One could easily labour under a misapprehension. To wit, that Fostex are a small cottage industry player who service DIY with unusually styled wideband drive units; and hifi retail with exotic super tweeters and a few luxury headphones. After all, that's exactly what most of us in this home hifi hobby are exposed to. But a glance at representative Yuji Bamba's email signature would broaden our view. In his address, it says Fostex Company, a division of Foster Electric Co. Ltd., 1-1-109 Tsutsujigaoka, Akishima Tokyo, 196-8550, Japan. Who then are Foster Electric?


As it turns out, a rather bigger Japanese conglomerate or keiretsu established in 1949 and on the Tokyo stock exchange since 1962. In their corporate time line, one sees the formation of offices and/or factories in China (Changzhou, Chingzo, Gaozhou, Guangzhou, Heyuan, Nanning, Shanghai), Indonesia (Bintan), North America, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam (Bac Ninh, Da Nang) and Germany; mergers with Tonegen Co., Fostex Corp. and ESTec Corp.; and a takeover of the micro audio transducer business from Star Micronics.


To translate that into more appreciable scale and attendant product mix, Foster today employ more than 20'000 people across 9 different countries. Products from Foster include loudspeakers (active portables, PA, TV, hifi, PC, car, gadget, vibration actuator), headphones (IEM, waterproof, balanced armature, clip-on, dynamic, active noise cancellation, hands-free for car/PC/game, microphones), ODM/OEM services for the automotive industry, and magnetic sounders and buzzers.


2015's Q2 ending June 30th showed corporate net sales of 47'092'000¥. Those were up by 11.3% over 2014's second quarter. Clearly these basic facts and figures make Fostex anything but a cottage industry player of limited resources. Rather, they are part of a large network of interlinked firms of significant globalization and diversification. To be blunt, it's precisely that which finances the more exotic hifi products for our niche markets.