Walking Into A Brick & Mortar High End Audio Store

Roxy54 has gone too far.

If am not mistaken, dealers generally make 100% profit on new gears (e.g manufacturers sells a gear to dealer for $1000 which then retails for $2000).

If a dealer expects each and every person entering his shop to buy a gear from him then the dealer will quickly make billions and his sales persons millions.

The 100% profit given by the manufacturers is meant to be spent on attracting potential customers by arousing their curiosity, fueling their interests, assisting them making the right choice, and helping them overall.

This is called marketing.

I have a question....if your local audio shop offered leasing would any of you be interested? I know I would and I have often wondered why this isn't a common practice in the B&M's.

stop the whining...any experienced seller knows you have to qualify your buyer and opportunity, and calibrate your time investment accordingly. That's just basic sales skills

.
Chrshanl37, I'd be interested in leasing. I think it would be a great idea.
.

I haven't stepped inside a B&M dealer in more than 12 years because I'm not willing to pay their prices, and therefore won't use their time. Nonetheless, the best thing I've done to build my systems (I have three) has been to develop a strong relationship with a local dealer, one who works out of his house, sells quite a bit online, is willing to discount, and comes to my home with components. I've spent many, many $K with him. It's a different kind B&M sales strategy, more of a hybrid, and it's one that works.

From my end, the keys to making this approach effective is for me to do a lot of research on the pieces I'm considering, and then be willing to gamble on whether or not I'll achieve the synergy I want. It takes time and careful judgment, along with the willingness to take some losses, but in the end it works for me--with surprisingly few glaring mistakes. Just part of the hobby.

Besides, I've found that I can't really tell what anything sounds like until it's in my room and I've spent quite a while massaging the system around it. Very tiny changes in a high-rez systems will have big consequences for sound; very few--if any--of those myriad contingencies are controllable outside of one's own room. B&M auditioning is therefore pretty much a waste of time for me. I don't bother going to audio shows, either, for the same reasons.