Make offer they can’t refuse. That's why
shy about prices
I assume a lot of you are in the industry and maybe you can answer this: why is it so hard or impossible to get pricing info for speakers?
I received a lot of suggestions for my speaker list to include more brands and I tried. I lookup up the company homepage, I searched for pricelists, however out of date, I emailed the company - nothing. Why are companies "hiding" the prices of their products they intend to sell?
This is not a generalization, I don’t mean to conflate companies with user-friendly and informative web sites (~30%) with the mystery ones (~20%). And the rest (~50%) are OK/could be better.
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- 53 posts total
I’m hazarding a nearly entirely ignorant guess but I would expect a certain amount of it could be to maintain fluidity in price and respective profit margins through time. Especially now, if a speaker company isn’t making everything in-house using domestically-sourced materials, a certain amount of volatility could ensue. Even some domestically-sourced materials would be a crapshoot in that regard. The last full-range speaker made by the company I use encountered such a disaster. The speaker had a generally well-respected price-to-performance point, but due to overseas manufacturer price hikes in the aluminum cabinet, the speaker price increased almost 2x between two generations (of essentially the same product). The speaker was still a strong performer at its new $6,500 price. But how do you explain that to everyone who saw them before for years at $3.5K? And their website did always have the price listed clearly. That may have wound up being a bad look over the long haul. Like I said though, just spitballing. I’ve noticed the same thing re: prices - they need to be on a dealer website but it’s hit-or-miss. |
@grislybutter I have never had a problem asking Google for "item name retail price in Canada" Will instantly see several dealer sites with the price listed. Having been in sales, I will say that 99% of the time you will only see the MSRP (manufacturers suggested retail price). Many manufacturers will only allow a retailer to "advertise" the MSRP or risk losing the brand. A retailer is free to sell for any price they choose but not advertise it. In speaking with a retailer for a brand I won't mention, but they are built in France, I was told the price of speakers follows the same mark-up for most every brand. If the cost of manufacturing is $5000, the cost to the Retailer is $10,000. MSRP is $20,000. I have no reason to think he was lying to me. The more expensive the speaker, the bigger the mark up is at every stage. The single reason we should never even entertain paying MSRP for new equipment. IMHO |
@benanders yes, it makes sense. I guess it’s a unique business in several aspects. |
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