Supporting Local Audio Stores are we?

I am feeling quite sea sick with all this boat talk.

But back on topic... My feeling is that it is a small market, and there are too many manufacturers. This means that dealers cannot carry enough brands for knowledgeable people, and carry too many to appropriately serve the people just starting out (lack of choice is a blessing sometimes).

We Audiogon habitues are 'bad customers' for B&M stores because we know what we want and in many cases we may have more experience, and more invested in what we really like, than the dealer, and certainly more than Lrsky's $10/hr college student. As people who do this because we like it, we spend more of our own money and time searching for information than is probably reasonable.

I might suggest that the model for metropolitan areas might be different than what we are used to... The model might be for manufacturers to supply demo equipment to a couple of dealers who split a listening room site. Dealers split up a large-ish factory building and outfit it with a dozen rooms with sound-proofing between them, Ikea furniture in most, and some nicer furniture in others (that can be sourced from local high-end estate auctions). Customers would be free to bring in their own equipment, and set it up on rolling racks prior to using the room. The rack(s) would be rolled in, stabilized, plugged in, and set in the first few minutes. Dealership staff would hook up the piece to be auditioned. If the rooms were set up well beforehand, speaker placement would likely be a snap, and concentric placement rectangles would be set up on the floor. Because the site is communal, rooms would be rented at some hourly rate in order to cover the cost of the site (maybe $10-20 an hour). Dealers would offer auditions of products they sponsor, along with customers' own equipment, for free if they want by putting their own money into the pot if they wanted to bring the customer in without him/her paying. There would be another set of rooms which allowed full dealer set-ups of 'recommended systems' at certain price ranges and those rooms would have rolling racks of equipment.

Rooms could be reserved (and pre-paid?) by internet. Rooms which had time-contiguous rentals would have a buzzer go off 5mins before the end.

Such a dealership set-up could act as a used equipment dealer as well I expect, with a place to audition if you wanted.

In return for the customer paying his audition fee, MSRP would no longer be sacrosanct on new products.

I obviously have too much time on my hands...

There will always be a need, and a clientele for a high end audio B&M store that provides excellent service and is located in an area with a wealthy and sizable pool of potential buyers.

However, the small number of dealerships that fit this criteria are unlikely to sufficiently support the number of high end audio manufacturers presently in business.

The UK has an organisation called BADA (British Audio Dealers Association), it is a group of up market real audiophile shops that go that little but further to keep the customer satisfied and not sell anything that the customer does not like or need, there is no hard salesmen bullshit tactics, it is all easy and a relaxed atmosphere. They do not discount on the items they sell (If I remember correctly) as you are paying for their expert service, before, during and after the sale. The 'other sort' of hi-fi shops mostly located in Tottenham Court Road, central London, are the discount stores where you can barter the prices, but do not expect good customer service, and once you have left the store, or once the cash has been handed over, you are on your own.
The real king of cheap hi-fi is a shop called 'Richer Sounds', actually there are about 30+ richer sound shops dotted around the UK. The owner's policy is to get small premises in good locations, stack the shelves high, sell cheaply. If you have been to one of his shops it is about the size of a restaurant rest room here in the US, I kid you not they are tiny, no demo rooms (a few locations do but are so small literally only book shelf or diddy floor standers can fit in the space), the whole shop is just a room, a small room also. That's what the general public in the UK want, cheapness. When I was in the UK I was a regular customer of 'Grahams Hi-fi' shop, yes a member of BADA. No discounts off the MRSP, but the service was top notch. This was how good it was, I bought a 2nd hand Linn LP12, I was having a few problems with it, I took it there one Saturday morning, the Linn service chap spent about hour+, tinkling tweaking, adding the bits it needed that were not there and getting it all up and running sweetly, and they never charged me for their time. The turntable was a mess due to some home hi-fi DIY person (butcher more like).Graham's was the best shop I have ever been in.
A no pressure take your time kind of attitude.

01-11-09: Chadnliz
John, man up and clean that snot off your shirt!

That might be insulting if it came from a real man, considering the source, all I can do is LMAO.