Aqua Illumination and Ecotech Marine announce that they are merging

Curious at what your thoughts are? Will this merger help or hinder the industry. Personally I think that it will benefit the industry since the two companies RD will be combined!

 

I think this will cause pricing to go up even more now.

 

I don't think pricing can go up anymore as its already at the top of the market lol. Curious ad to what this means as they are going to operate as 2 separate companies with separate product lines but share in RD.

 

Hard to say but more brains to bounce ideas off of sounds like a good thing to me.;D

 

Competition regulates price points...less competition means up up up.

 

I am curious as to which company bought which.

 

I wouldn't bet on those two R&D departments sticking around for very long. There is some agreement to keep things separate for a fixed period of time. Beyond that, eliminating redundancy was exactly the point of the move.

What I don't understand is why EM didn't take it's reputation and cash and grab a company that produces the remaining core components of a reef setup. Having a skimmer and return that integrate into an Em light, controller, and circulation system made sense to me.

This move seems to be more about either cutting costs and creating profit synergies, of AI has a piece of something EM needs. Has anyone reviewed the two company's patent filings recently?

 

Good point here not sure what the purpose of this move was. Maybe down the line there will be a complete merger and one product line?? Echotech already has lights. powerheads, and superglue down!!

 

Yes but there are still many other quality companies around as well as all the Chinese knockoff brands. Corallife, Hagen, Hydor, Reef octopus, aquaticlife, etc.

 

I could only hope that it reduces the cost of these lights a bit. That would be nice. From what I've read they seem to just be merging the R&D part of it all. For now of course. That may change in the future. Both have great products, it would be nice to see them create other controllable products that can interact with one another. Ecotech marine already have the vorTechs and the lights.