Goodmans is a British

consumer electronics Consumer electronics, also known as home electronics, are electronic devices intended for everyday household use. Consumer electronics include those used for entertainment, Communication, communications, and recreation. Historically, these prod ...

brand, currently under the ownership of the B&M Group. It originated as a company named Goodmans Industries in

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in the London Borou ...

and later based in

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

, best known for

loudspeakers A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or, more fully, a speaker system) is a combination of one or more speaker drivers, an enclosure, and electrical connections (possibly including a crossover network). The speaker driver is an ...

. A wide range of products have been marketed under the name, traditionally focused in audio, stand-alone speakers and radios, but now expanded to various other electronics.

Company and brand history

Goodmans Industries was founded in 1923, 1925, or 1926,https://www.bvws.org.uk/publications/bulletins/pdf/BVWS_Bulletin_30_4.pdf in

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, former county in South East England, now mainly within Greater London. Its boundaries largely followed three rivers: the River Thames, Thames in the south, the River Lea, Le ...

. The company started as a manufacturer of

for public address systems. The company was sold in 1959 to Relay Exchanges Ltd. and through a series of sales and mergers ended up under ownership of Radio Rentaset Ltd. and then

Radio Rentals Radio Rentals was founded in 1930Radio Rentals Staff Handbook by Percy Perring-Thoms in Brighton, Sussex, UK, to rent out radio sets, with a turnover in the first year of £780 (). It later offered televisions and videorecorders for rent. In ...

As of the post-war period through to the 1960s, Goodmans Industries was based in Lancelot Road, Wembley, where production and engineering took place. Following a merger resulting in a Goodmans Loudspeakers Ltd., and the acquisition of Radio Rentals by

Thorn Electrical Industries Thorn Electrical Industries Limited was a British electrical engineering company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange, but merged with EMI Group to form Thorn EMI in 1979. It was de-merged in 1996 and became a constituent of the FTSE 100 ...

(later

Thorn EMI Thorn EMI was a major British company involved in consumer electronics, music, defence and retail. Created when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI in October 1979, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituen ...

), the company moved away to Downley Road,

Havant Havant ( ) is a town in the south-east corner of Hampshire, England. Nearby places include Portsmouth to the south-west, Southampton to the west, Waterlooville to north, Chichester to the east and Hayling Island to the south. The wider borough ...

, in 1970. Goodmans Quadro 900

In 1984 there was a

management buyout A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management- and/or leveraged buyouts became noted phenomena of 19 ...

at Goodmans Loudspeakers. Its turnover had risen from £7 million to £20 million within three years' time. That same year, in 1987, the company purchased fellow loudspeaker maker Mordaunt-Short, then in September of that year announced a merger with

Tannoy Tannoy is a British manufacturer of loudspeakers and public address systems founded in 1926. Today the company is part of the Music Tribe group of brands. History The company was founded by the Yorkshire-born engineer Guy Fountain (1898-1977) ...

, resulting in the largest audio equipment company of Britain. Goodmans Loudspeakers became a subsidiary of the newly created Tannoy Goodmans Industries (TGI). Along with these three brands, the TGI group also owned the Epos and Creek Audio brands. The company later moved to Ridgeway in Havant. TGI floated on the stock exchange, becoming the first company to do so following the

Black Monday Black Monday refers to specific Mondays when undesirable or turbulent events have occurred. It has been used to designate massacres, military battles, and stock market crashes. Historic events *1209, Dublin – when a group of 500 recently arriv ...

crash.

Goodmans was the shirt sponsor of the English football team Portsmouth F.C. from 1989 to 1995. Goodmans effectively split in 1991, with OEM loudspeaker builder Goodmans Loudspeakers Limited (GLL) set up as a separate company. On the other hand, the part of Goodmans marketing foreign-made products like

in-car entertainment In-car entertainment (ICE), or in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), is a collection of hardware and software in automobiles that provides audio or video entertainment. In car entertainment originated with car audio systems that consisted of radios and c ...

and television sets was purchased by

Alba ''Alba'' ( , ) is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. It is also, in English-language historiography, used to refer to the polity of Picts and Scots united in the ninth century as the Kingdom of Alba, until it developed into the Kingd ...

in May 1994 for a "maximum of £3.6 million" and became a subsidiary, Goodmans Industries Limited. The Alba Group also owned and marketed Alba, Bush and

Hinari Hinari Access to Research for Health Programme was set up by the World Health Organization and major publishers to enable developing countries to access collections of biomedical and health literature. There are up to 15,000 e-journals and up to ...

branded electronics. The Alba Group became Harvard International in 2008 when their Alba and Bush brands were purchased by the

Home Retail Group Home Retail Group plc was a British retail company established on 10 October 2006, following the spin-off of GUS (retailer)#Other retail and manufacturing growth, Argos Retail Group (ARG) from GUS (retailer), GUS plc. It was listed on the Londo ...

. The Goodmans brand was sold by Harvard International to the B&M Group in 2022, which had been a long time licensee selling Goodmans products in its B&M retail stores.

Product range

In the 1960s, Goodmans Industries extended their products to amplifiers with the introduction of the Maxamp30, the first British made solid state amplifier. Also at the time, Goodmans marketed a loudspeaker named Maxim, which was described as "unusually small" in a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

research department's document. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Goodmans continued to develop loudspeakers, amplifiers, tuners and receivers. At one point it was a major supplier for loudspeakers to the hi-fi market and to the motor car industry. For instance, it made the first speakers supplied for the Ford Granada, Sierra and Fiesta car models. Goodmans pink headphones

Goodmans launched their first DAB digital radio products in October 2002, including the GPS280 portable stereo CD player. By the new century, Goodmans products had shifted in large part away from audio to

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable converter box, cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a Tuner (radio)#Television, TV tuner inpu ...

es during the rise of

digital TV Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adv ...

. They launched their first

HD ready HD ready is a certification program introduced in 2005 by EICTA (European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Associations), now DigitalEurope, DIGITALEUROPE. HD ready minimum native resolution is 720 rows in ...

TV on 27 July 2007. To breathe new life into the brand, Goodmans began to return to its audio roots in 2013. It collaborated with a design consultancy, Rodd Design, and led to the release of the 50s-style Goodmans Heritage radio and various other products. The next year Goodmans rebranded with a fresh new logo featuring a

squirrel Squirrels are members of the family Sciuridae (), a family that includes small or medium-sized rodents. The squirrel family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels (including chipmunks and prairie dogs, among others), and flying squirrel ...

. It also launched the Canvas, Go and Pebble portable radios, then in 2015 the Aspect soundbar and the 60s-style Oxford digital radio which is a recreation of a Bush TR130.

References

External links

*{{official website, https://goodmansuk.com//
Goodmans at B&M StoresGoodmans Support Center (get help & manuals)Goodmans former website (2022 archive)
Audio equipment manufacturers of the United Kingdom British brands Radio manufacturers