When I got into advanced hi-fi, planars were the only serious choice. David Fletcher (co-founder of SOTA, and designer of the Sumiko MDC-800, "The Arm") was selling the Canadian-made Dayton-Wright ESL’s in his Berkeley shop, Walter Davies (now LAST Record Care Products) was selling Magneplanar Tympani’s in Livermore, and Sound Systems in Palo Alto the Infinity Servo-Statics.
When I moved south, Brooks Berdan had the Eminent Technology LFT’s and Quads, and Martin Logans and Maggies were in a few stores. But as dynamic designs starting getting real good (Richard Vandersteen being a primary and hugely influential designer), planars started to fade. They require a lot of room, and the younger buyers with big incomes like speakers that "rock" more than do planars.
When dealers found out how much money they could make selling, oh, I don’t know, say Wilson speakers (;-), the writing was on the wall.