Quality Speakers at Half the Price - TSC, 10 year anniversary

By Nick Valente

Who started The Speaker Company? Where was it based? Why did it disappear after only a few years? These questions and more, directly from the source.

2017 was the 10 year anniversary of TSC, The Speaker company. Now, it's 2018. Throughout this year I plan on recounting some of the memories I have on getting this company off the ground, running it and finally watching a dream die. Here is my first post.

A Little History

The speaker company was the brainchild of Frank Sadowski a vice president and former Amazon executive who transitioned to D&M holdings, the company that owned Denon, Marantz, Boston Acoustics and McIntosh among a few other high end audio companies.

Quality Speakers at Half the Price

The idea was to introduce a mid-level speaker company that sold "Quality speakers at half the price", and do it only online.  This was to be done within the confines of a company whose main day to day objective was to sell high-end audio product through retail only. More on how that affected the business later.

The Business Model

The business model was pretty straight forward. Go to Chinese manufacturers who had tools for discontinued models of major brands, make slight adjustments to either the design or audio features  and sell them at a significant discount while still maintaining a 50% margin. Since tooling was such a big part of the startup cost this significantly reduced our cost base. Of course in 2017 this is nothing new. You can easily start up a company to sell almost anything if you have the know how and marketing skills to do so.
.
August, 2007

I joined TSC in August 2007 as the sole employee and the General Manager. The first order of business was to choose a logo. This as it turns out takes considerably less time in a small company than it does at some of the larger logo efforts I've been part of, like AT&T WorldNet where I started and ran www.att.net for almost 7 years. We have around 6 or 7 choices and in an afternoon we settled on the logo you see in the header of this blog.

The Goal

The goal was to launch this online only speaker company by December 7, 2007, about 90 days after I joined the company. Fortunately my working on startups at AT&T and RapidFax prepared me for this. Not to say it was easy, it was not. Frank was a great help as well as a font of information on ecommerce as well as the writer we hired, Len Schneider. Len was an audio industry expert and an incredible asset in helping get TSC off the ground. I also had the pleasure of working with Roland McBeth, a long time audio industry expert, who built and managed our product line.

Over the coming months I'll recount the trials, tribulations, celebrations and the truth about why TSC closed its doors.

TSC T100 Subwoofer

One of our original products was the TSC T100 subwoofer. It was neither powerful or big. The driver was only 10 inches and the amp topped out at 100 watts. What it was though was beautiful. Shown in this picture with TSAT 100 & 200 you can see it had a high gloss finish of 5 coats of lacquer. We weren't really looking for the hard core audiophile here, we were going for a high wife-acceptance-factor. With this finish and soft lines it really was a beautiful sub. Pair two together and you got beauty and beast.

It was one of our more popular subs. Don't get me wrong, wiht a BASH amp and solid design it sounded pretty good in a small to mid sized room. In fact I still use this on one of my home theater systems in my home. My wife likes it too.

What subs can you get today on the market that are similar? None of these "look" as good as the T100 but I'll bet they all sound better overall given the T100 was a $199 price point. Also, it's REALLY tough to capture a high gloss finish on a speaker in a photograph and none of these likely do justice to these units. What  is your thought on high gloss speaker finishes?

All About the T Series

Did you know that TSC's T series was in fact based on the Saphire speakers from Tweeters? When this series came on line however several changes were made.

The Tweeters were changed from Blue to Black
The Tweeters were changed slightly to remove some of the upper end harshness
The glass tops on the towers was improved

Other than that these were pretty much identical to the Saphire line.

How does this happen?

When a company, in this case Tweeter, no longer manufacturers a speaker, often the overseas factory continues to own the "tool" used to manufacture the product. When this happens they sometimes look for other vendor who may want to pick up the line. Since there is significantly reduced cost, building a tool can cost in the 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars, the new project starts life with a reduced manufacturing cost.

This is how TSC was able to sell high quality speakers at half the price.

More next week on the story of the T series speakers.

Need Information on Speakers?

If you're looking for information on speakers visit The Speaker Guys. They have some great articles and links to reviews. Including some good information on subwoofers.

tSc Unboxed Video

Thanks to Thomas for this great unboxing video. Thomas shows the TC2, T250 and TSS-B surrounds getting unboxed.

Dipolar Surround Sound on Sale $109.98 a Pair

Get a true dipolar surround sound speaker for only $109.98 a PAIR! That's right we have this spectacular speaker on sale right now for a discount price. It is easily worth $300-400 a pair.

Here is what one customer says...

Just like on the TC2 that I ordered, I looked for any type of flaw on the
outside of the speakers. I figured at this price range I would be able to
find something wrong with how it was put together....nope! I removed the
grills and looked some more for any flaw. I was not able to find not even a
tiny bity flaw. They are put together really well. AS far sounds go...THEY
SOUND GREAT! Enough said.

This surround sound speaker, the TSS-B truly rocks at an incredible price. Don't miss this opportunity.

Home Theater Spekaers 5.1 for under $225

With our current sale you can get 2 pair of P5 bookshelf speakers, an RC1 center channel and a ASW8 subwoofer for under $225.

Use coupon Most15 to get 20% off the RC1 and ASW8, the P5's are already on sale.

This is a great deal for a complete home theater speaker package.