Tweeter, formerly Tweeter Etc. and Tweeter Home Entertainment, was a specialty consumer electronics retailer providing mid and high end electronic equipment, including flat panel TVs,

plasma TV Plasma or plasm may refer to: Science * Plasma (physics), one of the four fundamental states of matter * Plasma (mineral), a green translucent silica mineral * Quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter in quantum chromodynamics Biology * Blood plas ...

car radio Vehicle audio is equipment installed in a car or other vehicle to provide in-car entertainment and information for the vehicle occupants. Until the 1950s it consisted of a simple AM radio. Additions since then have included FM radio (1952), 8 ...

s, home theater systems,

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

s and more. It also focused much of its business on custom installation of electronics for homes and automobiles. The company had more than 100 stores in 18 U.S. states, mostly along the east coast, but also including

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

and

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

, operating under the names Tweeter, HiFi Buys, Showcase Home Entertainment and Sound Advice. The company was founded by Sandy and Michael Bloomberg who opened the first store in the

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

area in 1972, and the company quickly expanded throughout

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

. Tweeter continued expanding largely through acquisitions, the first of these being Bryn Mawr Stereo in 1996. It then added Atlanta-based HiFi Buys in 1997, San Diego based DOW Stereo/Video in 1999, Chicago-based United Audio Center and Douglas TV stores in 2000 and Florida-based Sound Advice in 2001. These acquisitions gave Tweeter an instant presence in the Southeast and Midwest during a booming housing market. In March 2007, Tweeter announced the closing of 49 stores and the layoffs of 650 employees, and shuttered all of its stores in California and most of its stores in the Southeast. In June 2007 Tweeter Home Entertainment filed for

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

protection and its assets were purchased by Schultze Asset Management at auction on July 13, 2007, after a failed reorganization plan. Schultze reformed the company as Tweeter Opco LLC. After an attempt to revive the company, Tweeter Opco filed for Chapter 11 on November 5, 2008. Prior to filing the company had started

going out of business __NOTOC__ Business failure refers to a company ceasing operations following its inability to make a profit or to bring in enough revenue to cover its expenses. A profitable business can fail if it does not generate adequate cash flow to mee ...

sales in anticipation of the holiday season. However, a dispute among creditors regarding operating cash to continue the sales forced the closure of all stores on December 3, 2008, the firing of all 600 employees and the company filed a conversion of its Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation. Customers reported paid goods and deposits were part of frozen assets which eventually forced them to file as creditors in the liquidation.

TWTR Inc.

Following the original 2007 Chapter 11 filing and sale of assets to Schultze, the original Tweeter company (now a

shell company A shell corporation is a company or corporation that exists only on paper and has no office and no employees, but may have a bank account or may hold passive investments or be the registered owner of assets, such as intellectual property, or s ...

) remained active, having been renamed TWTR Inc.. On October 4, 2013, more than six years after selling its assets (and almost five years after the Tweeter chain shut down for good), shares of TWTR Inc. (at that point still listed under "TWTRQ") were trading for as much as 1500% above the previous day's closing price (

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

0.15 vs $0.007). It ultimately closed at $0.051 (a gain of over 684%), after trading was halted at 12:42pm EDT. Twitter, Inc. had released its preliminary

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

filings the previous day which revealed it was planning to use the ticker symbol "TWTR" (Tweeter's ticker symbol before its original bankruptcy filing), which apparently led to confusion among some investors. Shortly after the incident, the company's ticker symbol was changed to "THEGQ".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tweeter (Store) Consumer electronics retailers in the United States Defunct retail companies of the United States American companies established in 1972 Retail companies established in 1972 Retail companies disestablished in 2008 Companies that have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2007 Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008 Defunct companies based in Massachusetts 1972 establishments in Massachusetts 2008 disestablishments in Massachusetts Defunct consumer electronics retailers in the United States