I know its a hardship for local shop owners, I feel for them... but the internet is changing a lot of markets. They will either adapt, or will not survive.Very well said^^^^.
Nailed it.Think about this also. Amazon posted up the JBL MS-8 for sale for dealers cost. Dealers cost is around $449.00 plus around $10.00 in freight. Amazon sold them for $449.00 so how did Amazone make money. Hell JBL sold them directly to Amazon for rumor has for around $275.00-$300 each do to them whiling to buy so many. Production Cost vs. dealers cost is another issue. Dealers cost is many times double, triple, quadrople the production cost. Also distributors many times do not help anything. They buy in bulk and sale in bulk to dealers. There is only a few car audio companies left that do dealer direct sales. So now the manufacture, then distributor, then the dealer needs to make money in the end driving the cost up.
So manufactures pays $100, distributor pays $250, dealer pays $400, customer pays $650. Now days dealers are having to sell that $600 item at $500 to be competitive.
Most dealers are hurting now. The manufactures and distributors are making their money period. Many of the distributors if they are not moving product they sell it to places they are not suppose to like woofersect. Happened to Zapco several years ago, a distributor in Canada was pulled they were to return all product in stock to Zapco. Well they instead put it all over ebay and sold it off to unathorized places. Screwed thing is that they sold refurbs and broke amps as new on ebay ect. Have a friend that bought 4 off them broken from them, once hooked up all went DC and destroyed about $1000 in Dynaudio drivers. He had no real recourse other than paypal.
IMO as far as sales go in the car audio world things are out of control and one big mess.
thats the big problem right there so many manufacturers under cut there own dealers and that can cause them to go out of business ,pretty soon there will be no one to sell there stuff at retail where will they be thenThink about this also. Amazon posted up the JBL MS-8 for sale for dealers cost. Dealers cost is around $449.00 plus around $10.00 in freight. Amazon sold them for $449.00 so how did Amazone make money. Hell JBL sold them directly to Amazon for rumor has for around $275.00-$300 each do to them whiling to buy so many. Production Cost vs. dealers cost is another issue. Dealers cost is many times double, triple, quadrople the production cost. Also distributors many times do not help anything. They buy in bulk and sale in bulk to dealers. There is only a few car audio companies left that do dealer direct sales. So now the manufacture, then distributor, then the dealer needs to make money in the end driving the cost up.
So manufactures pays $100, distributor pays $250, dealer pays $400, customer pays $650. Now days dealers are having to sell that $600 item at $500 to be competitive.
Most dealers are hurting now. The manufactures and distributors are making their money period. Many of the distributors if they are not moving product they sell it to places they are not suppose to like woofersect. Happened to Zapco several years ago, a distributor in Canada was pulled they were to return all product in stock to Zapco. Well they instead put it all over ebay and sold it off to unathorized places. Screwed thing is that they sold refurbs and broke amps as new on ebay ect. Have a friend that bought 4 off them broken from them, once hooked up all went DC and destroyed about $1000 in Dynaudio drivers. He had no real recourse other than paypal.
IMO as far as sales go in the car audio world things are out of control and one big mess.