I think I'm in the town you're talking about (maybe lol) and here's my .02c
I've been in the AV industry since 2008 and the first half of those were at a retail brick n mortar and the second half has been in CI world, so two different worlds. I loved the retail job as it let me educate people as to how music should be listened to and I got a lot of sales just on the demo. We sold B&W, Classe, Rotel, McIntosh, ARC, Wilson, various turntables, Transparent Audio and a few others. I miss that type of business and the relationships with clients that I made. The big draw back was people would use our demo rooms, our knowledge, our vendor relationships and even going as far as doing a home audition then going online and buying it (used or from some dude working out of his garage). It got old really quick.
Now in the CI world, selling high end products is very difficult because I can't demo it and it's way more cookie cutter. We're about to build a new office/showroom facility next year and I told the boss we need to do some demo room/areas in order to sell the good stuff.
So in summary, I will always encourage giving someone the ability to listen to a system (regardless of price) so they can get that experience on how music should be listened to. Also keep in mind, that in between here and Nashville are A LOT of musicians/celebrities that have no idea what it's like to listen on a good system so that would be a great market if you can get into it. I will echo some of the others by staying away from the usual brands (KEF, PS Audio etc) since the market is flooded with those brands but in that same respect I would stay away from brands that are to obscure for fear of lack of dealer support (Avalon is right off the top of my head: Great speaker, no support)
