High end vs internet

Flex, as a salesperson, I can tell you that this is a fundamental element of the job, and if you get tired of it, you need to leave the business, or else you will starve. I'm actually not a 'people-type' either, but that has no bearing on how I interact with customers. Doing the job professionally means helping people - anything less, and you're not doing your job. Any salesperson who takes the residue of one sales encounter into the next - or yesterday's questions, or last year's commissions - is unprofessional and will not ultimately succeed. Retail selling is not a particularly demanding job, but it does require some measure of mental fortitude and perspective to be exercised if you don't want to lose money. But at the end of the day, helping people well must be its own reward, and the commissions will take care of themselves. Salespeople who place blame for their failures instead of learning from them are constantly leaving any sales business, and since, as in baseball, you are destined to fail a large proportion of the time, the more quickly you understand this as a salesperson the better a chance you have of surviving. If the high end retail business is to survive, it needs to learn from its failures instead of blaming the internet.

Flex, that's the job, that's how they earn their money.

I don't think the internet is killing high end. High end is killing itself.

The internet (thru sites like A'gon) has allowed people to get a taste of high end without having to spend $$$$ at the local store. Once bitten by the "bug", these people will frequent the locals and, all things being equal, would prefer to develop a relationship and purchase from someone nearby.

If high end manufacturers and dealers had any brains, they'd set up a touring system, visit local high schools and colleges and begin introducing younger people to the joy of high quality music reproduction. These are the people that will soon be needed to continue our hobby but, no one seems interested in educating them. Imagine a high school auditorium with Krells, Wilsons and a really good TT playing Eminem, being compared to the same CD on a $400 Best Buy system. Do you think the students would hear the difference? The answer is yes.

Just my 2 cents.

Yeah. I can see that each individuals own experience with retailers is going to obviously help dicate where people ultimately put their money. If your local shop people "aren't any help", I can see the desire to buy that much easier on line!
You know in rethinking the original statement. I think things may very well be changing for hi-end manufacturers. MOre and more hi-end shops are definitely going to where the money is, and that's CUSTOM INSTALLATION! Where they used to make substantially more money selling "gear" and "pieces", they are now selling labor, service, and mid-fi gear, inwalls, and volume controls and home automation stuff! I can say I know of several respected hi-end salons in my area, that used to be the "go-to-places" for hi-end equip. Now those companies are concentrating on selling "installation jobs" and custom design work...with the equipment generally going to more mid-fi level gear(with exceptins of course). Where these stores used to deal in higher line more "tweeky" essoterica, they now down scaled the ambition level of their audio...while video keeps in proving however.
Still, yes, things are DEFINITELY CHANGING! I guess you either adapt and/or change with it, or you get left behind.
In the case of the hi-end, I think doing the "multi-channel" HT/music combi-gear thing, and redirrecting their focus has become a necessity if they want anything more than a basic living from what they produce it seems

Emh, I'm trying to concentrate on imagining a high school auditorium hosting a high end set-up playing Eminem, but each time I get it fixed in my mind for an instant, something makes me wince in pain and I lose the thought, whereupon I immediately feel much better... ;^)