That’s a lot, I’m sure I watched it at least 2 1/2 or 3 times so I bet you could half the number of viewers.
I think that’s annual growth in the synth market, not total market size. I wouldn’t be surprised if the likes of Korg or Roland turn that over all by themselves.
The link you’ve left says the “market will grow by $78M”
Where are you getting the number of the entire synth market?
1 Like
The 3% CAGR (calculated annual growth rate) is 78 million. So the market before that growth is 2.6 billion usd. (78/3 is 1% or about 26million, times 100)
3 Likes
Yes! I caught that error about 10 minutes after posting. Serves me right for reading it too quickly. Thanks for doing the math.
Maybe product serial numbers might give some indication?
I would guess the big boxes like AR/A4/OT don’t sell hugely well, but considering how many pictures/people talking about the DN/DT I see, those two must have sold a hell of a lot.
I’m honestly not sure if the Model series kept up with the DN/DT as I don’t tend to see them that often, but could be where I’m looking.
…no one will tell u…in detailed numbers…
sure is…elektron is still a small business compared to roland, akai, korg…u name it…
but while still being considered a boutique stuff company, it has grown out of that since releasing the takt…that was the game changer in selling numbers…
when elektron entered the mid price segment for the first time…
boutique for everybody now…that was quite a big rush forward…
and never underestimate all THIS hobby market…it’s huuuuuuuuuuge…
with the century break, producing music became THE everybodies darling hobby. number 1…
pretty much everybody loves music in one way or the other…and being a musician, or even a star some day is endless apealing to almost everyone these days…
and so is the hopeful phrase number 1 ever…make ur hobby ur profession…live the dream…
no chance, this hobby will come to an end any soonish…
I think electronic music gear is as close to video gaming as making music. For a lot of people, it’s about buying complex gear, learning how to use them and then moving on to the next piece of gear, with little to no actual music made. There’s a huge amount of tech heads for whom the hobby is building a system, not to make music to be published or played live. IMO it was a genius move by whoever it was who first started marketing synths to tech nerds as opposed to musicians.
3 Likes
I found some financial figures reported by Elektron Music Machines AB. For 2019 they have reported sales of about 16 million USD, a loss of 1.8 million, and about 50 employees.
To reach this sales figure, I assume they must have sold about 20,000 boxes for an average sales price of 800 USD (unless I am missing another source of income here).
(For comparison: Arturia (July 2019-June 2020) - 36.6M USD sales, 8.8M USD profit, 74 employees)
1 Like
Yikes, that’s quite a loss. Hope they can turn a profit soon.
Yes, here are their figures for three years - sorry for the text in French - all figures are in USD (or in %).
I’m in two very active facebook groups, one for the M:S and one for both the Model boxes. Half of what gets posted (at least) are RTFM questions from people who seem totally new synths, drum machines, samplers etc. One group has about 1.7K members and the other about 1.1K
At the new price point of around $300USD they almost have to be doing decent, but then I’m biased as I think they are both a steal at that price.
1 Like
Also worth mentioning Elektron’s revenue increased 6 or 7 times since 2010.
Same with their number of employees. Octatrack and Digitakt were game changers.
800 USD per box maybe a little optimistic. Most are sold by retailers who put their margin on it. Also income from service works and selling accessories, soundpacks can have a share of 5-10% from the revenue.
20k can be a good estimation for total, I guess half of that are Digitakt and Digitone.
1-2k for Octa and Analogs each, the rest are Models.
Samples sold not so well, Cycles maybe better. I am not a retailer but I guess a big retailer like Thomann knows these numbers very well.
2 Likes
The most interesting data point I discovered in this thread is that Elektron is roughly the same size as Sequential, revenue-wise, based on the numbers that were floated around when the Focusrite acquisition was announced. I found that surprising. I always assumed Sequential was much larger than Elektron.
I don‘t have a source handy, so take this with more than just a little grain of salt, but I seem to recall that somewhere it was mentioned they sold 10 times as many Digitakts in the year after release as they sold OTs in total.
I once read, or maybe watched something along the lines of everybody in each of the Scandinavian countries can look at the tax returns of anybody in their own country.
I know it’s unrelated to business accounts/sales figures etc, but I find it interesting that nationals can see how much the big players at Elektron are earning, or taking from the company.
Probably stops people within Scandinavia from buying stuff they can’t afford.
I do believe there’s a bit of telephone going on with that. Ess off hand said it was more in the first year than the total of octa sales up to that point not necessarily 10x.
2 Likes
Looking at this data:
https://largestcompanies.com/company/Elektron-Music-Machines-MAV-AB-285824/closing-figures-and-key-ratios?currency=EUR
it would seem that Elektron ‘bet the farm’ on generating the tooling for Model Samples and Cycles, hoping presumably for an equivalent sales volume increase much as the previous years Digitakt and Digitone had provided over earlier models.
Model:Samples was released in Jan 2019 and Model:Cycles a year later, so the turnover figures for 2019 of EUR13.6m don’t reflect the impact of the Model:Samples on their bottom line.
If the previous years turnover was E15.4m, and the majority of sales were DT and DN, then at a retail price of E700 - less 20% VAT = E560, split with the retailer, gives - E280 which may or may not be split again with an importer. I’m guessing Elektron are big enough to handle the importing, so imagine that E250 is probably their retail return price on each DT and DN. If the DT/DN are the largest selling, then adding something for the more expensive boxes suggests approx 50,000 DT/DN’s were sold.
Presumably Elektron hoped to double/triple that figure by reducing the entry level retail figure from E700 down to E350 for the MS and MC. Who know’s, presumably they didn’t sell at the desired volume and Elektron are temporarily hurting having pumped EUR15m into the tooling for the MS/MC platform. This could explain the getting rid of key staff and the apparent shift towards SAS. The fact that Elektron has failed to fulfil the intended release of the Model:Sample/Cycles battery handle suggests that the MS:MC haven’t performed as hoped. The omission of a new product in Jan 2021 is also worrying as the past ten year history suggests a clear product cadence:
Octatrack 2011
Analog Four December 2012
Analog Keys November 2013
Analog Rytm 2014
Overbridge 2015
Analog Drive & Analog Heat 2016
Digitakt January 2017
Digitone 2018
Model:Samples Jan 2019
Model:Cycles Jan 2020
??? - Jan 2021.
We will get a better picture when their financials for 2020 come in. Hopefully the pandemic helped sales for the company.
The great mystery is how new product innovation seems to have stalled for Elektron in 2021. Presumbly the pandemic accounts for this but the departure of Ess and Cenk suggest something else is taking place.
1 Like
Retail margin is roughly 25% and not 100% so calculate with E450 net revenue per digi.
1 Like