ARC in receivership
 

It has been reported that ARC has filed court documents assigning receivership to Lighthouse Management Corporation. Evidently this allows avoidance of Chapter 7 or 11, but it remains to be seen if the company will survive and in what status. IMHO the issues are most likely the loss of key design people, parts sourcing and reliability, and the inability to maintain a sufficient work force of highly skilled technicians. The backlog of repair orders stretches months. The Ref 320M was shown at Munich a year ago, but never made it to market. Capital and management are essential to success in the audio business, but are meaningless without the engineering and circuit design people creating the gear, and repairing it when required. That is how ARC stayed the course for over 50 years.

Though I have never owned ARC gear....it is very sad to see top notch
audio gear makers go into receivership...

Wishing them well!!

This is the first I've heard of this. It's very sad if it's true, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

I now have some of the court filings so I can sadly confirm that the news of receivership is true. The filing was made April 3, so this has been underway for a while. The filing contains a long list of creditors who include my local ARC dealer. So this is going to cause a lot of pain for many people.

A court hearing has been set for May 17. (Minnesota Judicial Branch, Hennepin County Civil)

Very sad. Hope they make it thru all this.
Again, am sure a big part of their problem is all the Chinese gear that is flooding the market and killing off NA manufacturers. And all the pimping of Chinese gear done by the large e-tailers like MoFi/Music Direct & Up-Scale, to name a couple. Folks I'll never do business with again.

Was ARC owned in part by McIntosh at one point? I may have them confused with another company. I always was very intrigued by them but never owned any of their stuff.

Yes. ARC founder William Z. Johnson sold ARC to Fine Sounds back around 2008, and Fine Sounds then later acquired McIntosh. Charlie Randall at Mac then bought out Fine Sounds and it became McIntosh Group. It sold ARC to its sales manager (Trent Scruggs) a few years ago.

Yes that was what I remember. I saw a Youtube video where Trent Scruggs was taking someone on a tour of the facility. It was very interesting. This was after it sold to Scruggs. It's a shame they might go away.

I agree they are in a tough spot from a business perspective, but I don't think their target customers are buying Chinese stuff from MoFi. Sadly, I think their target customers are disappearing or buying AV surround stuff. (Plus, I really appreciate MoFi's efforts with vinyl, imperfect as they are)

Sad, Sad news for all the hard working people who work there!
The private equity craze is going to ruin this country!
Any way we can get a list of the companies who are owed money by ARC should be the who's who in the audio business.