Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is leaving the company after eight years. . This follows last year's in which the redesign was missing major features and broke almost every major aspect.
The company has named Tom Conrad to steer the ship as interim CEO. Conrad is currently a board member of Sonos, but was a co-founder of Pandora, VP of Snap, and head of product at, wait for it, . He also he reportedly has a Sonos tattoo. The board hired the firm to find a new long-term leader.
“I think we can all agree that we have let too many people down this year,” Conrad wrote to employees in a letter. “Getting back to basics is necessary, but clearly not enough to unlock the future we all see for Sonos.” He also suggested that he wants the company to expand far beyond home speakers and related equipment.
As for Spence, he'll be fine. His pay package includes $7,500 a month until June, a $1.9 million severance package and the transfer of his outstanding Sonos shares. He worked at Sonos for over ten years.
The decision to change management came after several months of turmoil at the company. Back in May, the company released a mobile app that was riddled with bugs and missing key features like alarms and sleep timers. Some customers have even complained that entire speaker systems stop working after updating the new app. It was quite a deal.
Sonos by extending the manufacturer's warranty on home speaker systems and creating an advisory board that will provide the company with “feedback and information from a customer perspective to help shape and improve our software and products prior to launch.”
This did not ease the financial burden the company faced. The share price has fallen about 13 percent since the app launched. In August, Sonos laid off more than 100 people as it tried to fix its software, and revenue fell 16 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Sept. 28. Analysts forecast another 15 percent decline during the holiday period.