The HiFi Audio market is an Uber competitive space today with a shrinking customer base. The internet has opened up the possibility of the brick and mortar stores not being needed due to online sales, brands being able to go direct to market and a sea of used equipment being at anyone’s finger tips via a phone, tablet, PC.
There is a lot of pressure on the brick and mortar stores that are left, gone are the days of an expansive customer base that drive higher volumes of sales spread across the price curve, most brick and mortar stores today have to bank on far fewer sales and customers but the customers they do have buying high end pieces, dropping some serious coin. I’ve talked to several owners at brick and mortar stores who have been great, let me demo items at home, exchanged items if I didn’t like it, carved out time at the store to spend with me. My go to store started with selling me a relatively inexpensive Parasound 2 channel amp. What the store owners would do is let me know if they had clients coming in that needed their time or equipment I was also interested in, laid out what those patrons were likely to spend, buy. That helped me understand what they had going on.
What is sad is there are fewer and fewer HiFi stores. There is still a real value a brick and mortar store has over the online experience. Also a real value to the experience a seasoned HiFi salesperson has and the perspective they can offer. It stinks that the OP had the experience he had, hopefully the Audiophile community does it’s best to keep some of these HiFi brick and mortar stores around.