PS Audio Revises Marketing to a Direct Sales Only Model

Went through the thread on their forum.  If there is enough profit margin their dealers were discounting 30-40%, that suggests PS Audio was selling to dealers at about 50% of retail.  I would expect they could pay the cost of their increased infrastructure and still reduce retail prices by at least 20%.  I do like the Schiit model that the price is the price, every day, all year long, unless B-stock or marked down as discontinued.    

Prices drop? Never. Profit up...maybe. Who will sell the product? TACT Audio died because of that strategy. Their room control system remains the most elaborate ever made but Boz (Radomir Bozevic) assumed that everyone was as bright as he was. His stuff was built to the highest standard and it was complex stuff that nobody had ever seen before. If he engaged a dealer network the price would have gone up at least 30% so high he felt it would never sell.
So he marketed direct. It worked for a while because his units were so special back then there was a huge buzz in the market. They were so special that most of the buyers had trouble using the units and Tact was swamped with phone calls. Trying to explain how DSPs work over the phone to someone who flunked out of math was not easy. There was a growing crowd of very unhappy campers and it spelled the end of TACT audio. If Boz had a trained dealer network that could have handled the customers locally things may have turned out different. A shame because their system remains the best If you know how to use it. 
Back to PS audio. There is absolutely nothing special about PS audio. There is nothing in their line up that remotely attracts my eye. How will people be driven to buy their stuff if they are not exposed to it somewhere. In my opinion Parasound makes better products and has a strong dealer network. Can PS audio compete with them marketing direct. I certainly would not bet on it.

My dealer just informed me that I have 2 weeks left for him to order new products from PSA. I’m a little bummed, since I was saving for a BHK250. However, I cannot pay the $7900 retail price. The dealer discount was significant. I’ll probably have to seek out a used one or just look elsewhere. I really love my BHK Pre amp. Oh well...at least I got an excellent preamp.

aberyclark, save money and be happy, very happy. Get a Parasound Halo A21+ designed by John Curl. It is faster, quieter and has a much higher damping factor than the BHK 250. 1100! 

I know that everybody says "Brick & Mortar Stores are Dead / Yesterday’s way of shopping"

However - when it comes to spending several thousand dollars (or, at least a grand and a half and UP), call me crazy, but I WANT to touch, feel, and in this case HEAR something BEFORE I buy it.

For a Boutique product like high(ish)-End Audio - (which caters to a small, select group of consumers): it would be difficult to operate "Factory Showrooms" where you can look and listen, but still have to order on-line, except for places where lots of people have lots of disposable income or a huge thruput of visitors. (LA Area, NYC, Vegas, Scottsdale, maybe Chicago...) This leaves most of us in fly-over-country with nearly no way to get our hands on something like this, other than buy it and return it if we don’t like it.

I only put so much faith in on-line reviews - experience tells me that they can be biased and/or altered.

For companies that choose to go "Direct-ONLY" = then, they should expect to have GENEROUS return / "home audition" policies.

If they reduce their MSRP on-line a bit because they do not need to leave as much room for dealer mark-up, then maybe it would be a GOOD thing. (But we’ll just have to wait-and-see, no?)