KICKER is an American consumer electronics

Consumer electronics

Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...

 manufacturer that exists under Stillwater Designs. They produce home/portable

Home audio

Home audio, essentially, refers to any audio electronics intended for home use, such as shelf stereos and surround sound receivers, which are becoming the most popular piece of home audio equipment...

, marine

Marine (ocean)

Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology...

 and mobile audio products, and are best known for their subwoofers, as well as their audio crossovers and the amplifiers that supplement them. Kicker is known for its high production of square

Square (geometry)

In geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral. This means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles...

 loudspeakers. Kicker Audio products are designed and manufactured by Stillwater Designs Inc, which is headquartered in Stillwater, Oklahoma

Stillwater, Oklahoma

Stillwater is a city in north-central Oklahoma at the intersection of U.S. 177 and State Highway 51. It is the county seat of Payne County, Oklahoma, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 45,688. Stillwater is the principal city of the Stillwater Micropolitan Statistical...

. Kicker, along with MTX Audio

MTX Audio

MTX Audio is an American consumer audio company that manufactures sound equipment for many applications, including car audio, home audio, marine audio and live sound products. They are best known for their car audio products and they specialize in subwoofers and subwoofer amplifiers. MTX Audio is a...

 and JL Audio

JL Audio

JL Audio is an American manufacturer of consumer audio products. They produce marine, home, and mobile audio products, but are best known for their subwoofers. JL Audio is known as one of the pioneers of the car audio industry.-Formation:...

, is known as one of the pioneers of the car audio industry.

History

Stillwater Designs was formed in 1973 as a two-person team which hand-built audio products for establishments such as churches and auditoriums for professional sound and musical instrument

Musical instrument

A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

 applications.

In 1980, they moved into the car audio

Car audio

Car audio/video , auto radio, mobile audio, 12-volt and other terms are used to describe the sound or video system fitted in an automobile. While 12-volt audio and video systems are also used, marketed, or manufactured for marine, aviation, and buses, this article focuses on cars as the most common...

 market when they made the first ever high performance full-range

Full-range

A full-range loudspeaker drive unit is defined as a driver which reproduces as much of the audible frequency range as possible, within the limitations imposed by the physical constraints of a specific design. Frequency range is of these drives is maximized through the use of a whizzer cone and...

 car audio speaker

Loudspeaker

A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...

 system.

In 2006, Stillwater Designs acquired SoundGate, a respected manufacturer of high-end audio interfaces and other OEM

OEM

OEM means the original manufacturer of a component for a product, which may be resold by another company.OEM may also refer to:-Computing:* OEM font, or OEM-US, the original character set of the IBM PC, circa 1981...

 integration products. In 2009, the SoundGate production line was discontinued, though many dealers still carry the remaining products.

Today

Today Kicker Audio employs over 220 people. Steve Irby is the current president of Kicker. Kicker and SoundGate products are now sold by over 1,500 authorized dealers in the USA. Their products are exported to over 2,000 dealers in approximately 50 countries.