List of Hi-fi manufacturers who sell direct

[Lindsayt]

I'm creating this as a spin-off topic from the AOS thread from Elsewhere on the Web.

That thread made me start thinking of a list of manufacturers who sell hi-fi direct.

There's:

NVA
Avondale
ESC - Expert Stylus Company
Lightspeed
Affordable Valve
World Designs
Lejonklou
Lampizator
Beresford
Teddy Pardo
Promitheus Audio
Bent Audio
Sowter


There must be others? Lots of others?

[Theo]

I think you'll find that an awful lot more do - if you approach them directly

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

How many of those supply dealers as well, or have built in dealer margins just in case. This is the thing that is hard to judge, the way to tell is to contact them saying you are a dealer and ask if there is any trade discount, if they say they don't have a trade discount then they are straight.

[nat8808]

Arthur Khoubesserian wrote a good post (I thought..) about selling direct:

Re: Selling Direct. An interesting and complex topic. “HiFi_Dave”, being a retailer, will have his own input on this as well but here’s my take:
A certain company (with whom I have regrettably had direct adversarial contact) does indeed sell direct to the public at a lower price than other manufacturers, thereby keeping all the margin. So what’s wrong with that?
Apart from plenty, Nothing.
It all depends on your business model. What do you want your business to do?
For most manufacturers, going direct at a lower price is pretty much a kiss of death to expansion.

Apple can do it because what they sell, they can do through wires to everyone. Their wares are one and the same time, both unique (their operating system) and common (itunes). You know you need your OS and either you buy it or you don’t, or you know the album (tracks) you want, so again you buy. The sale is ended. For Apple, this has allowed them to expand this model to their hardware.

A turntable, however, is quite different. They are all the same at being different. They all play records, so which one plays better (to your ears). You, the punter, go to your dealer and compare and then have your choice setup.
Lose all dealers and how do you now choose? Competition suffers and product development risk stagnation.
For the brand, how would the business grow? Dems are still needed. Who’ll do them? Where? Prospective customers would have to travel very far; this in itself would severely limit sales. Even if you are relatively successful in your home market with this model, your exports would run aground:

A product sold in the UK has VAT, dealer margin and export margin all built in. With the internet, now, more than ever, export markets (US?) are all looking at our home price, when deciding how and where to make their purchase.
The manufacturer has shipped the goods (= added freight costs). In order to promote and set up outlets across the vast land a distributor, familiar with dealers, mags and native customs, has to market the goods and then still sell at a price which is relatively close to the UK price. Now, drop the UK price. The international costs don’t change. The price disparity is now a deal breaker.

Pressure on grey importing increases. The distributor gets the hump and ditches you and you lose all the work he’s been doing i.e. the entire regular market and this is the catch word. Regular. Overnight you become a niche product. With no long term backup, people don’t like niche. And rightly so.

A business thrives not on the occasional £10,000 sale, which is all well and nice, but the regular “boring” repeat business.
Imagine Rega going direct. Or Linn. Or Naim. Or indeed Technics.
They have succeeded over decades by having their product supported through many, many outlets via distributors.
Moreover, who would want to get involved in that hassle?
For example, I have been told - don’t know if its true - that Rega have 300 outlets in the US. Try covering that on your own!

In the UK, we lose sales every day - we are not on people’s door step and dealers haven’t supported us. Historically politics has not been kind to us and I still come across bigots aplenty. Dealers are either afraid of the wrath of certain larger manufacturers, or they are just plain lazy.

By contrast, as mentioned previously, we are received and treated much more cordially abroad. The markets are considerably larger and generate far greater sales for less, much less input from us; this matches our capacity.
It is also much more enjoyable than dealing with negative mentalities - need I to point to certain content in this thread, which, truth be told, has been a less than palatable experience.
(What is it that people take pleasure in being hurtful to others?
Is 21st century man still so under-developed? From where I’m sitting the answer is a resounding “yes” and that makes me so sad.)

Don’t get me wrong there are also many dealers in this country who have been fighting something of a rear-guard action on our behalf and to those, I am very grateful indeed. But compared to our competition, in the UK we are small fry.

That said, Funk is growing, now faster than ever before. We have just expanded our premises and taken on more staff.
This is due to our being competitive both in the product we make and also protecting our margins internationally, which brings us neatly back to “dealers, yes or no?”
We always do our best to support buyers - real or potential: If there are no dealers around, we will do what we can to help. And this has worked very well.

Re-reading this, I apologise for its length.

Seemed to make sense to an innocent bystander. I guess there are many other takes and it is only his opinion.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Sorry it is self justifying nonsense - but I would say that wouldn't I

The reason is he needs the finance for the production so he has been *bought* by his North American distributor with up front payment. Perhaps he has high initial overheads, there could be many reasons for him doing it, but he has been sucked into the system even though in his previous incarnation he was shat on badly by the system. If anyone has a reason and motive to go direct it is him.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I am sorry they are all crooks and always have been, in the worst case they are spivs or charlatans (or Tesco ) probably an example of a good functional necessity is a pharmacist, but they still create on cost for the NHS which comes from our taxes.

Up until the internet these crooks were a necessary evil, but now because of the internet a lot of them in a lot of industries no longer serve a necessary function, just an on-cost. AND when that on cost is about 50% of the retail price of the unit then it can be safely called a rip-off, which is the case in the hi-fi industry.

Of course it would be pretty daft to direct sell bananas as it would even put the price up, but with certain products like hi-fi it is a logical no brainer.

[Daniel Quinn]

I agree, I have argued previously I could not envisage an economy of 62 million people with no middlemen. What is a supermarket if its not a middleman or indeed any food store.

However, I do think Hi-fi is uniquely suitable for direct selling as it a product primarily purchased for sound quality and this can only really be evaluated in ones home. Additionally the mark-up appears to have a logic of its own not found in other products and thus middlemen are far more pernicious and those that sell direct are to applauded.

Edit - response to docfoster not the docs above who once again beat me to the post. :D

[Lindsayt]

I don't know if all of the companies mentioned in this thread are doing everything to keep their prices as low as possible, as I don't know their costs and what margins they're working to and how much they pay themselves for their own time.

With me having used some of the services and products of some of the companies in my list I do think that, in general, you get better sounding products for your money from them than you do from manufacturers that sell via dealers.

The costs of selling via ebay or an online website are far lower than getting someone else with a bricks and mortar shop to sell the product for you.

All of the companies in my list are small. I can't think of any medium to large hi-fi manufacturers that sell direct only.

30 years ago you had EMT that sold direct. They were a special case, selling to radio stations and other professional users.


Can anybody come up with the names of any other manufacturers that sell direct only? Or is there really only a very small number of manufacturers that sell in this way?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Power Inspired, as in room we gave because they sell direct.

And we will do the same for any manufacturer who does the same.

[Tony Moore]

As far as I know (I may be wrong) but I think Ivan Leslie of IPL Acoustics (transmission line kits) only sells direct.

I had a pair of S5TLs for many years and have been a very happy customer.