I think people worry too much about things they don’t truly underdstand.
”Can you believe Chuck’s Buggy Whips” closed the other day? The transportation industry is going to hell. Said someone in the year 1900.
“Gertrude, no one is having their radios repaired, the music and news industries will never survive. Said someone in 1939.
“What the hell are all of these radio operators we trained to win a world war going to do to make a living?” Said someone in 1946.
Music today is not wholesome” said someone in 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1970, 1975….
“The transistor will kill the vacuum tube” said someone at Bell Labs in 1947.
“Bozak is going under???
”Altec is being absorbed by whom”
”Bose is a joke” said every employee EVER of McIntosh Labs …. until a few weeks ago.
Folks, many industries are zero sum games, plus or minus, unless innovation explodes a segment. For every company that goes down, there are new people/companies to fill the void. Nelson Pass worked for and with several companies that went under but out of the ashes you get companies like Pass Labs and Coda sprout in the aftermath.
The hifi industry has never been stronger but where is it written that once someone starts a company they are entitled to survive? Oh, and all the commentary about Covid killing the audio business is 180 degrees from what actually happened. EVERY industry had companies fail and thrive during Covid. Every well led dealer and Hifi company THRIVED during Covid. Those that are failing today made the mistakes during the PEAK of the hifi industry; 2021-2024.
Think about it for a second….MBL goes under, everyone wrings their hands but no one was bjuying. Devore developed multi month backlogs and still do. People shed a tear that Mark Levinso fell hard and the corpse was save from oblivian by other companies. Krell is inlikely to ever thrive again and yet, D’Agostino seems to be doing fine. HH Scott went down while Audio Research thrived. Audio Research slid, was purchased by private equity and then offloaded to a group trying to make a go.
Lack of business skills, working capital, engineering talent evolving to engineering brain drain…business come and go. I’ll bet that on the restaurant owners forums that non restaurant owners troll the group with questions like “ Joe’s Bacon Fat Ice Cream Company” closed the other day…does this spell the end of the ice cream industry? Newspaper are over, the news business is not.
Some of the commentary here tips the hand that many here have tremendous business accumen while other comments reaffirm the absence of same. I recall vividly the result of a poll some years ago that of the many thousands who were asked the question, “Do you believe your social/financial status is below average, average or above average?”…. I think the number was someling like 75% of the respondents answered “above average”. Kindof not possible huh?
The high end will be fine, some will prosper while others will not. Same as any other industry.
Horse beaten…