How Do Hi Fi Companies Stay in Business?

[greekgod]

Originally Posted by PHC1

I’ll tell you one thing. The 5 hrs it took for a hot water heater delivery and installation a few moths ago at my house is much longer than any audio delivery at multiples of the price! Ha....

You know what's both funny and sad? Sometimes I think places like Subway give better service selling a $5 sub than some audio dealers give selling gear costing thousands of dollars.

[SuperD]

Like car dealers, I'm sure their are some bad apples but there are also diamonds in the rough out there that build their business around service and customer experience. I don't normally like car/audio analogies but there are some similarities. We work to stay in touch with current customers and advertise to brand our dealerships and conquest new ones. I'd bet that most keep their speakers longer than their cars. If I were an audio dealer, I would need to constantly be in touch with customers about new products and sounds like Paragon does that Jim mentioned. It would be difficult in small markets to profit when you only turn new products to current customers every decade. Those of us always upgrading and looking for the next best thing is what keep brick and mortar open IMO. My dealer is always telling me about new products he wants to try in my system, he's not waiting for me to call him in 2025. Like car salepeople, audio retailers should know their product and the competition and hopefully help someone build a system with synergy. I really don't know much about audio retail other than buying a few items here and there but IME, putting the customer first is the first step to a long term business strategy.

Dave

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by SuperDave

Like car dealers, I'm sure their are some bad apples but there are also diamonds in the rough out there that build their business around service and customer experience. I don't normally like car/audio analogies but there are some similarities. We work to stay in touch with current customers and advertise to brand our dealerships and conquest new ones. I'd bet that most keep their speakers longer than their cars. If I were an audio dealer, I would need to constantly be in touch with customers about new products and sounds like Paragon does that Jim mentioned. It would be difficult in small markets to profit when you only turn new products to current customers every decade. Those of us always upgrading and looking for the next best thing is what keep brick and mortar open IMO. My dealer is always telling me about new products he wants to try in my system, he's not waiting for me to call him in 2025. Like car salepeople, audio retailers should know their product and the competition and hopefully help someone build a system with synergy. I really don't know much about audio retail other than buying a few items here and there but IME, putting the customer first is the first step to a long term business strategy.

Dave

Agreed. In many ways the car dealers wish they could see the same trend as audio dealers do. It is not uncommon to see multiple pairs of speakers come and go and even more components changed in a much shorter time span than a typical life span of a car. We don't always start with the top notch audio gear but if the budget allows, watch out cause here comes the storm of upgrades. If it's not speakers, it will be new cables, not an amplifier, it will be footers, then an even more expensive pair of speakers. The merry-go-round doesnt' stop for most audiophiles, no matter what they say to the contrary. Would it not be great to have as many people starting with a Base Acura and wind up with Acura NSX if we apply the parallels?