Wico is owned by Happ Controls?

[spidermonkey]

Is this true?
I was checking out the arcade controls forum on the "Arcade At Home" website and a well known reputable poster on the Mameworld forums (not naming names) said that Wico went out of buisness a few years back and Happ Controls bought them.  If this is true then why is the sales department at Wico so poor (my opinion from personal experiance) and Happ has a great sales department. In my experiance Wico seems to be alot slower in the shipping department too. Hell,just getting a catalog from Wico was like squeezing blood out of a rock. If this is true than Happ Controls should do a better job of overseeing the customer support of their sidekick company. Mind you this post is nothing but speculation and could be the furthest from the truth. If this is false then no disrespect to Happ Controls.

[AndyWarne]

This is simply not true. Wico source a lot of their parts from Suzo which are a Dutch-based company which also has offices in the UK. I don't know if Wico are actually owned by Suzo but they might be because Suzo also have a poor sales department as well.

[m3talslug]

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This is simply not true. Wico source a lot of their parts from Suzo which are a Dutch-based company which also has offices in the UK. I don't know if Wico are actually owned by Suzo but they might be because Suzo also have a poor sales department as well
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I've also had suspiscions about Happ acquiring Wico.  I used to buy P360 joysticks from a Happ distributor.  I made another order for p360 joysticks last week and I noticed this time that they had a WICO instruction sheet instead of a Happ instruction sheet.  There were NO DIFFERENCES in the construction of the p360.

[Lilwolf]

p360s (the mechanics) was always made by one or the other (I think wico).  So that shouldn't be an issue.  Just one of the two buy from the other.

If happs owned wico, then they would have some product merging and happs would be all the high end stuff and wico the low.  (probably)

[Grasshopper]

I think it is highly likely that Wico are now owned by Suzo because Wico's new online catalogue is identical to a printed Suzo catalogue that I own.

I have to say that I've been very happy with the service that I've received from the sales department of Suzo(UK). I guess you just have to speak to the right person. YMMV as they say.

As far as the Happ and Wico Perfect 360 joysticks being the same is concerned, I wouldn't draw any conclusions from this as most if not all of the Happ joysticks are made by another company anyway. Happ are essentially just a distributor.