Is it possible for a high end manufacturer to overprice their goods?
Having just read the interesting and hyperbole laden review by RH of the new Rockport Orion speakers in the latest issue of The Absolute Sound, one thing struck me..
is it possible in the high end for a manufacturer to overprice their product ( doesn’t have to be a speaker, but this example comes to mind)? I ask this, as the Orion is priced at $133k! Yes,a price that would probably make 99% of hobbyists squirm. Yet, the speaker now joins a number of competitors that are in the $100k realm.
To that, this particular speaker stands just 50.3” tall and is just 14.3” wide…with one 13” woofer, one 7” midrange and a 1.25” beryllium dome ( which these days is nothing special at all…and could potentially lead to the nasties of beryllium bite).
The question is…given this speakers design and parts, which may or may not be SOTA, is it possible that this is just another overpriced product that will not sell, or is it like others, correctly priced for its target market? Thoughts…
It's like asking is there any greed in man. Answer yes!
I have the 22K Aurender W22SE, I can imagine the markup is less than jewelry on high end audio, but I expect Aurender took 10K profit from the 22k. Worth it? Absolutely yes! Greedy? a little. But also good business, it's a fine line between greed and good business, few walk it. |
@russ49 -- It has to do with one construal of the OP’s question, as to whether the speakers are overpriced. Clearly, one reaction to the price is moral revulsion; we read this all the time on Audiogon -- "How dare they ask that much for X?" We all understand that there are no *laws* against pricing things as they wish, so there are a couple other ways to explain why this question gets asked. (a) Is the price justified by the economic inputs (parts, labor, research, etc.)? Here the answer is hard to gauge, because every company adds in their "margin" and it’s hard to question what kind of margin is "correct." (b) Is the price justified by the wider social conditions? Here the answer is often "no," either because of what people themselves can afford or what they see around them (hence the cardboard box comment). Many people get angry at this question because it brings up issues of injustice and how dare we talk about that. This is supposed to be a happy occasion! (c) Is the price creating a distortion in the audio market? Here, people divide up. Some see the pricing as part of a trend which is distorting the hobby into an ultra rich guy thing. That makes regular hobbyists feel priced out. Others look to the opportunity to buy this ultra-gear at used prices or hope that there is trickle-down from the technology (the way the Apollo program lead to all kinds of innovation.) In short, the OP’s question is a kind of Rorschach test, and this leads to a fun but chaotic, cross-purposes thread. |
IMHO, once you have established what the law of diminishing returns is on a piece of audio equipment, any money spent above that price becomes questionable. Of course, I am basing this on common sense. For instance, does a $200,000 audio system sound ten times better than a $20,000 system? For that matter, does a $20,000 system sound 10 times better than a $2000 system? It's all relative to how much money you have to spend and how good your hearing is.
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