Bose Corporation reached a deal to acquire fellow headphones brand Skullcandy, the companies formally announced on Oct. 21. The acquisition brings together two big names in consumer electronics and audio wearables, following a history of collaboration.
Bose is also No. 48 in Digital Commerce 360 and ReFiBuy’s AI Commerce Rankings, while Skullcandy is No. 62. That set of rankings is available in the Top 1000 Pro with AI Database.
Why Bose acquired Skullcandy
Lila Snyder, the CEO at Bose, said the Framingham, Massachusetts-based headphones maker and seller was thinking about long-term plans as it moved to acquire Skullcandy.
“For more than 60 years, Bose has been committed to delivering incredible audio experiences however and wherever people choose to listen,” said Snyder. “As we work to reach even more people, we’re expanding how we do that, not only through Bose products, but through technology partnerships and a growing portfolio of brands.”
Ultimately, she sees Skullcandy as an important part of that portfolio.
“As a privately held company, we have the freedom to make bold, long-term investments in opportunities we believe in, and Skullcandy is a great example of that,” she stated. “They have an established, thriving brand, and together we see tremendous opportunity to create new products and experiences and reach more consumers around the world.”
What the Bose acquisition means for Skullcandy
“We believe this is a win for Skullcandy and our fans,” said Brian Garofalow, CEO of Skullcandy. “Skullcandy was born on a chairlift in Park City, Utah, over 20 years ago, and we’ve always believed great music should be part of the experiences people love.”
Salesforce announced Bose as a Commerce Cloud client in 2022. Meanwhile, Skullcandy detailed that it had migrated its ecommerce site to Shopify in 2022. Shopify listed Skullcandy’s previous ecommerce platform as BigCommerce. Now, the two companies, which have collaborated on the use of Bose technology in Skullcandy products before, will combine efforts in a competitive space where Apple has become increasingly assertive. Elsewhere, Samsung and Sony have remained assertive as noise-cancellation and digital assistants have become part of their wearable earpiece experiences.
“Joining Bose gives us the opportunity to make those experiences even better by bringing more of their audio expertise and technology to our products, and it opens up even more ways to take Skullcandy further,” said Garofalow.
