Bowers & Wilkins

The brand

History

The Bowers & Wilkins story begins with a friendship forged in the Second World War: John Bowers and Roy Wilkins served together in the Royal Corps of Signals and, after the conflict, opened a small radio shop in Worthing, on the south coast of England, in 1946. Two decades later, a decisive episode changed the company's course: Miss Knight, a loyal customer and former opera singer, left Bowers £10,000 in her will specifically so that he could devote himself to his passion — developing very high fidelity loudspeakers. And so, in 1966, B&W Loudspeakers Ltd was born.

John Bowers's philosophy was simple and definitive: "The best loudspeaker is not the one that adds the most, it is the one that loses the least." This quest for absolute transparency led the company to develop its own drivers, materials and technologies, culminating in the pioneering use of Kevlar (aramid) fibre in its cones in 1974, and in 1979 in the launch of the 801 — quickly adopted as a reference monitor by Abbey Road, Skywalker Sound, Decca and Deutsche Grammophon, establishing the brand as the "sound" behind countless great recordings of world music.

Since then, B&W has kept raising the industry standard: the revolutionary Nautilus (1993), with its spiral shell shape that completely eliminates cabinet colouration, and the diamond tweeter — grown by chemical vapour deposition for extreme stiffness — became icons of British acoustic design. Based in Worthing, West Sussex, with a dedicated research and development centre, the brand formalised in 2017 its official partnership as audio supplier to the historic Abbey Road Studios, binding its history for good to the house that recorded the Beatles and Pink Floyd.