Interesting discussion about dealers, manufacturer sales & market, and the buying habits of the customer. A few thoughts of my own.
I am in the final stages of having a home built. Complete with a lot of wiring, gear, and speakers. I did a lot of very painful shopping.
It was painful because there are few stores with decent gear. The gear is often displayed poorly with, with little opportunity to do A/B testing-listening. The sales staffs know little.
Message boards are filled with advocates of their own gear. Cheerleaders.
I am ordering a batch of ML in walls (Voyage / Passage / Helos 100's) because you HAVE to have these installed by someone who knows what they are doing, I loved what I heard in the product, and was fortunate to find a good dealer to work with. It all came together as a package.
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If I were a manufacturer, I'd be looking for a way to get my product HEARD by customers ready to BUY. Autos have regional auto shows, where you can wander from car to car, take a peek at many to narrow down your list, then go test drive with an often poor dealer / salesman. But you go home from the show with a short list, do your own research on the specs, and then go test drive. You buy in spite of the salesman, not because of him. I understand manfacturers can't bust a budget, but there has to be a way to do more shows, smaller shows, in more places. Not some big event where new products are announced to the press. Events that showcase product to buyers. Big difference. Bypass the dealer in the sales process, or put differently, develop some pull into the dealer. Maybe these need to be staffed / supported by the local dealers, with just a factory rep showing up to answer the tough question.
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If I were a dealer, I'd be looking for more ways to get my products heard. I had a hard time even FINDING a decent list of decent retailers of gear within 100 miles of where I lived. I literally had a hard time figuring out who to go see, just to see what products they carry.
If I were a dealer, I'd put some focus on the inwall market. None do. Now that is one market where a part of the puzzle is installation, and for that you need service. You don't have the internet price competition eating you up. You have installation margin.
Crestron has figured that out, and so have their dealers. That stuff costs a huge price, and far more than it is worth in my opinion. But they seem to sell plenty of it. It is a total solution, dependent on the installation process. Follow on service calls.
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The bottom line is, I spent many months wandering around trying to find someone with product. When I found them I had to exercise a lot of patience with them. I drove a lot of long distances on wild goose chases. I've never had so much trouble carrying around a checkbook I couldn't use. I was ready to buy, but with no one to buy from. This is silly.
Big ticket item manufacturers as a rule figured out a long time ago that their customer isn't you and me, it's their dealer. But they can't sell to their customer, if their customer can't / won't buy from the local dealer. Keeping dealers healthy is the entire game. Manufacturer advertising pulls in clients to the dealer. Shows pull in customers to the dealers. When you are talking autos, helping a dealer is 100% helping the manufacturer. The problem with audio gear, is if ML does a promo to pull in clients to the dealer, the client is also going hear a pitch on B&W, Maggies, or whatever else the dealer sells.
Bose has not flourished because it has great gear. It has flourished because it has great marketing. And big marketing budget.
Manufacturers need to find more ways to get their product heard. Reliance on the local dealers to make that happen is obviously failing. Some sort of bypass of the dealers is going to be necessary, even if in cooperation with the local dealer.
The system is broken. Everyone can stand there and watch it fail, or try something new.
My two cents.
