Kick Ass Speaker Boxes From Texas

MTI Acoustics is making the jump from a boutique, direct-to-customer seller of car speaker enclosures to a national retail supplier with two key distributors. It also plans to hire manufacturers reps by the end of the year.

MTI produces custom speaker boxes that are leather-wrapped and contoured to fit under the seats of trucks. They have factory-like OEM stitching and badging plus customized lighting. Most MTI boxes are built to enclose JL Audio speakers but the company works with speakers from other brands, as well.

The startup is a sister company to 12 volt retailer Mobile Toys of College Station, TX with two stores. Both are owned by Chris Pate who was named the 2017 Installer of the Year by Mobile Electronics magazine.

MTI services about 70 dealers in North America. Six months ago, it added its first US distributor, Quad State Distribution based in TX.  This month, it announced a second distributor, Gemsen, to cover the Canadian market.

Pate says MTI produces about 200 boxes a month and is stepping up to about 450 per month.

“It’s been customer direct. Quad State was our trial run to see if we could keep up. GemSen is our second,” said Pate.

MTI now has two dedicated employees handling customer service. It runs 3 CNC machines and three laser engraving machines.

“If you have an F150 crew cab with black leather and red stitching, our box has black leather with red stitching inlaid with the vehicle badge so it looks like it came from Ford,” Pate said.

Gemsen, one of the leading distributors in Canada, began shipping MTI products to dealers in early May. Gemsen serves a network of about 150 active dealers and works with other brands including AudioControl, Atrend, Dynaudio, Dynamat, JL Audio, Kicker, Morel, Boss, and Planet Audio.

“Chris and his team have identified a niche in the ever-expanding customized truck market,” said Dave Singh, Gemsen National Sales Manager – Mobile Division.