otkad je roland rotel?
edit:
prosvetljenje:
Rotel was originally called Roland Electronics until around 1971 when they made a push to expand worldwide—they realised they couldn't trademark the Roland name overseas, so they changed it to Rotel. They never had anything to do with Roland DG.
Most sources online (including Rotel themselves) will tell you that Tachikowa-san founded the company in the 60's, but it goes back further, to the 50's when he was the Japanese distributor and assembler for Sylvania TV equipment. It merely became an audio company in the early 60's, when he won over the Americans with his efficient, reliable, competent operation and started OEMing on contract for Scott, Marantz, Harman Kardon and other American brands, growing the OEM business throughout the 60s and 70s.
The company only started making its own Rotel-branded products in the late 60s.
What makes Rotel rather unique is its UK connection, initially with that odd British conglomerate, the Rank Organisation. Rank distributed Rotel gear and Rotel manufactured gear for their Leak and Wharfedale brands. By the late 70's/80's Rotel had UK co-headquarters with English designers designing Rotel components in a more Occidental fashion with the focus on strong power supplies, simple signal paths, etc, and that's the Rotel that we know today (which Alex Encel has had so much success with in Australia.)
Although it's easy to ignore Rotel because of its general focus on simple, good-value equipment, it's actually a rather unique company, becoming a kind of Anglo-Japanese hybrid over the years. From the outside it looks like they made a lot of good business decisions. And you could call it one of the few intact survivors of the 20th century Japanese audio story—although B&W owns it, Bob Tachikowa, heir to the throne, still runs the company from its Tokyo and UK HQs.