I think the new owners may not have understood the nature of the speaker market. In speaker designs, there are a lot of good brands. If you want something, most likely there are ten brands will compete to offer you that "something". So it's not like there is a shortage of speakers out there. And each brand already has its own loyal customer base.
The new Thiel attempts to build speakers that may be good in themselves, but they are no more special than what already available out there which themselves already has its own followings. Why would the existing customers have to take a chance to purchase the new Thiel speakers while they already know their current preferred brand fairly well?
It's hard to build up a brand image that people can identify with, especially in the speaker industry where most stuffs are more or less a commodity especially at the price point the new Thiel was trying to compete. It's tough to compete in that segment. Someone once told me that if want to go into doing business, target either the very high end or the very low end. The middle end is very tough. It seems like the new Thiel strategy was going for something in the middle in both price and technology - just another headwind for them. The old Thiel although in term of pricing, it is somewhat in the middle but it's technology was at the very high end of the market.
I've seen some very successful brands such as Dynaudio, B&W, Spendor, Sonus Faber and so on ... I think part of their success are as much on life style as their sound. People buy them for decorative purpose as much as the music. Seems like the new Thiel was trying to position themselves into this market but I guess it didn't work out for them.
