In these, difficult, times, we see that many people are concerned about supporting local businesses, we experience more and more customers asking about the origin of our products. We welcome the fact our customers are not only interested in supporting a local business, but also wants to ensure manufacturing is done by qualified personal and under good working conditions.

“Made in Denmark” should be pretty self-explanatory – but in reality, it is not so obvious. By law a manufacturer can indicate the country of fabrication as the country where the majority of production costs are paid. That means if a product is mostly produced in the far east, but final assembly or testing is done in Denmark by a technician with a very high salary (apparently extremely high skills!) – the majority of expenses can in fact be in Denmark – and the product may be labeled “Made in Denmark” although it is in reality only tested in Denmark.

What exactly does it mean when we at Gato Audio say that a product is made in Denmark?

It means we have inspected and quality controlled all incoming parts. We are hand assembling each product from ground up and run it through extensive testing in our own test lab and purpose-build facilities. It all happens here at our small factory in Copenhagen, Denmark and it is done by people who really care about the products, the customers and about music.

Does that mean all parts going into production are also made in Denmark?

No, this is not the case. We purchase parts from all over the globe. We find the best suppliers to make the parts as we designed them and at the highest possible quality. Many parts are sourced in Denmark and Europe, some from USA and others from Asia.

Are some Gato Audio products assembled by China manufacturers?

None of Gato Audio products are being produced by Chinese factories. Trust us, we have tried before to take the “easy” business model of having Asian factories producing products and we regret to say that quality control and manufacturing precision was never even close to what we do ourselves. Perhaps it is the complexity of our products or perhaps the extra care we put in our little “babies”, that makes the difference. We are pretty sure it is a combination of the two. We have invested in our own production facility and local partners.

Who cares where a product is made, if the price is lower?

Initially a product could be manufactured cheaper at a big factory in China, no doubt about that – it could even give us a bigger profit. But looking long term on the matter, shows us that eventually this gain would become a loss. First of all, is product quality. Secondly, the manufacturing processes give you a unique insight and experience of product design and engineering. Thirdly is the after sales service of a product. How can you gain experience in product engineering when you do not have it in your hands? How will you make quality improvements in a production that you do not have any control of? How can you fully service and understand a product that someone else built for you? We believe having design, engineering, manufacturing, testing and quality control together with the service department under same roof is good business on the long run.