| Type | High performance audio equipment manufacturer |
|---|---|
| Industry | Audio |
| Founded | 1977 |
| Founder(s) | Jim Thiel and Kathy Gornik |
| Headquarters | Lexington, Kentucky |
| Key people | Kathy Gornik; president |
| Products | Audio electronics |
| Website | thielaudio.com |
Thiel Audio is a privately held high performance loudspeaker manufacturer headquartered and established in Lexington, Kentucky. Thiel Audio products are distributed to over 30 countries spanning the globe. All their products are designed and built in their 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) facility located in Lexington. The current president of Thiel Audio is Kathy Gornik, who is also the chairman of the Consumer Electronics Association.
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Thiel Audio was formed by three college friends, including Jim Thiel and Kathy Gornik, who started in 1976 with equipment in Thiel's garage on Georgetown Road in Lexington. Thiel Audio was formed with $25,000 borrowed from Thiel's parents, Gornik's parents and some friends. Jim Thiel graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1968, majoring in physics. Thiel Audio first exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1977, which is the year in which the company is often cited as being founded.
Jim Thiel's brother was good at woodworking, and would build the speaker boxes. Their first product was a two-way speaker with an equalizer to give it high-quality bass response. Jim soon realized that he would need someone to do the sales part of the business, so he asked Kathy Gornik who lived in Washington DC to sell them there. She agreed and sold over 2,000 speakers in the first nine months. Thiel and Gornik are considered to be good partners due to Thiel's good engineering skills and Gornik's good salesperson skills.
In March 2006, Thiel and Gornik unveiled the Thiel CS 3.7, a high performance speaker in the Middle East, an event hosted by Emirates Computers, one of Dubai's leading technology companies.
In 2007, Thiel Audio announced that it will offer its high performance line of loudspeakers in Crutchfield retail stores, the Crutchfield site, and through their catalogs. At the time, the primary lineup that Thiel was to offer through Crutchfield was priced from about $990 to $5,450. Thiel's products in general range from about $990 to $6,450.
Jim Thiel died of cancer on September 17, 2009.[1]
Thiel Audio has won many awards, including the International Consumer Electronics Show Innovations Design and Engineering Award, for which Thiel has been honored 22 times, and the Image Hi-Fi speaker of the millennium award in 2000. Thiel has also won BizRate's coveted "Circle of Excellence" award seven times.