Sweetwater Sound Informations

Sweetwater is the largest online retailer of musical instruments and pro audio equipment in the United States. Sweetwater is located in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Chuck Surack established the company in 1979 in Fort Wayne, Indiana so that he could stop being a touring musician. The company originally offered recording services via a remote recording studio in Surack's Volkswagen microbus and a recording studio based out of his home. When the Kurzweil K250 programmable keyboard and sampler was introduced in 1984, Surack became known for his custom K250 sound library and programming skills as well as his upgrade kits. Surack became a Kurzweil dealer, but his clients were asking for advice regarding other products as well. Surack expanded Sweetwater to become a music retailer whose emphasis was pre- and post-sale customer service. By 1990, with 6 employees and annual sales of $6 million, Sweetwater had outgrown Surack's home and moved into its own commercial building, and Sweetwater's growth over the next several years earned it a place on Inc.'s ranking of America's fastest growing companies in 1993, 1994, and 1995.

Initially launched in 1995 as an informational website, by 1999 sweetwater.com offered most of Sweetwater's inventory for purchase online.Electronic Musician included sweetwater.com as one of nine essential online information resources for a musician,.

Sweetwater has several publications, including the ProGear Directory, Worship Sound Pro, and Music Educators Technology Resource., and a blog, inSync.

Sweetwater's campus includes its corporate offices and warehousing facilities, along with recording studios, two performance venues, a music academy, a retail store, and numerous customer and employee amenities.

In 2006, with 220 employees and continued business growth, Sweetwater commissioned MSKTD and Associates, Inc. to design and master plan a new 44-acre corporate campus. The new headquarters, consisting of corporate offices, a distribution center with warehouse, and a retail store, also included the Sweetwater Studios recording studio complex and 250-seat LARES-equipped performance theater, both designed by Russ Berger Design Group. Sweetwater's new facility was certified LEED Platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council in April, 2009.

In October of 2018, Sweetwater announced another expansion to construct a new, 350,000-square-foot warehousing facility that will provide product storage as well as gear testing, gear photography, offices, staff amenities, customer pickup and more. An additional structure will house a new 35,000-square-foot conference center with room for up to 1,000 people that will accommodate continuing education sessions for employees. The facility will also be available for members of the community to use for other events. The buildings will be operational by the summer of 2020.

Sweetwater contributes to more than 600 nonprofit organizations annually, including charitable donations to Fort Wayne Community Schools, Arts United of Fort Wayne, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra, Easter Seals ARC of Northeast Indiana, and the Voices of Unity Youth Choir.

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