The death of ultra hiend audio

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.

Ego, greed and poor management can only result in one thing!

-1 not supported by any evidence. Covid created supply chain problems, and inflation created another

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. 

+1

A lot of these companies were on shaky ground to begin with and Covid was the final straw.  

One problem I feel exists within the high end industry is that the manufacturer's have to potentially supply a very wide world wide market. As such, they get fooled into thinking that because their goods can sell into one market at a highly inflated price, that they can sell into all markets at this same price! As such, we have examples of one distributor/rep claiming the goods are under-priced for his or her market, while another knows that said pricing will simply be unattainable in their area. Since manufacturer's have to maintain consistency in pricing throughout their distribution areas, this leads to a number of mistakes in the pricing strategy for certain locations. Instead of setting a more level ( and in most cases lower price point) they set the highest price point advised by their one distributor, who happens to be right in their area----only!