Clairtone Sound Corporation Limited was a manufacturer of high-quality sound electronics and accessories based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1958 by the Hungarian-born entrepreneur and electronics engineer Peter Munk with furniture designer David Gilmour, the company established an international reputation for stereo and cabinetry design in the 1960s. It failed little more than a decade later, but in its heyday it made a notable contribution to the field of consumer electronics.
In 1959, Clairtone won a design award from Canada's National Industrial Design Council for its very first hi-fi model, the "100-S"—a long, low teak cabinet fitted with a Dual 1004 turntable, a Granco tube chassis, and speakers obscured by cream-colored broadcloth from Knoll. But the most famous Clairtone design was the futuristic Project G series designed by Hugh Spencer and introduced at the National Furniture Show in Chicago in January 1964. Striking, massive (nearly seven-feet long), and expensive ($1,600, or about $12,000 today), the Project G featured a rosewood cabinet mounted on a metal base, and, at either end, cantilevered black aluminum "sound globes" (a.k.a. speakers). The Project G introduced the now-standard modular approach to consumer audio[1] that offered a dramatic departure from boxy cabinet design popular until that time (and which Clairtone also manufactured). The Project G won a silver medal at the 1964 Milan Triannale and is now widely considered a design icon.
Clairtone earned a reputation for combining modern designs with high-quality materials, and marketing them well. It opened its first international sales office in New York in 1960 and convinced Frank Sinatra and Oscar Peterson, among others luminaries, to endorse Clairtone's sound systems. "Listen to Sinatra on Clairtone stereo. Sinatra does," was one of the company's memorable tag lines.[2] The Project G system was featured in the films Marriage on the Rocks and The Graduate, marking an early example of product placement, and Clairtone hired the fashion photographer Irving Penn to photograph the hi-fi for its promotional booklets and brochures. The Project G came to epitomize the ethos of the Swinging Sixties when Hugh Hefner bought one for the Playboy Mansion.[3][dead link]
In 1963, Clairtone began traded publicly on the Toronto Stock Exchange. At its peak, demand for Clairtone's stereos in Canada and the U.S. was so great that for a time the company's factory stayed open around the clock.[4] But even as sales soared and it was winning awards for its innovative designs, Clairtone was facing insurmountable financial troubles. In 1963, it earned a profit of $300,000 on sales of $10 million, and profits decreased the following year as marketing costs rose higher than sales.[5]
Early investor Frank Sobey, who had been mayor of Stellarton, Nova Scotia from 1937 to 1959[6] and was then president of Industrial Estates Limited (IEL), helped the company obtain financial support from the Government of Nova Scotia to open an electronics manufacturing plant in Stellarton. The company decided to switch production to televisions at this time and was fully operational in Stellarton by the summer of 1966. There were close to 1,000 employees at the time.
Clairtone launched its new G-TV television set with its usual flair, hiring the cinematographer Fritz Spiess to direct a TV advertisement that starred Peter Munk and David Gilmour driving a 1936 Pierce-Arrow convertible across the Brooklyn Bridge—with a Clairtone TV set in the back seat (the ad, titled "New York," can be found on YouTube today). But Clairtone's entry into the color television market was ill-timed (the market would not take off for another five years; see History of Television). Sales were exceedingly poor, with annual losses in 1967 of more than $6 million, and the business began to spiral out of control. In October, 1967, Industrial Estates Limited, an economic development agency of the Government of Nova Scotia, took over control of the company from Peter Munk and David Gilmour. Sales continued to decline and the share price plunged from more than $15 in 1967 to a few cents by 1970.[7]
A confidential study commissioned by Clairtone in 1967 found that the failure of the plant was in part due to the local workforce: "The general population is basically not geared to the manufacturing frenzy and especially the five-day workweek... The welfare situation is such that it has created conditions similar to Appalachia in the United States where the third generation is already on relief."[8] But, as reported by Peter Munk's daughter, the financial journalist Nina Munk, in her 2008 book about Clairtone (The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958-1971), the labour force in Stellarton was only one of many problems: "Nothing went smoothly, from all accounts. Cost controls were 'nonexistent,' according to the commissioned study. Roads leading to the factory were so bad that Clairtone's stereos and TVs were often damaged en route. Getting parts for the stereos, a task that at the old plant in Rexdale, Ontario, could be organized in a single day, took several weeks. As for the manufacturing process itself, Clairtone's inexperienced management team was over its head, and sinking: inventory went missing; unidentified parts accumulated on the factory floor; the assembly line seldom if ever ran at full speed or full capacity."[9]
By March 1970, Clairtone was sold to the Government of Nova Scotia and came under new management. At this time it began to offer cheaper products including the world's smallest transistor radio, the "Mini Hi-Fi".[10][dead link][11][12] The company hemorrhaged money to the amount of $19 million that year, losses that were absorbed by the province. Clairtone's stock was de-listed from the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1971, and the company finally closed in 1972.[13] The assets were sold but the company was not officially dissolved until 1979. Over the period of its investment the Government of Nova Scotia lost approximately $25 million, considerably more in today's money.[14]
Roy E. George, The Life and Times of Industrial Estates Limited, Halifax: Henson College, Dalhousie University, 1974. (IEL was the company crown agency that attracted Clairtone to Nova Scotia and later took over the company.)
Garth Hopkins, Clairtone: The Rise and Fall of a Business Empire, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1978.
Nina Munk and Rachel Gotlieb, The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958-1971, McClelland & Stewart, May 2008.
The Clairtone Sound Corporation Fonds is an extensive archive of photographs, technical drawings and graphical material deposited by Clairtone at Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
There is also a small archive of Clairtone ephemera (catalogues and brochures) as well as a G2 console at the Design Exchange (DX) Resource Centre in Toronto.
Clairtone Collection: Clairtone Collection Website created by Daniel Leblanc and DC Hillier showcasing their extensive Clairtone collection.
YouTube: 2008 CBC News Feature Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news feature about Clairtone.
Related Research Articles
The 8-track tape is a magnetic-tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, which pre-dated the 8-track system, surpassed it in popularity for pre-recorded music.
Pictou County is a county in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. It was established in 1835, and was formerly a part of Halifax County from 1759 to 1835. It had a population of 43,657 people in 2021, a decline of 0.2 percent from 2016. Furthermore, its 2016 population is only 88.11% of the census population in 1991. It is the sixth most populous county in Nova Scotia.
New Glasgow is a town in Pictou County, in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. It is situated on the banks of the East River of Pictou, which flows into Pictou Harbour, a sub-basin of the Northumberland Strait.
Westville is a town in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is located immediately west of Stellarton and about four kilometres southwest of New Glasgow, the major town in the area.
Robert Lorne Stanfield was a Canadian politician who served as the 17th premier of Nova Scotia from 1956 to 1967 and the leader of the Official Opposition and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1967 to 1976.
Stellarton is a town located in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. It is adjacent and to the south of the larger town of New Glasgow. In pioneer times the area was called Coal Mines Station, and from 1833 until 1889, it was known as Albion Mines. The town was incorporated as Stellarton in 1889 and owes its name to a specific type of torbanite which came to be known as "stellarite" because of the "stars of fire" given off by its sparky flame.
The Westray Mine was a Canadian coal mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia. Westray was owned and operated by Curragh Resources Incorporated, which obtained both provincial and federal government money to open the mine, and supply the local electric power utility with coal.
Peter Munk was a Hungarian-Canadian businessman, investor, climate-change denier, and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive officer of a number of high-profile business ventures, including the hi-fi electronics company Clairtone, real estate company Trizec Properties, and Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold-mining corporation.
Sansui Electric Co., Ltd. was a Japanese manufacturer of audio and video equipment. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, it was part of the Bermuda conglomerate.
Harman Kardon is a division of US-based Harman International Industries, an independent subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. Harman Kardon was originally founded in Westbury, New York, in 1953 by business partners Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon.
McIntosh Laboratory is an American manufacturer of handcrafted high-end audio equipment headquartered in Binghamton, New York. It is a subsidiary of McIntosh Group, which is under the ownership umbrella of Highlander Partners, a Dallas-based private equity firm.
Denon is a Japanese electronics company dealing with audio equipment. The Denon brand came from a merger of Denki Onkyo and others in 1939, but it originally started as Nippon Chikuonki Shoukai in 1910 by Frederick Whitney Horn, an American entrepreneur.
Leo McKay Jr. is a Canadian novelist and short story writer from Stellarton, Nova Scotia. He also is a periodic contributor to The Globe and Mail.
Frank Hoyse Sobey, OC was a Canadian businessman and art collector who was the primary builder of the Sobeys chain of supermarkets.
Luxman is a brand name of Japanese Luxman Corporation (ラックスマン株式会社) that manufactures luxury audio components. Luxman produces a variety of high-end audio products, including turntables, amplifiers, receivers, tape decks, CD players and speakers.
TC Electronic is a Danish audio equipment company that designs and imports guitar effects, bass amplification, computer audio interfaces, audio plug-in software, live sound equalisers, studio and post-production equipment, studio effect processors, and broadcast loudness processors and meters. In August 2015, the company was purchased by Music Group, a holding company chaired by Uli Behringer.
Nina Munk is a Canadian-American journalist and non-fiction author. She is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and the author or co-author of four books, including The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty and Fools Rush In: Jerry Levin, Steve Case, and the Unmaking of Time Warner. As well, she is the editor of the critical English translation of How It Happened: Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry, an influential account of the Holocaust in Hungary written by Ernő Munkácsi in 1947. According to Publishers Marketplace, Munk is working on a new book for Alfred A. Knopf titled In My Dreams, We Are Together about "her family in Hungary during the Holocaust".
David Harrison Gilmour was a Canadian businessman and investor. He was the founder of Fiji Water. Gilmour founded Wakaya Perfection in 2011, a multi-level marketing nutrition company.
The NAD 3020 is a stereo integrated amplifier by NAD Electronics, considered to be one of the most important components in the history of high fidelity audio. Launched in 1978, this highly affordable product delivered a good quality sound, which acquired a reputation as an audiophile amplifier of exceptional value. By 1998, the NAD 3020 had become the most well known and best-selling audio amplifier in history.
"Don't Ever Go Away " aka "Por Causa de Você " is a bossa nova song composed in 1957 by Antônio Carlos Jobim, with original lyrics by Dolores Duran. English lyrics were later added by Ray Gilbert. A version in French was written by Serge Rohde.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
