Triad Speakers has a 30-year history of serving the custom-install industry with innovative, customizable loudspeaker solutions. Now, Control4—the home automation company—has acquired the Portland, Oregon-based speaker maker for $9.6 million. As it happens, that amount is almost the same as Triad's annual revenue of $9 million.

Control4 considers this a strategic acquisition with Martin Plaehn, Control4's chairman and CEO, noting that "The acquisition of Triad brings proven premium-acoustics experience and innovation to our company, enabling us to immediately deepen our entertainment offering and develop new integrated-audio experiences for the future."
The cool thing about Triad is it's a U.S. company, with R&D and manufacturing taking place in its Portland facility. The release says that "Nearly the entire Triad team will be joining Control4, including founder Larry Pexton, as well as the Triad’s R&D, manufacturing, and custom-services employees."

Triad's focus is on residential custom-install speaker solutions for applications including home theaters, family rooms, whole-home or multi-room sound systems, as well as outdoor/landscape audio.

The acquisition comes with perks. Effective immediately, North American Triad dealers have access to a new online dealer portal. Plus, Control4 and Pakedge dealers can now order Triad speakers online. According to the press release, in coming weeks the Triad dealer portal will add access to information about technical training as well as marketing resources and materials.

"At Triad, high-quality audio, custom design, and seamless integration have been the standards that we will continue delivering to our dealers and their end customers," said Larry Pexton, founder and CEO of Triad. "Becoming part of the Control4 family enables us to expose our engineering expertise to those homeowners in the broader market of home automation and entertainment who are passionate about their listening experience."

Ultimately, Control4 hopes to push for adoption of Triad products through larger sales channels. Consequently, the company sees itself breaking even on this transaction in 2017, after accounting for acquisition-related expenses.