Sweetwater Sound
 |
|
| Corporation | |
| Founded | 1979 |
| Headquarters | Fort Wayne, Indiana |
|
Key people
|
Chuck Surack (founder), President/CEO John Hopkins, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Radke, Chief Sales Officer Marc Leveridge, Chief Financial Officer David Stewart, Chief Marketing Officer |
| Products | Musical instruments, Recording equipment and accessories |
| Revenue | $433.1 Million |
|
Number of employees
|
946 |
| Website | www.sweetwater.com |
Sweetwater is one of the United States' largest dealers in musical equipment for musicians, recording studios, schools, churches, concert sound companies and broadcasters. Sweetwater sells pro audio equipment, digital recording systems, pianos and keyboards, guitars, microphones, mixers, loudspeakers, signal processors, and drums.
Chuck Surack established the company in 1979 in Fort Wayne, Indiana so that he could stop being a touring musician. The company originally offered recording services via a remote recording studio in Surack's Volkswagen microbus and a recording studio based out of his home. When the Kurzweil K250 programmable keyboard and sampler was introduced in 1984, Surack became known for his custom K250 sound library and programming skills as well as his upgrade kits. Surack became a Kurzweil dealer, but his clients were asking for advice regarding other products as well. Surack expanded Sweetwater to become a music retailer whose emphasis was pre- and post-sale customer service. By 1990, with 6 employees and annual sales of $6 million, Sweetwater had outgrown Surack's home and moved into its own commercial building.
In 1995, Sweetwater mounted an informational website: www.sweetwater.com, and by 1999, most of the inventory was available for purchase online.Electronic Musician included sweetwater.com as one of nine essential online information resources for a musician, due to its 63,000 pages including instructional videos, demos and technical documents.
...
Wikipedia