes
Larry@quantegy.com
334-749-7697

I’m not sure what Larry’s title is, but he has Peter Hutt’s old phone number. Peter Hutt who was President and CEO and Foster's partner is no longer with the company and hasn't been for some time. Obviously a lot has transpired there behind closed doors leading up to this that we may never know.

They may be so far in over their heads there’s nothing we can say to change things. But at the very least they need to understand that they can’t sit on those analog formulas… they must make tape or pass it along to someone who will. (By the way, anyone got 6 million dollars they don’t need right now… I promise I’ll get it back to you eventually).

Tim

Last year there was a HUGE survey on PSW about who and how much tape people would be using to further Quantagy tape manufacturing. The response was pretty good and that was when Quantagy decided to do this.

The actual sales was not even close to what they found in the survey. I don't know why, but I believe that although many pros completed the survey in all honesty, they were in the midst of changing to digital anyway. Probably what happened is that although Qhantatgy was coming back, no one wants to clip their line to a sinking ship. The pro market is where Quantagy belives their market is BUT I think they really have not surveyed home recordists at all. The time they have been making tape again is too short and they have yet to "catch on" again. People are still scrambling on eBay and such in the belief that Quantagy is gone. Unless you are on these boards, how would you know they are making tape again?

I could be wrong, but Quantagy is looking at a single market (2" pro) and basing their decisions on only that market. Remember, pro 2" tape WAS consumed daily based on project. A pro studio could go through 2-5 reels of tape for each project. How much do home recordists buy in a year?

The other side of it is that I have no idea of what it takes to make tape, how much the operating costs are and how the sales market is going.

The last observation is that even pro 2" machines are largely not being used as they were before. A vast majority of pros use these machines as "bed" tracks if at all and you don't need any more than a few reels of tape for that. The cost of a reel of 2" is now over $200 and that adds up way too fast.

The tape market will suffer from the same fate as the machines that run it. Although someone will probably always make both, the cost is totally out of the question for the majority. Hell, the last tape deck on earth still being made is a 2 channel and goes for $5000!



And 2 reels of the RMGI is alittle less than $500.

The used tape market will boom big time.

 

[cjacek]

Good points. But one has to figure RMGI and their entering the market when Quantegy made a comeback. Many of those "pro" studios went with a better quality product, selling boat loads, from what I read and heard. Quantegy lost on that one too. The one thing which really could have saved Q is catering to such places as this one, making their case and tape known to home recordists. Also, the majority of the semi-pro market uses 1/4" and 1/2" tape and and one was able to get a new tape for pretty cheap and very reasonable, from both Quantegy and RMGI.

 

[Beck]

One also has to remember there are a lot more home studios now than pro. And the days of the so-called super studio are long gone for sure. How many tapes each home/small/project studio goes through in a day isn't the number to look at... it's the overall annual consumption of this segment of the market.

It’s probably not easy to collect this data either. Nobody saw eBay coming in the 90’s. It’s a worldwide super garage sale on steroids. I think a lot of people overlook the resale market when evaluating the popularity of analog in general. Traditional survey methods will tell you there are virtually no new analog machines being built and it’s a dead market. However, that fails to tell you how many are really being used.

Probably the best measure of traditional users was the worldwide reaction of recording professionals when the old Quantegy closed its doors in 2005. If one didn’t know how important tape was to the industry before that, one certainly does now. That was only 2 years ago. People are still buying tape, but they have more than one source.

On that note I think Quantegy’s recent press release is a bit disingenuous. I’ve taken a second and third look at it and there’s definitely a failure to admit mistakes. It’s easier to blame it on “New technology.” Nothing has changed in that regard that couldn’t have been foreseen in April 2005. We won’t know the whole story for some time, if ever.

Who knows, they may even decide to continue beyond what they are saying now, based on what kind of sales and reaction they get from their announcement. Or in typical unscrupulous corporate fashion they’ve planned all along to “Change their minds” and resume making tape. How many times has that old going out of business sale trick been used to generate revenue? It’s an American tradition.

All I know is the fat lady still hasn’t sung yet, so the show’s not over.

And again... the more people they hear from the better.

 

[MCI2424]

One also has to remember there are a lot more home studios now than pro. And the days of the so-called super studio are long gone for sure. How many tapes each home/small/project studio goes through in a day isn't the number to look at... it's the overall annual consumption of this segment of the market.

It’s probably not easy to collect this data either. Nobody saw eBay coming in the 90’s. It’s a worldwide super garage sale on steroids. I think a lot of people overlook the resale market when evaluating the popularity of analog in general. Traditional survey methods will tell you there are virtually no new analog machines being built and it’s a dead market. However, that fails to tell you how many are really being used.

Probably the best measure of traditional users was the worldwide reaction of recording professionals when the old Quantegy closed its doors in 2005. If one didn’t know how important tape was to the industry before that, one certainly does now. That was only 2 years ago. People are still buying tape, but they have more than one source.

On that note I think Quantegy’s recent press release is a bit disingenuous. I’ve taken a second and third look at it and there’s definitely a failure to admit mistakes. It’s easier to blame it on “New technology.” Nothing has changed in that regard that couldn’t have been foreseen in April 2005. We won’t know the whole story for some time, if ever.

Who knows, they may even decide to continue beyond what they are saying now, based on what kind of sales and reaction they get from their announcement. Or in typical unscrupulous corporate fashion they’ve planned all along to “Change their minds” and resume making tape. How many times has that old going out of business sale trick been used to generate revenue? It’s an American tradition.

All I know is the fat lady still hasn’t sung yet, so the show’s not over.

And again... the more people they hear from the better.

I found some info from the Quantagy company (from last year's bankruptcy)

Quantagy sold, in 1993, 250,000 reels of tape. In 2003, they sold 20,000. Link Here:http://www.tennessean.com/business/archives/05/03/67174753.shtml

I would say that in 2007, this number ain't gonna be too great. I think the new Quantagy found out why the old Quantagy went the way of the dinosoar. Must be an expensive lesson to them. They probably are looking to magnetic storage for othr applications as they know their ship will soon sink.

Of coarse, a tape manufacturer can survive if the stuff is made in China or India.

So, who is up for some chinese tape?

I would also like to see tape recorders made in China and/or India. Maybe Dell could do it.

 

[Wil816]

So, who is up for some chinese tape?

I know almost nothing about the tape-manufacturing process, but I'm sure the required quality control is beyond what China can accomplish. When they get up to the level of Taiwan or Korea at least, so will their prices. I even bought a batch of American-made Scotch Master tape around 1980 which was plagued with dropouts. Soon after, I read that that was a common complaint with that brand-- and that was from a company that had been making tape for decades. If I see tape made in China, you can be sure I won't buy it. Same thing with tape recorders. I don't want a disposable one. It has to be reliable. It ought to have a three-year warranty like we've been putting on our products and rarely getting a warranty return; but that concept is totally foreign to China.

 

[cjacek]

Of coarse, a tape manufacturer can survive if the stuff is made in China or India.

..... or if they keep it as RMGI claims to do with their "economical" production. The name of the game is low overhead, especially when tape is a specialized market now. I'm stupified, as Dr. Phil would say, that Quantegy continued the 'ol mass production method when times had changed for analog. RMGI claims to be a "slim organizational structure, which enables low overhead & efficient operation", producing and marketing analog audio products in an "economical way". At least these guys knew what they were in for, but as Beck already pointed out, Q had a problem with knowing the market. At least RMGI has a better than good chance of surviving and they do produce a higher quality tape.

So, who is up for some chinese tape?

If the quality of Made in China tape is going to be anything like their CDR and DVDR offerings, no thanks.

I would also like to see tape recorders made in China and/or India.

Hey, if the quality wouldn't suffer, then this would be a way to cut costs drastically. I sincerely doubt, though, that consumers would go for it. It makes more sense for companies, who are already known for analog and have the blue prints and factories, to bring back these recorders as a special prepaid order item. You choose, you pay, they take 1 month to make and you get delivery of said machine. Why wouldn't this work ?

 

[cjacek]

Also, how cool and smart, for business sake, would it have been to have someone from Quantegy sign up for groups such as this and be a participant in discussions ? If they would have done their research early on, keeping their production and expectation lower, talked to us directly, then they would have never closed. But I guess keeping it "small" wasn't in their vocabulary. Does Quantegy really think it's going to survive without magnetic media and with their "me too" products ?

 

[Beck]

"In its peak year in 1992, Quantegy sold about 250,000 reels of tape and had 1,500 employees in Opelika and another 700 worldwide in sales and service. By 2003, the company sold only 20,000 reels."
--The Tennessean

http://www.tennessean.com/business/archives/05/03/67174753.shtml.



Those numbers are a bit shy and Quantegy wasn’t even around in 1992... it was AMPEX in Redwood City California. Clearly tape had declined and was long past its glory days. However, there was a lot of inaccurate info around two years ago. There still is. It was entertaining for me to watch these reporters, some of which had never even seen a reel of tape try to give us the scoop. Some of the stories were just a hoot to read. I’ve got them all archived including this one from The Tennessean. To be fair it’s not a bad article but their numbers and some other info weren’t in line with industry stats.

According to SPARS, the new owners of Quantegy had backorders numbering in the tens of thousands to fill before new tape would be available on the shelf for the rest of us. And for those of us that were trying to buy tape right after things began rolling, as you will remember it took a while… and some wondered if we would ever see it. That was after a shutdown that only lasted 4 months.

20,000 reels of 2” and ¼” mastering tape sold to recording studios maybe. In addition we still had Zonal, EMTEC and Maxell impacting 2003 statistics. Whatever the actual figure of worldwide tape sales of all widths and sizes Quantegy wasn’t the only maker, but the new Quantegy anticipated they would be and thus would have it all. RMGI and the phantom ATR Magnetics screwed them up a bit.


RMGI certainly didn’t jump into a 20,000 reel a year market with Quantegy already back and ATR on the way.

In the end I’m sure mismanagement will be shown to be the undoing, just as it was with the former Quantegy. Peter Hutt disappeared without an explanation, they made enemies of some important clients, and they made some bad runs of tape… so bad in fact the NLS stopped using Quantegy shortly after the new owners took over because of Quality Control Issues.

So as usual in the business world failure has less to do with the viability of a product and more to do with marketing and management style.

(No criticism of MCI2424 here, but rather the press and Quantegy. There is so much info out there it’s hard to get at the real stats on the web.)

 

[Wil816]

I would also like to see tape recorders made in China and/or India.

Hey, if the quality wouldn't suffer, then this would be a way to cut costs drastically. I sincerely doubt, though, that consumers would go for it. It makes more sense for companies, who are already known for analog and have the blue prints and factories, to bring back these recorders as a special prepaid order item. You choose, you pay, they take 1 month to make and you get delivery of said machine. Why wouldn't this work?

This is getting a little OT and it will be time to move this to a new thread if it takes off; but I should mention the following and see if it stirs some interest. It definitely has to do with the topic's title, "Don't Just Do Something; Sit There..."

People on another forum were lamenting that HP has quit making the great calculators of the 1980's. The newer calcs are inferior in many ways, despite more memory, speed, etc.. So someone there decided to get a bunch of the guys together and design and make a calculator that incorporates the things on the scientific & engineering community's wish lists, taking the best of the HP glory-days calcs and adding new technology like USB. It's not a professional company, but basically a group of engineers who volunteer some of their free time. They want to make something that will help them in their day jobs, and if they can sell it too, terrific. They're off to a good start, although as you can imagine since they're not working on the project full time with investors funding it, progress is slow. So what?! The same "disadvantage" may be exactly what makes them succeed. Without investors or competitors putting pressure on them, they have the freedom to do it without the rug being pulled out from under them if the "bottom line" doesn't look NYSE-worthy. They don't have the commercial pressures to turn out another jelly-bean-shaped half-baked product full of bugs in six months or less to sell to a bunch of giggling junior-high cheerleaders at Wal-Mart.

The time may come when it is appropriate to do a similar thing with tape recorders. It would take some machinists and electronics engineers who know tape recording. It seems to be established now that new tape will be available--from somewhere--for a long time. The last thing I have not heard addressed so far is the long-term availability of tape heads. (I'm new on this forum though.) A few of you guys are into recording for a living, and it will remain a living. If the tape recorder product helps you, you'd be supportive of the effort even if you don't make money on the tape recorders themselves. I suspect most of you are into recording mostly for fun, and you're interested in both your music and the technology itself, and you'd be supportive also without having to make money on the recorders themselves.

Having designed and brought many electronic products to market (high-end intercoms for private aircraft), I could help on such a project, but I certainly can't head it up. It might be good to start collecting some tape recorder service manuals, books on tape recording, and of course the online technical articles in order to be armed with as much helpful info as possible should the community decide it's time to try such a project. My own tentative design goals might include minimal mechanical complexity to reduce tool-up and production costs and facilitate field service, and minimal need for rubber which deteriorates. Although I've never had my hands on an Ampex ATR-100, I like the idea of going pinchrollerless.

Again, I don't think the time has arrived-- yet. But keep it in mind for a future possibility.