3-15-2017, Mobile Electronics Magazine -- After 45 years of service to the mobile electronics industry, having held positions at the retail and manufacturer level, Glenn Ihrke has officially retired. In 1972, Ihrke began working at a retail store as a salesman after attaining an anthropology degree in college. Working at several retail stores, Ihrke developed his skills in the business, enough to become a manager.
His next career move would take him from the retail level to manufacturer level when he joined Alpine Electronics in 1983. He would work for the company for 26 years, moving through the roles of regional manager, up to vice president of sales for North America. Ihrke then moved on to Harman, where he spent the next five years developing and refreshing the company's car audio division.
Today, Ihrke stands atop the hill of retirement, overlooking the valley that is his career, with the outlook of a man who has seen many changes in 12-volt during his tenure. He sat down recently with Mobile Electronics to discuss his perspective on the industry.
Q: What was the industry like when you got started?
A: The cassette was just being introduced in head units. Subwoofers didn't exist yet. Amplifiers were a rarity in itself. They were called EQ boosters back then. Then amps and subs came in and the transition to CD players took place. Back then, people didn't want to let go of their cassettes yet. So the transition became CD changers, controlled by in-dash cassettes. Then in-dash CDs came in, where changers became less important. Then iPod controllers came. I remembering we the first to introduce Alpine iPod controllers. It was called the CDA9827. You plugged the white cable into it and the controls showed up on the in-dash readout. You couldn't sell anything without it within a year.
From there, Alpine got to be a huge player, but like everyone else went through huge struggles as market crashed in 2008. At that point in time, Alpine had to make changes in the aftermarket management, which left me out looking for jobs. That brought me to Harman and I was left to run car audio in the Americas. I really was the car audio sales guy; setting strategy, working with product guys to develop product. Car audio had been ignored as they reworked the consumer division. I was brought into to do the same for car audio. So what we really had to do was lay out a strategy on where we wanted to go with the brand and how we wanted to go to market.
We were seeing double digit growth for at least three years. We completely redid the Infinity line, and a new high-end component line called Kappa Perfect. We came out with Bluetooth streaming amplifiers without having to replace the factory head unit. We also reinvested into the marine category, which is just starting to come to market now. If you look at the Infinity brand, our oldest product is a year old. It's the same with JBL. The objective with Infinity was to gear it to the specialist channel and gear JBL toward a broader-based market. We were very happy to come up with that kind of growth.
Q: Just like retail, you as a manufacturer have lived through the transition of leading the technology race to now having to cater to the whims of Smartphone developers quickly advancing OEM systems. Can you give us some insight on how these changes impact our industry at the manufacturer level? What are some of the tough decisions you've had to make?
A: If you take a look at what's going on starting at the head unit side of it, everything is in decline except for devices with Android Auto and CarPlay built into them. When I started in this industry, the sources were stationery. Whether it was albums or 8-tracks, whatever it was, you didn't take it with you. Now, everything has to be able to control what comes around with you in your pocket. That puts incredible opportunity out there for the aftermarket to interface with the dashboard. We've got to find a way to interface and continually update that dashboard. One of the problems the carmakers are going to run into is that it takes several years to develop a new product line, then it takes years to update. The opportunity of the aftermarket is to update the manufacturer's system on a continual basis and be able to upgrade that sound system with new technology. It requires a specialist to do. You can't buy it online or at big box stores.
