Published
Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 13:00
- The iconic US synth company joins a stable of brands including Numark, Alesis, M-Audio and Akai.
Moog has changed hands.
The company has been bought by inMusic, a US firm that owns many other instrument, audio and DJ brands, including Numark, Stanton, Denon DJ, Akai, Alesis, M-Audio, Marantz and plugin company Air.
The sale means Moog is no longer part-employee-owned. Since 2015, 49 percent of Moog had been sold to its employees in a share scheme. All employee shareholders have now been bought out and the company is 100 percent owned by inMusic.
Speaking to Resident Advisor, Moog's brand director, Logan Kelly, said the sale would help to ensure the company continued to create and build great instruments.
"Nothing is changing," he said. "We'll still build everything here in Asheville, North Carolina, to the same standards. For all of us working here, this just helps to safeguard the future of what we do. The past few years have been challenging, with parts shortages and supply chain issues. Something had to change, but this is ultimately a great thing for us."
Moog has faced problems in recent years as a small, independent company, manufacturing in the US. Larger companies such as Music Tribe, which owns the brand Behringer, have been very successful at creating copies of Moog's instruments and manufacturing them cheaply in China. In 2017, Moog was forced to cease building its flagship Minimoog Model D reissue after only a year, as it was unable to source sufficient components. Production of the Minimoog began again last year.
Kelly confirmed that the inMusic deal would help to ensure Moog continued to build and sell Minimoogs for as long as there was demand. He also said the company was working on a number of new instruments that it hoped to release this year.
But inMusic isn't free from controversy. Formed in 2012 by Jack O'Donnell, a former vice-president at DJ equipment brand Stanton, the company first acquired Numark Electronics before branching out to purchase instrument, pro-audio, stage lighting and audio software companies, eventually purchasing Stanton itself in 2020. Instrument designer Roger Linn, who made many ground-breaking drum machines in the '80s before creating the MPC 60 for Akai, has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews.
Read a statement about Moog's sale by the company's president, Joe Richardson.
The Moog brand has changed hands numerous times in the past but was reclaimed by its founder Robert Moog in 2002. He passed away in 2005. The company recently celebrated the 89th anniversary of his birth with an interactive website that recreates the Asheville workshop where the company builds its products.