Death of the salesman

Purité Audio ( the name really ought to be Pureté (pure in French) Audio but my wife who is in fact French misspelt it!

Started in the early 2000's back then there was a clearly ordered retail chain.

Manufacturer/Distributor/Retailer.

Traditionally the margin to the distributor was around 60%, 40% for the retailer the remaining 20% for the distributor.

The distributor was expected to promote the product in his territory, arrange advertising, attend Hi-Fi shows ensure the product was reviewed and take care of any repairs and warranty issues.

Retail has changed immensely in those twenty odd years.

Increasingly manufacturers are selling directly to the customer, which makes perfect sense.

The consumer pays less and the manufacturer earns more.

Relatively inexpensive shipping, facilitates the movement of goods between manufacturer and customer, manufacturers might typically allow you sixty days to evaluate the product and may even pay for the return shipping if you decide not to keep it.

So my question, is there any point to me the audio retailer, do I add any value whatsoever?

Recently one of the companies I represent decided to totally sell directly, as he said to me,

'I do all the work, I should receive all the money'.

He has a point!

I honestly couldn't see any flaws in his logic, the only value I brought was that potential customers could visit and hear the loudspeakers before they decided to purchase.

I would argue that having a selection of speakers here from various manufacturers is of value to the customer but not necessarily to that one particular manufacturer.

The majority of companies I have represented in the past agreed to only sell directly into territories where they did not have a retailer and this arrangement in my opinion worked pretty well for both parties.

I should point out that I as a retailer I have always had to purchase all my stock, perhaps larger businesses are sent equipment on a sale or return basis or consigned ( lent) equipment, I really don't know.

Obviously it makes no sense for me to purchase equipment and then have the manufacturer

sell directly to a customer who lives one and a half miles away!

For electronics the direct model works really well, being relatively small and light, shipping isn't expensive, contemporary dacs/streamers have a set-up menu, installing to operating literally takes minutes, absolutely no need for a dealer to install / set-up.

(hopefully the manufacturer spends their extra margin to create a help desk large enough and well informed enough to field any customer queries).

Also the majority of contemporary electronics are audibly transparent, which means they do not add audible distortion, which means that two properly engineered products are going to sound identical, ironically one has to pay more for poorly designed components which actually do add audible distortion.

One can order electronics and presuming you have checked out their measurements beforehand ( thank you ASR) you are guaranteed to buy transparent equipment.

Exactly the 'straight wire with gain' that Peter Walker (Quad) talked about all those years ago.

But loudspeakers,

Loudspeakers are the one component that still actually sound different to each other, even really fine measuring designs ( see ASR and Erin's Audio Corner, each use the Klippel NFS) still aren't identical

Tonality and timbre are often extremely similar, but speakers vary in their bass extension and output and most importantly in their dispersion.

They are the one component that ideally one should hear in your own space and ideally compare to another 'possible', direct comparison is easily the most valid and worthwhile.

Also speakers can be pretty large and heavy, not the same at all as shipping a one kilo dac around the world and back.

Ultimately I suppose local retailers will endure if the market demands it.

Sadly we will no longer be representing the 'direct sales ' manufacturer but will endeavour to keep stocking the most interesting, soundly engineered and thus best sounding loudspeakers, that potential customers can either hear here or delivered, installed and optimised in their own homes.

Purité Audio London