Why is the high end stratospheric?

You better be scared, Junior. 

I've seen interviews where a manufacturer would say that his dealers in Asia told him he didn't have product that was sufficiently expensive, and urged him to introduce a new model to fill that demand...

Its a fact. I got a whole bunch of stuff cheap when I learned there are "blems" that exist only because Crazy Rich Asians willing to pay through the nose for perfection won't spend a dime if they see so much as a dust speck.

Its not just planes and audio either. A friend one time gifted me a box of Granny Smith Apples. He worked for a produce distributor. The box was for export to Japan. Laser scanned for shape, size, and blems, they were an entire box of identical, perfect apples. Fresh from the tree and immediately stored at 33.5 degrees in a nitrogen atmosphere they were the juiciest, crispest, tastiest apples ever. You do not even want to know what they sell them for. Let alone what people pay for them in Japan.

Once we started printing "money" by the trillions from nothing, well what did you think was gonna happen?

There are two ways of looking at this yes, we have seen certain products that were artificially over priced to generate interest the original Kharma loudspeakers were priced at $10k retail and the importer jumped the price to $20k a pair to make them seem special and outlandish, and there are other products which are generally expensive to make with custom parts in limited quantities.

We used to sell a loudspeaker from a company called Polymer Audio Research this company's loudspeakers sold for $68k, when you looked at the parts quality and cost these speakers were under priced:

2 Accuton Diamond tweeters          which are $3k each *2          $ 6k
2 Accuton Diamond midrange drivers which are $10k each * 2 =$20k
2 Custom Midbass drivers  estimated cost $500 each *2 =          $ 1k
4 Custom Woofers              estimated cost $500 each*4=            $ 2k

 So just in parts not including all metal composite baffle
all metal cabinets, all silver wire, custom inductors                      $29k

if you take those parts at 50% off for wholesale you still have     $14.5
add in all of the metal cabinets, wiring, caps ect                          $10K


so all in you have a projected cost of manufacture of $25k at least
add in margin for the company which was ridiculously low at $10-15k
you had a purchase price of $35-40k to the dealer with a sales price of $68k you had a tiny margin compared to the price of the loudspeaker.


There are other products that are priced very fairly considering the cost to build. So not every expensive audio product is overly inflated.


What people here fail to realize is that there are $30k Hermes bags, which are really nice leather bags, how difficult is it to produce a leather bag? 

Compare that with the huge costs to build a custom set of loudspeakers or amplifiers that do not use off the shelf amplifier modules in a prettier case. 


Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

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This exactly.

Only the other day the wife showed me an advert in one of the crazy magazines she gets for free with her Allstate insurance points ( yes seriously).

14k for a dog bed.

I mean really?

How much do you think ANY dog bed could really cost to make?

Makes my Ayre EX8 seem like a bargain at $8900......