New Home Depot concept coming to Audio?

Tweeter staff vary. Some are quite clued-in, and come from a high-end background. I have friends that work there that are an example of this. Sure, some of them are clueless, but I've also encountered plenty of cluelessness in high-end stores as well. Tweeter will always only be upper mid-fi at best since that is what sells the most. Some of their product is nice (Sumiko/REL/Sonus Faber) but they don't have any electronics of the same caliber. And, that part of the market makes up a small percentage of their sales.

My friends who work at tweeter and at high-end stores basically loathe the typical audiophile customer: they come in and listen for long periods, are high-maintenance from a customer service standpoint, rarely buy things and when they do they beat them up on price or simply buy used or off the net. Can't say as I blame the sales people. The sales folks seem to much prefer the non-audiophile types who tend to spend more, buy more often, arent' such chiselers, and are easier to deal with.

Any wonder why the high-end shops are falling on hard times... ?

We just had a couple of Ultimate Electronics stores open here. Most of what they sell is Circuit City/Best Buy type stuff, but they do sell Krell, Adcom, and Martin Logan. When I tried to audition some speakers there, the boom-boom from the car stereo section precluded critical listening, even though I was in a separate room with glass walls.

My experience with Home Depot is that the sales staff is extremely knowledgeable. A good perecntage of Home Depot revenue comes from sales to contractors so they have to be fairly well trained. Also Expo is fairly high end (how many of you have $3,000 shower heads?). Still, the analogy between home improvement and audio still doesn't work. I believe that Expo has succeded by and large because in the last ten years of prosperity many people ended up with excess wealth that they reinvested in their homes (home traditionally being the sole investment of Americans). But I think the home improvement craze will subside with the shift back in the market. I really wonder if Expo's sales model will work in a recession. Regardless, while many people can think of fixtures and paint as a capital improvement (and hence, in some ways an investment), I think that it would be more difficult for them to believe the same about speakers.

Tweeter: UPPER mid-fi? I don't think so....

Incredible Universe failed in the Dallas Fort Worth Area. They sold some mid fi stuff such as Parasound, Denon, Acurus, Etc. Most of their sales staff did not know from up. There were, however, a couple af outstanding exceptions.
An aside to pdaneluzzi: I for one do not think Hales are gone because of little value for their money. I think many of their products had exceptional value. It was only after Wadia bought out Hale that the problems started.