Focal

Focal began in 1979 when Jacques Mahul, an engineer with a passion for hi-fi, started building speaker drivers in a small workshop hosted inside his father's precision-engineering firm in Saint-Etienne, France. The company split its early identity across two names: Focal sold speaker drivers to other loudspeaker manufacturers, while a sister brand, JMlab, built complete high-fidelity loudspeakers. The JMlab-era DB13, fitted with a double voice-coil driver, became a reference point for compact bookshelf speakers, and the brand went on to develop its own diaphragm materials, Polyglass and Polykevlar, rather than buying them from outside suppliers.

That driver-first, build-it-yourself approach carried through to the Grande Utopia, launched in 1995 and still the house's flagship loudspeaker line, and later into headphones: the open-back Utopia, introduced in 2016, uses a driver Focal describes as the world's smallest full-range loudspeaker. A professional-audio division followed in 2002, putting Focal drivers into recording-studio monitors, and the company extended into wireless headphones with the noise-cancelling Bathys in 2022.

In 2011, Focal merged with the British electronics maker Naim Audio to form the Vervent Audio Group, pairing Focal's speaker and headphone engineering with Naim's amplification and streaming hardware under joint 'Focal Powered by Naim' retail boutiques. Focal marked its 40th anniversary in 2019 and, in 2024, became a member of the Comite Colbert, the association representing more than 90 French luxury houses.