Monoprice is an American online retailer that sells generic-branded consumer electronics under its namesake

private label A private label, also called a private brand or private-label brand, is a brand owned by a company, offered by that company alongside and competing with brands from other businesses. A private-label brand is almost always offered exclusively by th ...

, as well as name brand consumer electronics and outdoor equipment. The company is based in Rancho Cucamonga, California. The office and shipping operations are run out of a 173,000 square-foot warehouse. As of 2013, Monoprice is a $120 million-a-year business.

History

Monoprice was founded in 2002 by Jong Lee and Seok Hong. On February 5, 2013, Monoprice released new products at the Consumer Electronics Show in

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, including an

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and a small portable

video camera A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos (as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film). Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of oth ...

called the MHD Action Camera. In March 2013, Monoprice was sued by Klipsch, an American

loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or ...

company, for patent infringement for the latter's Energy Take Classic 5.1 system. Monoprice had to withdraw its 5.1 Hi-Fi Home Theater Satellite Speakers & Subwoofer system. On July 7, 2013, Monoprice started selling its own brand of proprietary guitars. On August 22, 2013,

Blucora Infospace, Inc. was an American company that offered private label search engine, online directory, and provider of metadata feeds. The company's flagship metasearch site was Dogpile and its other notable consumer brands were WebCrawler and Meta ...

acquired Monoprice for $180 million in an all-cash deal. On August 27, 2013, Monoprice joined the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), with

PC gaming A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-dete ...

products including gaming mice, mechanical keyboards, PC speakers, and

7.1 surround sound 7.1 surround sound is the common name for an eight-channel surround audio system commonly used in home theatre configurations. It adds two additional speakers to the more conventional six-channel (5.1) audio configuration. As with 5.1 surround sou ...

headsets. On January 23, 2014, Monoprice returned to the

NAMM show The NAMM Show is an annual event in the United States that is organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who describe it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

with new

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products, including guitars,

bass guitars The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and sc ...

, DJ products, speakers, and stage lighting products. On June 25, 2014, Monoprice's parent company, Blucora, Inc. announced the appointment of Bernard W. Luthi as President of its Monoprice subsidiary. As President, Mr. Luthi was to oversee the operations of the Monoprice e-commerce business. Luthi previously served as COO and CMO of Rakuten.com and Buy.com and SVP of Marketing, Merchandising and Web Management for Newegg.com On November 18, 2016, Monoprice and YFC-BonEagle Electric Co., Ltd. (YFC), a Taiwan-based provider of power cord sets and networking peripherals, announced that YFC acquired Monoprice in a cash transaction valued at $40 million. In 2019, The Mediahq named the Monoprice Voxel as the Best Intermediate 3D printer for 2019.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.monoprice.com Electronics companies of the United States Companies based in San Bernardino County, California Online retailers of the United States Retail companies established in 2002 2002 establishments in California