Thiel Audio - History

History

Thiel Audio was formed by three college friends, including Jim Thiel, Tom 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.

Tom Thiel was a skilled woodworker, and would build the speaker boxes. Their first hi-fi 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 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.

In 2012, Thiel Audio was sold to a private equity company in Nashville, and later that year, Gornik was replaced as President of the company.

Jim Thiel died of cancer on September 17, 2009.