Hi-fi Industry,cocern..

Nando's

are you saying that you are a famous musician?

 

Yes it is a business like any other, but having worked in the electronics industry for many years both here and overseas, not to mention along side of some of the Worlds most well known manufacturers (not just audio), it's not my 'passion' for audio that tells me that alot of the people in the distribution/dealer chain are bad news, it is my years of business experience.

But then as I said in my initial thread, just IMHO!

 

The easiest way to ruin a pleasure is to turn it into a business. I learnt this lesson long ago. So how do you avoid a business. A businesses only motivations are growth and profit, and the common business consensus says you need both. Well combined they are self defeating if you wish to keep your work at an enjoyable and self sustaining level. Expansion can only mean / lead to contraction unless you aquire a means of continual aquisition and growth. So ultimate success will mean you end up going public and creating another multinational, just what we need!

A self sustaining business means you set a goal of not losing your joy and pleasure in your work. You set a level of income that you need and you calculate your time and available capital to provide this. You ride the waves of demand (by denying it and resisting sales) and disinterest by seeing both as illusion. If you have a course and a purpose stick to it, but it helps to have a second string to your bow to balance the other in times of drought, which always comes.

Of course this is selfish as you don't employ, pay lots of taxes, support the government (local or national) in its crazy ineficiencies and policies and desires. BUT the world is starting to look at these new ways at the moment of a self sustaining culture especially in agriculture. I personally think this is the way we will all have to look in the future in all aspects including service and manufacture. We will go through the last crazy years of expanding capitalism with China and India and the other undeveloped nations until they get over their avarice and jealousy of Western wealth.

The present system of greed and desire is unsustainable. But we all have to make our own choices, if you want the cars the lifestyle the power the money then you must make sacrifices with your idealism, your peace of mind, your choice!

Richard

 

Well said that man.

 

wish i was, regards.

 

L.ear

point taken, though my experience of dealers and the like over the last few years has been , by and large, ok. I've dealt with a couple of larger dealers and a quite a number of smaller resellers of s/h kit. I wouldn't say this industry was any worst than any other .

as for the other post questioning the sustainabilty of big business, i'm too busy being a wage slave in a large corperate to think about that.

 

imho i think we live in a sad world driven by greed and jealousy
things are sold on a what can we get for it rather than what it's worth. but i guess that's life. there will always be the have's and have not's, nobody said it was going to be fair and it isn't. I have seen quite a few dealers change tack to include home cinama over the years so as not to loose out
thats just my view anyway

 

the audio industry is a by product, most dealers and makers don't love hifi, its just a means to make money, listening ear is spot on, some of the stories I have heard about major manufacturers make the mind boggle, if you only knew what went on, copying designs, lying about specs., costs to make, made in england when its made in china, designing from chip makers data sheets and claiming your own, not crediting designers, half baked poor designs, drug abuse, going bust and reinventing companies, going bust and running off with people's money, that's just the tip.

a lot of companies are actually run by people with little expertise who get outiside designers to do the designing, Anthony Michaelson for one knows nothing about audio design, and doen'st even use his own products.

naim amplifiers copied the goodmans circuit, also used by RCA, and the preamps and crossovers are EMI copies, all slightly reworked.

sadly now, the magazines are not objective, you can't really believe anything you read in them, before, they had respectability, but now they are totally dependant upon revenue from advertisers, and actually get given items to guarantee good reviews, and other favours, wining, dining, trade tickets abroad,

have you noticed now there are no bad reviews? have you wondered why some products are consistently hyped?have you also wondered why reviewers who get paid around £150 per 1000 words in magazines can afford mega expensive kit? yes that's the going rate. one article brings in around £300-£400 per month, they may not get articles for a couple of months.

basically the magazines and many makers are corrupt, there is no other word for it.

David Price of hifi world was given some transformer preamps, and origin live stuff, and ortofon cartridges. he's one of the better ones, don't mention hifi plus man who is on many payrolls

 

That mirrors my experiences too..........

you've all read about my experiences with the preamp....we approached a respected reviewer ...who said if he got to keep the pre he would write exactly what we wanted ....in otherwords he wanted us to write the piece too. We said thanks but no thanks

 

I have been supplying equipment for review as a product manager in the 70's to designer and manufacturer in the 80's and 90's. Though I have had no experience of them in the last 6 years.

During those early years the system was corrupt and reviews could be bought very easily, no names no pack drill. It was the objective reviewers who were corrupt, and since the more subjectivist lot appeared in the late 70's / early 80's I have seen no overt corruption at all. During this period it involved the placement of well over 100 different items for review over that nearly 30 year period in just about all the available mags from Studio Sound to What Hi-Fi.

The objectivist could easily adjust their parameter to give you good readings if you looked after them. BUT not once have I had a subjective reviewer attempt the slightest form of coersion. It is another game with them, you have to appeal to their egos not their pockets. Also in that time there has never been any link made between advertising placed and copy space given. Over time I became friendly with many magazine editors and publishers, basically as I had got a reputation for being straight and calling a spade a spade. There was always pressure from advertising departments but the editors I knew vehemently maintained their independence. Yes you lent product, yes if they wanted to buy you gave them a very good deal, but I do that with all friends.

OK some of them were virtually brainwashed to some brands, but there was a lot of high level psychology and manipulation going on from certain manufacturers. You sometimes had to plough through the cult blockages in trying to deal with them, but that was largely naivety not corruption. The only problem I ever had was with Hi-Fi Choice and that was largely of a political nature not financial, having sued them they seemed to make a point of trying to damage me and my company at every opportunity.

If there is corruption now, it is recent.

Richard

 

note

please dont put up examples of shops that you feel have let you down.

it can easily get the site threatened, and the thread deleted/closed quicker than lickety-spit.

stick with positive examples please.

cheers

 

I don't know of any business in any industry that doesn't tell lies or *bend the truth* to make sales. Image creation is the worst, sell someone an image and not a reality is embedded in the capitalist ethos. The classic US expression is "don't sell the meat, sell the sizzle".

Stop thinking of it as a business but as a life pursuit and then the game changes as the motivation largely changes, or I should say becomes more in balance.

Richard

 

I think the gap between "good" and "bad" kit is now closer than ever before so it becomes even more difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. I will be starting my own hi-fi magazine shortly and the items of kit I've had through my hands recently for review serves only to prove just how close those gaps are and do bear in mind too that however hard anyone tries to be dispassionate and unemotional about it, their own bias and dare I say prejudices might crop up somewhere along the line and the biggest of those is the purchase price, hence leading to nonsense descriptions like "giant killer". The badge on the front and the associated hype has never bothered me personally.

Maybe we make the mistake of basing our perceptions starting from the bottom and looking upwards towards "perfection" so maybe working from the top down would highlight the differences more. Awarding demerit points for cutting fingers on heatsinks, putting on/off switches round the back (my personal pet hate BTW) inadequate connections, available from one dealer only in Outer Mongolia, or taking 2 hours to warm up and 18 months to burn in should be awarded demerit points? I don't know, what do others think?

I really would hate to see a return to pure objectivism for reviews because the wiggly graphs and reams of numbers never really did tell me what anything was likely to sound like. A microphone at 1 metre off axis bore no realtionship to my hearing preferences, so the paradox was that the stuff that measured perfectly sounded like a bag of nails to me. Until someone comes up with a better solution we are stuck with the subjective review for the forseeable future, so your best bet is to read between the lines and interpret what someone has written on your behalf what they heard. The minute I read something like "only suited to mid or low priced systems" the alarm bells start ringing immediately for me.

 

the issue here somewhat has gone astray, the point of this thread : one is not condem a particular dealer, this is not the issue, the issue is "what i belive" is that the personal touch from both manufacturers and dealers do no loger have the enthusiasom or time to spend with customers, having said that most customers are time wasters so you can't blame most retailers but staff should be able to seperate the two, .i think .

 

I think the problem with dealers is they have too short term a view of customers. Most simply have the intention of bleeding you white the moment you step through the door sad to say, so when you walk out of the premises having bought nothing after a long demo you are automaically classed as a "timewaster". Most folks are testing the dealer every bit as much and the kit on demo, so some time later they will pick the best of the bunch and they get the business. If this happens too often to dealers they should be looking at themselves in the mirror rather than labelling browsers as timewasters.

I am in the industry myself and many is the time I get a phone call or email asking simple or complex questions followed by a request for a quote. Wherever possible I suggest alternatives that save money and I would rather turn business away than make a quick fast buck kill and a long term enemy.

I may then not hear back for weeks or even months but because I make a point of looking back through my correspondence to see what was last said, most customers appreciate that I have taken the time to remember who they are and what they wanted from me.

 

I certainly don't take the attitude of bleeding someone white,but try to offer the best they have for thier budget.

It is also very hard to tell a timewaster,to someone who takes there time,to someone who just hasn't got the money for what he/she wants.I found the best way to spot a timewaster is someone who says,i've ben to so and so,and they said this,I called so and so and they said that,I bought this then cancelled it as I changed my mind,if I hear thoes types of comments I think I've got a timewaster.

Sometimes you help someone,answer a email and dont hear from then in 2-3 months,you think they have ignored your advice,but they later do buy from you,whenevr you deal with the public it's not going to be easy,be it hifi or any other product you sell.

 

Interestingly, most dealers I have spoken to are unaware of forums such as ZG. It blows my mind that they are in the industry but have no actual interest in it!

By the way, I mentioned the DEQ2496 room eq idea to a dealer yesterday and he said "interesting idea, but it's not really hifi is it?"...

These guys are mostly resolutely committed to specific margins on equipment. In the pro-AV industry (where I work) the advent of more competition has meant that we have to forget this idea and take an overall view of a job: "how much will we make on this sale?" "Is it worth it?" "What will it cost us?". Plus we have the ability to be very flexible with margin...

 

The job of anybody making and selling products is to make money. If above this existential necessity there are also in the Hifi-business moral or personal interests of making good or great sounding products then that is an extra for those who are wanting that kind of quality.
Asking the industry for that is just rediculous unless that is the only way they can sell their products. Asking dealers to be aware of Hifi forums is also rediculous. Why should they consider the eccentric taste and requirements of a very small group of people considering the millions of others who listen to music without many exigences?
It's really foolish to expect that everybody should start making things that one would like to have renouncing in that way making more money. I would believe that dealing with Hifi-fans in forums is one of the worst things can happen for a dealer. It is better not to have customers, which are mostly interested in getting the best for the cheapest price, which laugh at (or cannot understand) other people when they buy something more expensive. Especially when these customers are in a great minority.

 

From a customers point of view,if i feel looked after when i go into a store and walk away happy with my purchase, i'm more likely to recommend the shop and customer care to friends interested in the same thing.
On the other hand, if there's a patronising prick behind the counter not listening to what i want but trying to sell me what he gets the best profit margin on,i won't be going back and i'd probably tell twice as many people about my bad experience.
A hell of a lot of business is gained by recommendation, sometimes more so than advertising.
Even if a "timewaster" doesn't buy something from the store,they still could give others feedback on their experience. Especially on a forum like this one.
Free advertising?
It costs nothing to be nice

 

this thread should be renamed 'the trouble with winging obsessives with too much time on their hands';