Photo: VPI

Social distancing. Flattening the curve. These expressions are embedded in our collective psyche as we to try to keep COVID-19 and the novel coronavirus that causes it at bay. Few of us who live through this will ever forget them.

But life and work must somehow go on, if at a slower pace than before. Even now—as I write, just a couple of weeks after the earliest stay-at-home order went into effect, in California—the pandemic anxiety and resulting closures have businesses across all sectors taking a huge hit. Today’s unemployment numbers were staggering, dwarfing those at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. High-end audio—a specialty niche within the luxury market—is hardly immune.

Stereophile wanted to find out more about how COVID-19 was impacting the audio industry—how companies and people are coping and adapting to an unpredictable and unprecedented situation that’s still unfolding, changing daily. Also: What else is on manufacturers’ minds? What are they anticipating? Could there perhaps—strange as it sounds—be a silver lining to all this? Not everyone, it turns out, is entirely glum.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. People are dying—although so far we’ve heard of no major figures in our own industry who have passed on. There have been layoffs—lots of them apparently—although few are willing to talk about them. One who is is Bill Low, founder and CEO of California-based AudioQuest. Low provided Stereophile with a statement, with excerpts from a recent email addressed to his employees:

For only the second time in the forty years of AudioQuest, we have had to lay off people and make adjustments that are based not on the merit of the employee, but based on the extent to which the company can remain afloat without their valuable contributions. Some of the most valuable people the company has ever employed—irreplaceable people who had been with the company for decades—have been let go. . . .

“I apologize deeply and profoundly that I can offer no more hope other than that our heroic managers and I have stepped up to the plate to do our best to keep our intentions to regrow alive. Maybe that process can begin before the end of the year. . . .”

AudioQuest’s Stephen Mejias later sent an email adding that, because of Netherlands policies that ensure job stability, no layoffs have occurred among the company’s European staff: 38 people, all told. AudioQuest is operating at reduced capacity, for the health and safety of the staff (many of them working from home), but the company is continuing to process and ship orders.

We’re not here to circulate hearsay—we won’t be repeating anything specific we could not confirm—but we’ve heard numerous credible reports of layoffs, including at well-established companies. “The whole industry is being filled with layoffs, and no one is talking about it,” Mat Weisfeld, president of VPI Industries, says. “It’s as if these companies don’t want to talk about it because it’s going to make them look weak. And I’m like, ‘No, this doesn’t make you look weak, it makes you look like [the industry is] in a crisis, because we are.'”

At the time of this writing, some 35 states have ordered people to stay at home, except for essential activities like grocery shopping and dog-walking, in order to slow the transmission of the virus. Companies deemed “essential” are allowed to remain open, but the definition of “essential” varies from state to state.

In phone interviews and email exchanges, a common theme emerged: people and companies doing their best to stay the course however they can. Two company leaders uttered the phrase “keep on rocking and rolling.” “So far, so good” was also uttered twice by company heads. All the companies we contacted that remain operational are stepping up their sanitary practices, keeping hand sanitizer handy, arranging for some employees to work from home, ensuring that on-site staff follow CDC guidelines.

For some, this is a time for introspection. “This situation certainly pushes us to pause and evaluate every aspect of our business,” MSB Technology CEO Jonathan Gullman told Stereophile, via email. “But for every challenge, there’s a solution. No audio shows? Maybe we need to work on more online video to compensate. Will our team have to spend more time working remotely? Then we’ll improve our online systems, communication, and networking software. Are we short-handed for daily operations? Then we’ll improve documentation and company organization.”

California, which is home to MSB and many other audio companies, is on lockdown. MSB’s whole production team has been furloughed, but all are receiving some compensation and full health insurance and other benefits. In the meantime, principals Jonathan and his brother/business partner Daniel are “holding down the fort.”

Pushing Plans And Pivoting

COVID-19 has led two companies—Schitt Audio and VPI Industries—to accelerate plans already in the works. Push came to shove, you might say.

Schiit, which has headquarters in Santa Clarita, California, sells its products direct online, via brick-and-mortar dealers, and also at its own shop, which it calls the Schiitr, and which is closed until COVID-19 subsides. Although some of its 20 employees are now working from home, the company is still operational, for service, support, shipping, and so on.

“Some people are actually going into the office because under California’s rules, we are considered an essential business, or at least that’s what our lawyer [said],” Schiit cofounder and analog designer Jason Stoddard told Stereophile. “Our lawyer was okay with us continuing as long as we did all isolation measures and posted the right signs and everything.” Stoddard, who says he dislikes the phrase “social distancing,” has divided the production staff into two shifts within an 18,000-square-foot building so that employees “basically each get their own house to roam around in.” His staff is working voluntarily, knowing they can take a fully paid leave of absence if they want to. Very few have accepted that option, he says.

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