The death of ultra hiend audio

Companies Cease Trading for numerous reasons.

As for many where a product is a design to produce a very particular service, a strong communication with a Customer Base is paramount, as there are others ensuring there own products are extremely well exposed.

Lose exposure, is losing vital influencing, losing vital influencing is losing closed won sales and then the overhead is in trouble.

Blaming the pricing of the products for sale as being the detriment is only one portion of the overall pie, a Customer Base needs their own reassurances, that are beyond what is written sales spiel for a product.    

Is Dartzeel out of business? I hadn't heard that and their website seems current?

@fuzztone What I was trying to say is that some of these companies are trying to continue business as before, not changing their business model, but are no longer good enough at it to make it still work without their founders…not necessarily greed or ego...

This can be a chosen business model, firms can sell to a larger market at relatively lower price vs a much more exclusive market at high prices. Capitalization costs are generally going to be lower for the firm serving the exclusive market which means higher profit margin per item sold. Assuming we don't see parts and assembly costs that substantiate these extremely high prices, perhaps a firm could cite R&D as a reason for the high price. This may or may not be true. Do we see some actual new technology in all these products? 

I suppose one could research the personal financials of top management at these companies in order to to gain some insight into where money is going.

we really don’t know why these companies  ran aground, and there could be different reasons for each of them, marketing, inability to control costs, poor financial management, any number of things could be at play. It’s also not just the truly high-end manufacturers that have encountered trouble. ARC had to find a white knoght to bail out of financial problems, and although their gear is certainly not cheap, it’s not in the range of the top of the line MBL stuff. 
 

the truth is that all of these companies, even those not selling six figure gear, are chasing a very thin, likely diminishing market. The great majority of people who enjoy listening to music think that people who pay even 10 or $15,000 for an audio component are extravagant, foolish, or just showing off. So there are always going to be winners and losers in the business world, and I’m not sure it’s that much different  in Audio than a lot of other businesses, other than the fact that the demographic shopping at the high end is very thin and for the most part pretty old and exiting the market. I hope both of these companies survive, but creative destruction has always been a part of the business world.