Noel Lee (executive)

Last updated

Noel Lee
Born (1948-12-25) December 25, 1948 (age 75)
San Francisco, California
United States
Nationality American
Alma mater San Francisco City College
California Polytechnic State University
OccupationCEO of Monster Inc.

Noel Lee (born December 25, 1948) is an American engineer, inventor, and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Monster Inc.

Contents

Lee graduated from California Polytechnic State University with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and subsequently did work in laser fusion for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He quit his engineering job in 1974 to play drums for a country rock band. After the band separated, he founded Monster Cable Products in 1979, based on loudspeaker cables he invented and manufactured in his garage.

Lee's audio cables met corporate resistance at first, because most audio cabling at the time was zip cord provided by audio vendors for free. Sales improved as retailers witnessed audio demonstrations and saw that his Monster-branded cables offered better profit margins than other electronics products. Lee is credited with building the Monster business and shaping today's audio components market.

Early life

Noel Lee was born in San Francisco, California on December 25, 1948 [1] to Chein-San and Sarah Lee. [1] His parents named him "Noel" because he was born on Christmas Day. [2] His father worked for China's Central News Agency and Lee had four sisters. Lee's parents moved to San Francisco around the same time the Communist party took power. [1] [3]

Lee took an interest in music as a child; he described himself as having a more diverse taste in music than other kids his age. [4] Lee's senior project was an effort to improve the quality of audio from electronics. [4] According to Lee, his high school experiences were "rough" due to the level of discrimination against Asian-Americans at the time. [1] Lee attended San Francisco City College, then California Polytechnic State University, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 1971. [5]

Engineer and drummer

Noel Lee's first job out of college was as a laser fusion design engineer at a government-run nuclear research center called the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. [1] [3] On nights and weekends he played drums for an Asian country rock cover band called Asian Wood and worked on his home audio equipment. [1]

In 1974, Asian Wood was given an opportunity to go on a world tour. Lee quit his job as an engineer in order to be the band's drummer. [1] [5] Asian Wood's members moved to Hawaii to start their tour, but it was cancelled two weeks later. The promoter wanted a straight rock band without country influences. [6] This left Lee and his family stranded in Hawaii until they could earn money for travel back home. [1] The band reinvented itself, covering Top 40 popular songs in order to attract work. Asian Wood took on other gigs around Hawaii for 18 months before breaking up. [6] Lee continued doing solo gigs for six months after that, before returning to the Bay Area for an engineering job with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. [5] He also worked as an independent salesperson for several small speaker companies in San Francisco. [1]

Monster

Noel Lee is credited with turning the audio cable market into a "profitable cottage industry" [5] and with changing the consumer mindset to see audio cables as a way to improve sound quality. [7] He was awarded the Plus X Lifetime Achievement Award for his role in shaping a market and was named Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. [2] [4] [8] The company he founded became a household name [1] and market-share leader. Monster does not disclose its financials, but industry analysts estimate the company is "hugely profitable." [3] Lee calls himself the "Head Monster" and calls the company culture the "Monster Attitude." The company, while still best known for audio wiring, now carries 6,000 different products, such as headphones and home theater components. [2] [5] Its products are sold in more than 15,000 stores and it owns over 375 patents. [2] [5] Monster became one of the largest employers in the Bay Area. [5]

Origins

In the late 1970s, Noel Lee wanted to improve the sound quality from his home audio equipment. He didn't have very much money, so Lee experimented with ways to create a better sound by improving inexpensive cabling. [3] [6] At first he worked out of his family's apartment and later in his in-laws' garage, [1] which they rented from family after moving to the Richmond district in 1978. [5] [9] Lee experimented with different widths, winding methods, and qualities of copper and insulation in audio cables [9] [10] to find an alternative to the zip cord audio vendors gave out for free. [5] [10] He compared different wire constructs, while listening to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. [2] [10]

Lee called the 12-gauge audio cable he created "Monster" due to its size. [1] According to Vision Magazine, the first Monster cable was "a low-resistance twin-axial stranded design." [2] Lee manufactured the cable by hand on a ping pong table and sold it door-to-door. [5] [10] According to Lee, Pacific Stereo was the first electronics retailer to give him a chance to sell Monster cables in their store. [10]

Lee spent $50,000 in personal savings to demonstrate the cables at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago in 1979, using a borrowed portion of someone else's exhibit area. [9] [11] Lee received a positive response at the event [1] and founded Monster, Inc. (formerly known as Monster Cable Products) later that year. [1] Lee received an order from a Canadian distributor [10] for 30,000 cables. [2] [9] The distributor wouldn't pay until the products were shipped, [10] so Lee took out a $250,000 bank loan to pay for the production of the cables. [1] [10] [12] According to Lee, he started the company without business experience or a strategy. [7] [8]

Lee was met with resistance, because the audio industry at the time didn't believe cables made any appreciable difference in the sound [3] [9] and wire was generally provided for free. [2] Lee demonstrated the difference between Monster cables and zip cord to convince consumers that expensive equipment was wasted on cheap wiring. [7] Sales rose as retailers saw high profit margins selling the cables. Lee provided incentives to retail salespeople to sell the cabling, rather than spend money on advertising. Some critics say this practice creates aggressive salespeople. [3] [5]

Establishment and diversification

Within six years from when it was founded, Monster had $50 million in annual revenues and 400 employees. [1] The company's growth was primarily due to Monster training sales staff at electronics stores to bundle the cables with other electronics purchases, an effort the company spent 15 percent of its revenues on by 1998. [1] Lee kept the company private and grew the business, [5] despite pressure to go public. [10]

In connection with his background as a musician, Lee founded the record label Monster Music in 1999, [1] signing Van Morrison's daughter Shana. [5] Monster created numerous divisions as it diversified into other products, such as Monster Performance Car, Monster Game, Monster Photo and Monster Computer. [4] By 2003, Monster produced more than 1,000 products, including power cords, gaming accessories and cooling products. [1] According to a 2005 USA Today article, Lee and his company were developing furniture with high-end electronics built-in, wireless products to replace audio cords and a user interface to consolidate the consumer's control of their electronics. [3] Lee and his son worked with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine to collaborate on the Beats brand of headphones, which was later acquired by Apple for $3 billion in 2014. According to Business Insider, Beats Electronics denies that Monster had a role in the design of the headphones. [13] Lee said Beats had no engineers on staff and it spent millions in research and development to get the product started, but that their contract was poorly constructed, giving all the intellectual property to Beats when it wasn't renewed. [13]

In 2004, Lee bought the rights to the San Francisco 49ers football stadium, which was renamed to Monster Park. Citizens and local government protested that a public facility adopted a corporate name and a local ballot was passed to revert the stadium name after the four-year deal with Monster expired. [3] [5] The sponsorship was partially contentious due to a recent layoff of 120 local employees. [10]

Personal life

Noel Lee is divorced with two children. [5] His son Kevin Lee, sometimes referred to as "Little Monster", [5] started working for the company [13] and developed the M-Design product line of high-tech furniture. [5] Lee's son later quit Monster and started his own audio company Sol Republic in 2010. [14] Lee has a degenerative nerve disorder that prevents him from walking without a wheelchair or Segway, which he says was caused by exposure to toxic doses of radiation when he worked as a fusion engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. [3] [5]

Lee enjoys collecting gadgets and has a collection of old sports cars. He enjoys socialising with musicians and counts Carlos Santana and George Benson among his friends. [5] He is a member of the Asian Business League of San Francisco. He donated $75,000 worth of audio cables to the Los Angeles Unified School District. [1] Lee describes his business ethic as "24/7; sleep when you're dead." [5] He lives in Hillsborough, California. [3] Lee is also known for throwing large parties at the Consumer Electronics Show and spending time with celebrities at the event. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">THX</span> Theater standard and American audio company founded in 1983 by George Lucas

THX Ltd. is an American audio company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is known for its eponymous suite of high fidelity audiovisual reproduction standards for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, video game consoles, car audio systems, and video games. The THX trailer that precedes compliant films is based on the Deep Note, with a distinctive glissando up from a rumbling low pitch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noise-cancelling headphones</span> Headphones with active noise control

Noise-cancelling headphones are headphones which suppress unwanted ambient sounds using active noise control. This is distinct from passive headphones which, if they reduce ambient sounds at all, use techniques such as soundproofing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consumer Technology Association</span> Standards and trade organization

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) is a standard and trade organization representing 1,376 consumer technology companies in the United States. CTA is led by president and CEO Gary J. Shapiro.

Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG is a German audio equipment manufacturer headquartered in Wedemark. Sennheiser specializes in equipment for both the consumer and professional audio markets, including microphones, headphones, and loudspeakers.

Bose Corporation is an American manufacturing company that predominantly sells audio equipment. The company was established by Amar Bose in 1964 and is based in Framingham, Massachusetts. It is best known for its home audio systems and speakers, noise-canceling headphones, professional audio products, and automobile sound systems. Bose has a reputation for being particularly protective of its patents, trademarks, and brands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dolby</span> Audio technology company

Dolby Laboratories, Inc. is a British-American technology corporation specializing in audio noise reduction, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and HDR imaging. Dolby licenses its technologies to consumer electronics manufacturers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Koss Corporation</span> American company specializing in audio equipment

Koss Corporation is a company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US that manufactures headphones. The company introduced the first high fidelity stereophones.

TEAC Corporation is a Japanese electronics manufacturer. TEAC was created by the merger of the Tokyo Television Acoustic Company, founded in 1953, and the Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company, founded in 1956.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harman International</span> American electronics company

Harman International Industries, Inc., commonly known as Harman, is an American audio electronics company. Since 2017, the company has been operating as an independent subsidiary of Samsung Electronics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monster Cable</span> American consumer electronics manufacturing company

Monster Inc. is an American company that manufactures and markets about 6,000 products, but is best known for audio and video cables. It also produces speakers, headphones, power strips, mobile accessories and audio devices for automobiles. The company was founded by an audiophile and engineer, Noel Lee, in 1979 by experimenting with different ways to build audio cables. It grew by doing demonstrations to convince the industry that audio cables made a difference in audio quality and by establishing relationships with retailers that were attracted to the cable's profit margins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audio-Technica</span> Audio equipment company

Audio-Technica Corporation is a Japanese company that designs and manufactures professional microphones, headphones, turntables, phonographic magnetic cartridges, and other audio equipment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AKG (company)</span> Acoustics engineering and manufacturing company

AKG Acoustics is an acoustics engineering and manufacturing company. It was founded in 1947 by Rudolf Görike and Ernest Plass in Vienna, Austria. It is a part of Harman International Industries, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics since 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belkin</span> American consumer electronics and networking company

Belkin International, Inc., is an American consumer electronics company headquartered in El Segundo, California. It produces mobile and computer connectivity devices and peripherals for consumer and commercial use. These include wireless chargers, power banks, charging cables, data cables, audio and video adapters, headphones, earbuds, screen protectors and cases, surge protectors, docking stations and data hubs, secure KVM switches and network cables.

Beats Electronics LLC is an American consumer audio products manufacturer headquartered in Culver City, California. The company was founded in 2006 by music producer Dr. Dre and record company executive Jimmy Iovine. Since 2014, it has been an Apple subsidiary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS Audio</span> American headphones manufacturer

SMS Audio is an American consumer electronics company that primarily manufactures and markets headphones. The company was founded by 50 Cent in 2011 and acquired Kono Audio that same year.

Goji Electronics, Inc. is a producer of computer, smartphone, audio products and equipment headquartered in Hemel Hempstead, United Kingdom. The audio division of the company was founded by grime artist and entrepreneur Rav and DSG International plc president Lord Kalms, and primarily produces products under the brand Goji-Rav.

Beats Pill is a line of portable Bluetooth speakers produced by Beats Electronics, presently a subsidiary of Apple Inc. The speakers are characterized primarily by their capsule-like form factor. Several models have been released of the Pill since their launch in 2012, with the most recent version released in 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sol Republic</span> American audio manufacturer

Sol Republic, Inc. was an American privately held audio manufacturer based in Michigan. Founded in 2011 by Scott Hix, Seth Combs, and Kevin Lee, it was sold to HoMedics in late 2015 or early 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Professional audio store</span> Retail business

A professional audio store is a retail business that sells, and in many cases rents, sound reinforcement system equipment and PA system components used in music concerts, live shows, dance parties and speaking events. This equipment typically includes microphones, power amplifiers, electronic effects units, speaker enclosures, monitor speakers, subwoofers and audio consoles (mixers). Some professional audio stores also sell sound recording equipment, DJ equipment, lighting equipment used in nightclubs and concerts and video equipment used in events, such as video projectors and screens. Some professional audio stores rent "backline" equipment used in rock and pop shows, such as stage pianos and bass amplifiers. While professional audio stores typically focus on selling new merchandise, some stores also sell used equipment, which is often the equipment that the company has previously rented out for shows and events.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Hirahara, Naomi (2003). Distinguished Asian American Business Leaders. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN   9781573563444.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Stevens, Cindy (November–December 2010). "Monster's Noel Lee - Down to the Cable". Vision. Archived from the original on 2013-09-28. Retrieved 2013-05-09.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Kessler, Michelle (January 16, 2005). "Monster move puts name on Marquee". USA Today. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Eglash, Joanne, Head Monster is Mad About Music, Cal Poly, retrieved February 26, 2013
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Evangelista, Benny (November 8, 2004). "'Head Monster's' winning ways". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 Jay P. Pederson (April 29, 2005). International Directory of Company Histories. Gale. ISBN   9781558625440 . Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  7. 1 2 3 Miller, Paul (February 2008). "Wired for Sound". HiFi News.
  8. 1 2 Guttenberg, Steve (July 3, 2012). "Monster Cable". Home Theater. Retrieved March 20, 2013.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Wilkinson, Scott (October 12, 2012). "Monster Founder Noel Lee Gets Geeky About Cables". Home Theater Geeks. Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Safer, Will (April 30, 2009). "How Monster Cable got wired for growth". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  11. 1 2 Williams, Stephen (December 22, 2011). "CES Watch: Monster's Noel Lee to Launch New Lines" . Retrieved February 27, 2013.
  12. ↑ "Head Monster". TIME Magazine. September 11, 2005. Archived from the original on March 6, 2008. Retrieved February 27, 2013.
  13. 1 2 3 D'Onfro, Jillian (May 11, 2014). "Here's An Interview With The CEO Who Missed Out On The $3.2 Billion Apple-Beats Deal". Business Insider. Retrieved December 9, 2014.
  14. ↑ Carnoy, David (August 23, 2011). "Monster founder's son flies solo with Sol Republic headphones launch". CNET. Retrieved March 1, 2015.
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.