‘The products aren’t the business,’ its CEO said.
Teenage Engineering, the company famous for its synths, is going to stop making… synths, CEO Jesper Kouthoofd told High Snobiety. Since most of its products are music or audio devices, that means the company may cease to be a product manufacturing firm. It will then possibly focus on design, though Kouthoofd wasn’t clear about that in his comments. The article states:
Kouthoofd tells me that, as part of a reorganization last fall, he announced to his team he is planning to stop making synthesizers altogether. The OP-1 is no exception. Launched in 2011, it put Teenage Engineering on the map and has been central to its success ever since. “Everyone was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ But I’ve come to the conclusion that, for us, the products aren’t the business,” Kouthoofd says. “We can be so much more than that.”
Teenage Engineering does have a deep design pedigree on products besides its own. The company was behind the Playdate console and Rabbit R1, and has worked with the smartphone/audio company Nothing. It’s also done some famous one-offs like the Mayku Multiplier pressure former and Impossible Camera, along with some IKEA collabs.
Redditors who use TE products on the regular were a bit alarmed at the news, particularly since the company was extremely vague about the timeline. Whatever Teenage Engineering does may take awhile to germinate, though, according to the article. Talking about one important project “that may change our online lives”, he told High Snobiety that “some of [these upcoming projects] won’t be released for five to 10 years.”
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