The true story of Vestax's end

We decided to publish information about how the Vestax brand disappeared because there are various stories about the demise of the Vestax brand as a Japanese DJ equipment manufacturer ten years ago that are not true. Even unbelievable fairy tales and a lot of false information appear.Some people don't even know what it was like back then, because at that time they weren't interested in djing because they were still very young. Here is the real story of the end of production of Vestax dj products. This year marks the sad ten-year anniversary of the fall of Vestax Corporation Japan.

Spring of 2014

Already in 2014, at the music fair MusikMesse in Frankfurt am Main, Europe (which was held in this European city every year in Spring), there were whispers that the Vestax Corp. company was having significant problems. The exposure of the brand at the fair was quite small, nothing big and most importantly - there were no fundamental and revolutionary innovations that the brand had always presented at fairs in previous years. At the fair, only prototypes under the "Vesta Audio" brand appeared here. Vestax fans were confused. What's that supposed to mean?! If you look back a year ago in 2013, the brand's presentation at this fair was completely different (see photo gallery below). There was talk among the Vestax distributors that the Vestax Corporation was facing a fundamental decision. Information has even leaked from rival brands (like Pioneer, e.g.), that Vestax is ending. No one wanted to believe it, but as it turned out later, the cards had long been dealt.

Autumn of 2014

During 2014 September, new information from Tokyo slowly ceased to appear, and the Vestax brand slowly disappeared from the forefront of media attention. In early September, some managers from Japan still claimed that nothing was happening; that Vestax will never cease to exist, it's all just gossip. On October 25, 2014, all global distributors and dealers of the Vestax brand received the notice that the Vestax Corp. had declared end of activity. Here we attach » unique copy (one of the many) of this key communication. All the distributors and dealers all over the world suddenly started to quickly get rid of all Vestax brand stock often at extremely low prices. Back then you had the only chance to buy Vestax gear at the lowest possible prices. Vestax ends ? That can't be true after all ! This cannot be true, thousands of users of this legendary brand asked. There was a huge panic in the worldwide DJ market.

Epilogue of Vestax (December 2014)

On December 5, 2014, Vestax Corporation filed for bankruptcy officially in TDB (TEIKOKU DATABANK Ltd.) Japan: "To Vestax Corporation (capital stock ¥95,000,000), Ota Nakaikegami 02.03.15 (registered on Setagaya Fukasawa 2-16-15, president of Toshihide Nakama), was issued by the Tokyo District Court on December 5, 2014 the decision to initiate bankruptcy proceedings."

At the end of the statement is written: "Last year sales fell below 500 million JPY, in between the request for a new one was not allowed repayment schedule. In order for the company's financing not to achieve even worse results, it had to financial institution companies to cease operations by the end of August this year. Current debt 900,000,000 JPY is expected in the bankruptcy filing, it is likely that will change." Full statement from TDB Japan in original here ». The English translation is also available for download in PDF format here ».

On December 10, 2014, leading music site DJWORX published an article about the end of the Vestax brand. The end was unavoidable...

Our Statement

All information published in this article
comes from publicly searchable official sources.
We thank former distributors for providing
some information, memories and
documents & archival photos.

Postcript of 2024

Some questions remain unanswered. Was it possible to save Vestax Corp. in 2014 ? Why, for example, was a failing brand not saved by some larger corporation by buying it ? How would she fare today and what new things would she bring to the DJ market ? Why did it happen ? The fact is that after the collapse of Vestax, the owners of mixers, turntables or controllers were left without support for many many years...

It is therefore unbelievable that even today, ten years after the bankruptcy, many Vestax devices, manufactured for example between 2000 and 2010, are still working well. Even you, who are reading this article, must have owned a device with a red logo at some point in the past. Or you still have it at home. In order for them to continue to function well, we try to help Vestax owners with our offer of the original spare parts.

You can go through the entire amazing history of the Vestax brand here.

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