I can answer with complete confidence—not this century!
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The closest high end audio dealer is 1.5 hour drive and inventories almost nothing other than floor samples.
I am not counting Best Buy or similar shops. There is one of those 30 minutes away but they aren’t open all days and hours due to help and inventory issues. Things may be very different where you are just due to local wage structure and population…
I will add that I have spent over $100k in the last 5 years or so on stereo gear and never saw any piece of it before the truck showed up in the driveway. I have not sent anything back.
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Cycle shops are a good corollary. The was a specialist store in London going back to the 1920s called Evans Cycles who were bought out about 15 or 20 years ago by venture capitalists who went on a buying spree. They bought my local cycle shop, where I got my bike as a kid and so did my children. The owner told me he was offered a silly amount of money, so gave up his business of 30+ years and became a mechanic for a pro cycling team.
Of course customer service went down the pan and Evans Cycles went bust in 2018. So my previously excellent independent local store now lies permanently closed and vacant.
Meanwhile, the many independent cycle stores that provide a service are thriving.
My perception is that dealers who perceive their businesses as a service industry rather than just shifting boxes can likely prosper, working with manufacturers and jointly demonstrating and promoting their products.
If a store is having inventory issues, it is probably partly because they having a poor relationship with manufacturers that does not provide them with sensible financial terms to hold enough stock.
Or it might the million overseas containers sitting off the US ports.
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What a non discussion.
Has anybody on this forum ever paid the asking price for a car, just to be able to perform a test drive?
Who on earth is going to wire transfer a 25-30 k$ savings account to PS Audio just to hear the FR30? This is mortgage kind of budget. If I’d pay with the idea to get it back after return of the speakers I’d insist that PS Audio would depositing the money on a bank warranty pay back account. Of course I would expect PS Audio to pay for the bank warranty. Those are not cheap.
Consequently either poeple like these speakers so much and have a lot of trust in PS Audio or, if they prefer to hear them enjoy a nice vacation in the Rockies.
When having the budget to pull the trigger on 25 k$ Speakers, I expect that you can afford a vacation in the Rockies of Colorado and pay PS Audio a visit.
However this is not every-bodies cup of tea and many will take the convenience of comparing speakers at dealers, or visit different dealers selling different speakers. If you can not afford a couple of city trips, you can not afford to pay for these speakers either.
The question is, what do you prefer? A couple of city trips or a vacation in the Rockies.
Ie. FR30 or something else.
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My small town, 23,000 people, a university town has 3 very well equipped bicycle stores, no camera stores and for about the last 25years, no audio stores. A slightly large college town, 9 miles away, in a different state is similar. There are no audio stores of repute in our state, and Seattle/Portland (300 + miles), or SLC (600+ miles) would be the closet market.
London we ain’t. Like @Baldy I bought all my current equipment, and the ones they replaced, sight unseen. I’m happy.
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The largest container port serving London is full and turning away vessels. Supply issues are global, and getting worse due to the Chinese energy crisis, which will only get even worse over the winter as consumer demand peaks. Buy your hifi now, while stocks last!
Maybe we should wait a bit, to find out what is going on, first, before redesigning the world around us to suit assumptions.
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We would never consider selling a product within the United States without making it easy to return - and that includes big and expensive speakers like the FR30.
One way to think about this is that we understand at our core that if we made it difficult to return or somehow people trusted us, took something home, and then weren’t happy that would be a huge black mark against the company and our community.
If you ever want to pre-guess what we as a company would do in any situation, bet on us doing what’s right to make our family members happy. Happy customers spread the word and we all benefit. Unhappy customers spread the word too, but not in a good way.
If you decide to be one of the first to get on the reservation list for a pair of FR30s, understand you will have plenty of time to play with them and make sure you’re in love. We realize it’s a blind date and don’t want any sour grapes.
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In London we have about 6 authorised Leica stores, including two flagship stores, but only about 2 or 3 other large camera stores selling Sony, Canon etc.
It is obvious because Leica is a touchy-feely premium product that no one buys online, whereas Sony and others have geared their businesses to selling on Amazon. Not long ago Sony had their own stores, closed them all down. Fuji opened a camera store/gallery in Central London, it’s done well.
https://fujifilm-houseofphotography.com
I’m with you Paul. You may have misread my post.
I was, more or less, defending your sales model plans for your new line of speakers.
My reference to a disagreement with you was with regard to an assertion that you agreed that purchasing the FR 30s would require a “leap of faith”.
I don’t see it that way.
In any event, looking forward to the release date and wishing you the best of success with this latest product line…
SEE
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These things have been tried before. Two speaker manufacturers I know (and owned their product) tried and quickly stopped sending out demo speakers as they get damaged quickly and the packaging doesn’t last more than about 5 cycles and is very expensive. So what happens if someone returns a pair of speakers damaged? Does PSA send them back and not give a refund, or accept return of damaged goods? No win either way. The good news, from what I’ve heard is that very few sale or returns are ever returned. It’s often considered good marketing as it encourages sales and rarely results in a return.
I would be almost certain that if someone decides to return a product, A PSA salesperson will be on the phone/email incentivising the customer some way to keep the speakers.
London has a population greater than that of the states of Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming and probably N & S Dakotas combined.
We do have smarter, nice people, though 
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I have no special opinion on all those sales model discussions and I’m just interested to follow how it turns out. It just would be interesting how PSA estimates the circumstances (number of expected returns vs. sales, damages, people of no integrity etc.) and how to handle them. There must be plans for that.
It may do, but it doesn’t have a PS Audio dealer in the metropolitan area. The good news is your are never more than about 100 yards from an Indian restaurant.
London is full of lovely, friendly people with incredible cultural diversity (everyone’s a member of minority group). Covid made people a lot friendlier because dealing with the pandemic became a common cause. My wife was a volunteer food delivery driver for 5 months and noted a palpable change. If you like music and the performing arts, it must be in the top handful of cities to live. That is the main reason why we still live here.
There are possibly few audio dealers for a city of 10m+, but there are enough.
I was speaking to a PS Audio dealer about buying the Stellar Phono. He told me he’d sold three, all online, even though he has full demo facilities. Make of that what you will.
Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones. I have 2 dealers within 5 miles. One of them is elite - paragon sight and sound. I have heard so many high end kit there. I was in the market for speakers awhile back - I listened to Sonus Faber / Wilson / b&w /McIntosh . Took a 4 hr trip to listen to the high end magnepans. All speakers were from 15 -200k. Now if I was in the same position I’d like the psa speakers to also be in the compare … but damn it would be so difficult. Maybe somebody I know that lives close by will buy them one day.
I have purchased dac /amp/pre on reviews and internet speak. Speakers are personal taste. People love Wilson. Love Sonus Faber. Love magnepan. I can tell you - I like two of the above. Ive heard them all.
But none of this matters. A very limited market further limited as - believe it or not- there are people that will balk at 25k out of pocket to test drive when they can do what I did above. Even if they are the 1% that could afford such an expenditure. Maybe from a business model it works because of profit margin. From a consumer perspective it feels ‘meh’.
We beat these topics to death some months earlier, and are again beating them to death.
As previously discussed, the availability of audio stores depends on where you live. They are doing fine in some areas; non-existent, never existed, or closing, in others. The existence, or not, of audio stores where one happens to live is not necessarily indicative of the rest of the world.
Let’s wait until the speakers are an existing, available for sale product - and PS Audio’s has announced how one can test them out - before ripping both the speakers and the auditioning process to shreds. Too many imaginary straw men have already died.
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This thread is about speakers?
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Where have you been? It’s about Covid, container ships, bicycle shops, camera shops, Amazon, and the new world order.
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