Published July 2003

Home-theater market growing; Sunfire Corp. ‘along for the ride’

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

The growth in home-theater equipment is one of the bright spots in the economy today, says Bob Carver, a longtime member of the audio industry.

As head of Snohomish-based Sunfire Corp., a manufacturer of home-theater audio equipment, Carver has seen revenue gains of 20.8 percent during the first quarter of this year alone.

Industry news reflects those gains.

According to consumer electronics tracker NPD Techworld, unit sales of home-theater audio systems in the United States increased by 50 percent in February from the year before.

And a 2001 report by marketing consultant Frost & Sullivan notes that U.S. sales of home entertainment audio equipment generated revenues of $525 million in 2000 and is projected to increase to $849.6 million by 2007.

To what does Carver attribute this growth? Two things:

• Today’s movies are laden with special effects — both audio and visual — that more and more people want to experience in the comfort of their home.
• The price of home-theater equipment has slowly fallen while the performance of that equipment has risen.

“So it’s just been a good symbiotic exposure of two different things gong on, and we’ve gone along for the ride, even though we’re high end. A lot of people have wanted the best,” he said.

The ride didn’t begin with Sunfire, which Carver began in 1994 as a boutique audio equipment maker of preamplifiers/processors, multi-channel amplifiers, receivers and subwoofers. It began some three decades ago with Phase Linear, a manufacturer of audio amplification equipment that Carver founded and later sold to electronics giant Pioneer.

The ride continued during the 1980s and early 1990s with Carver Corp., a company Carver founded to manufacture preamplifiers, amplifiers, tuners, receivers and subwoofers. Unlike Sunfire, which has about 45 on staff and caters to a higher-end market, Carver employed almost 500, and its products had a broader distribution base.

A fallout with the company’s board led Carver to leave Carver Corp. and subsequently start Sunfire. In 1998, Carver regained control of Carver Corp. when he bought back the company, which by then was facing financial difficulties.

“My plan was to resurrect it,” Carver said. “And so I designed some products, manufactured them on assembly lines here in Snohomish at Sunfire. ... I brought them to market, and they were failures. I miscalculated and wasn’t able to establish an adequate dealer distribution base because the dealers were so upset with (the former management of) Carver.”

“That brings us, more or less, to the present time.”

It’s a time of promise for the audio equipment inventor and for Sunfire, whose products are sold by authorized dealers around the globe.

Noting a continual consumer push for smaller equipment, Carver in the mid-’90s developed technology that led to compact subwoofers with powerful base. The first, an 11-inch cube dubbed the True Subwoofer, featured a 2,700-watt amplifier.

Although it raised more than a few eyebrows within the audio industry, it wasn’t long before other manufacturers began rolling out their own small “woofers,” as Carver calls them.

Following up on that trend, Carver today is developing compact speakers that will offer the same performance as the large floor-standing variety. Called Cinema Ribbons, the speakers will measure approximately 3 inches wide, 4.5 inches high and 3.5 inches deep.

“They will put out as much sound as the big floor standers, with the same purity, intensity and spectral distribution,” he said, adding that prototypes already have been produced with the hope of getting the Cinema Ribbons to market within a year.

As for the future, Carver and the engineers at Sunfire continue to tweak their product line as inspiration strikes and advances are made in computer and audio technology.

“We’re always working,” he said with a smile.

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