Linn, which has its headquarters at Eaglesham in East Renfrewshire, posted a 170% boost in pre-tax profits to £1.4m for the year to the end of June, compared with £517,000 the year before, in what Tiefenbrun described as a “paradigm shift in customer behaviour” and an ongoing change of focus from CDs to downloadable music.
Tiefenbrun, who is the son of Linn’s mercurial founder and executive chairman Ivor Tiefenbrun, said: “In this current economic climate, Linn is benefitting from the quest for authentic quality. Plus, it’s an absolute fact that people are now buying less CD players and CDs, but more and more downloadable music.
“Linn is at the forefront of this change. A big part of our focus now is music streaming, which produces a digital sound quality that is as good as an artist’s studio master.
“We’re doing particularly well in Japan, which is a bit like taking coal to Newcastle in the consumer-electronic sense,” he said. Linn DS players are now recognised as the world-leading solution for streaming digital music in the home.
“This is a strategy that I started to develop as R&D manager five years, so in a lot of ways the results we’re seeing here are the fruits of my labour.”
Turnover at the company climbed to £16.2m for the year, compared with £12.5m last time.
Tiefenbrun’s father started Linn in 1972 from a factory in Castlemilk and ever since has manufactured extraordinary hi-fi systems for “discriminating people for whom sound quality matters”.
Since 1986, the company has operated from Eaglesham, and until recently it kept the Castlemilk plant as a metal foundry where the casings for Linn’s hi-fi systems were made.
Linn’s systems – priced between around £1400 and £2m-plus – have been used in Aston Martins, super-yachts and in the homes of some of the “richest, most intelligent and most creative people on the planet”.
Songwriter David Bowie and actress Sharon Stone, for example, are customers.
Meanwhile, Linn’s record label also enjoyed continued growth, with retail music sales showing widespread decline, the company is bucking the trend with an 11% increase in turnover year on year.
Tiefenbrun said: “This is a solid financial performance for any manufacturing business at this time, but particularly a British manufacturer operating at the premium end of the audio market.
“With the backdrop of the credit crisis, our customers have recognised that Linn provides leading edge digital technology that takes them into a new era of home entertainment.
“Customers are more receptive to our products in downturn. Staying in is the new going out and quality products that are built to last are better than cheap junk.”
He added: “Bling and brand lose their appeal after a while. These really aren’t the things that matter in life.”
