equipment manufacturer industry audio founded 1977 founder jim thiel tom thiel kathy gornik headquarters nashville tennessee key people jim thiel ; kathy gornik david b. griffin current chairman of the board products audio electronics website thielaudio.com thiel audio is an american privately held high performance loudspeaker hi end audio manufacturer founded in lexington kentucky but now based in nashville tennessee . thiel audio products are distributed to over 30 countries . all products by the founders were designed and built in their 35 000 square foot 3 300 m2 facility located in lexington . contents 1 history 2 awards 3 references 4 external links history edit thiel audio was formed by three college friends jim thiel tom thiel and kathy gornik who started in 1976 with equipment in the thiels garage on georgetown road in lexington . 1 2 thiel audio was formed with 25 000 borrowed from the partners parents and some friends . jim thiel graduated from the university of kentucky in 1968 majoring in physics . thiel audio first exhibited at the consumer electronics show in 1977 which is the year in which the company is often cited as being founded . a skilled woodworker tom thiel built the speaker boxes . their first hi fi product was a two way speaker with an equalizer to give it high quality bass response . jim thiel soon realized that he would need someone to do the sales part of the business so gornik sought to sell them in her city washington d.c. in march 2006 thiel unveiled the thiel cs 3.7 a high performance speaker in the middle east an event hosted by emirates computers one of dubai s leading technology companies . in 2007 thiel audio announced that it would offer its high performance line of loudspeakers in crutchfield retail stores the crutchfield site and through their catalogs . at the time the primary lineup that thiel was to offer through crutchfield was priced from about 990 to 5 450 . thiel s products in general range from about 990 to 6 450 . in 2012 thiel audio was sold to a private equity company in nashville and later that year gornik was replaced as president of the company . since the purchase thiel has had three ceos . jim thiel died of cancer on september 17 2009 . 3 the former president of thiel audio was kathy gornik who was also the chairwoman of the consumer electronics association . awards edit thiel audio has won many awards including the international consumer electronics show innovations design and engineering award for which thiel has been honored 22 times and the image hi fi speaker of the millennium award in 2000 . thiel has also won bizrate s coveted circle of excellence award seven times . references edit john e. kleber . the kentucky encyclopedia . university press of kentucky . pp. 878 . isbn 0 8131 2883 8 . the absolute sound . 168 72 . absolute sound limited . 2007 . pp. 18 . jim thiel external links edit official website thiel audio on twitter legendary speaker designer jim thiel passes away . http hometheaterreview.com legendary speaker designer jim thiel passes away absolute sound some thoughts on jim thiel cepro jim thiel passes away . thiel audio acquired by outside investors . thiel audio tm3 bookshelf speaker review . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title thiel audio & oldid 742543959 categories companies established in 1977loudspeaker manufacturersprivately held companies based in kentucky navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 4 october 2016 at 09 38 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view