The Hidden Legacy of AudioSonic: A Dutch Audio Toys Supplier

I thought Erres was just a Philips brand that only had AKAs to serve a different (cheaper?) market with a different brand name. Like Aristona for instance.

Audio Sonic, on the other hand, released all kinds of equipment under its name from many different OEM manufacturers. Similar to the Supertech brand.

It's nice to see the attention for the Philips Walkmans. They're often not considered attractive, but they're actually quite cool.

 

From what i know Erenberg and Resing (Erres) created the brand, in the 50's its was taken over by Van Der Heem in Den Haag. That's the Erres we know of today. Director was R.S Stokvis hence Erres. (on Dutch we pronounce it like that R = Er and S = Es). Later on it was acquired by Philips.
But they made their own production line from what i'm reading using OEM products from the far east, just like Audio Sonic.
https://www.vanderheem.info/historie.html
For example that Philips EM6301 headphone i've also seen in another brand, from memorie something like Siemens. (edit: Nordmende)
So to me it seems that importers had a choice from a catalog or something and they could order whatever radio, walkman, boombox they wanted and configure it to their specs.
Another example of this is a Sanwa 7056 boombox i have, all graphics are in German but its a made in Japan box with only Japanese parts inside. Exact same boombox was also released as Tectronic TCR-6500s.
So looks to me that Philips and Erres ordered the same model walkman and branded it accordingly to their specs.

 

It's true that Erres was once an independent brand and manufacturer. But this was before the days of the personal stereo cassette player. It seems logical to me that Philips also sold products from another manufacturer under one of its own names to fill the gap in its product range if that yielded more profit than developing and making something themselves. But I don't know if that was really the motive. I wasn't there.

The fact is, there were more brands than manufacturers. So it's common for models to be released under different brands. We call them AKAs, "Also Known As". Sometimes they were the exact same devices (like Conion CRC-H58F and Audiosonic TBS-8900). Sometimes there were minor changes, such as color (like Conion V121F and Supertech MC-121 for instance). Sometimes the changes were more significant (like JVC RC-838 and Normende RK4186 for instance). There are almost countless examples.

It's also suspected that manufacturers outsourced production to others because they could do it better and cheaper. For example, the Philips ART-60 TV boombox, which likely came from a Sharp factory. But it doesn't have a Sharp AKA.

In addition, there are also many devices made by a manufacturer that are released solely under the manufacturer's name. These are usually the more well-known names. For example, there are no known AKAs of the JVC RC-M90 or JVC RC-M70, except for the JDM and non-JDM versions.

The connections can be made by examining the inside of many devices What applies to boomboxes also applies to walkmans I guess.