The survival of the fittest.

Some good insights here.  As someone who’s been around ( lower) high end since the 70s I think it’s offering something unique (whether real or not) that makes a good story - previously thru reviews and dealers - now through word of mouth on the internet.  
The also need to keep evolving as others will come after your space unless you have patents like Ohm. 
Was a big/early fan of DCM back in the day (going to school in Ann Arbor).  Great value and unique approach but didn’t follow it up and becomes just another speaker company over time... they might have been sold over that time too and lost the vision of the company founders...

Interesting thread. 

I an a volunteer at SCORE, which is an all volunteer organization and part of the Small Business Administration. I work with clients who wish to start or grow their small business. These folks range from people who who do not have a clue to those who will be successful. 

There seem to be some basic steps that all successful small businesses follow in the current internet capable society. Without getting into too many details, these folks have something that other people are willing to pay for and they have a knack for scaling their business to mesh with their available resources; which include dollars to invest on the business and their time available to devote to it. It is amazing the number of folks who start small and are on the way to success through word of mouth and an effective presence on Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

My opinion is that small speaker manufacturers can be very effective with word of mouth if they are willing to keep their day job for a while. 

A good example of this is Tyler Acoustics in Kentucky, which has no formal advertising except for occasionally offering models for sale on US Audio Mart and has a positive presence on various blogs including Audiogon. 

I ran across Tyler Acoustics while trolling the internet threads and called Ty and got to know him a bit when I was considering life after Maggie 3.6's. That did not pan out for him as I ended up going down the Thiel rabbit hole. However, I spoke with him again last fall and took delivery on a pair of his speakers this year. He still has his day job and still is building speakers that he will customize for a potential customer.

By the way, I am glad I tried his speakers because I like how they sound!

Thanks for listening,

Dsper

Having been on this site for nearly 20 years, I find that the content of this forum hasn’t changed all that much. What has changed is the desire for people on either side of a discussion (or argument if you prefer) to shout the other side down and the amount of vitriol displayed to do so. People see no need to consider the other side of the coin when they are certain that they are right. That is not confined to this site. It is prevalent in society everywhere these days.

Thanks for voicing and writing better than i could do what i think....

My best regards to you....


P.S. it is interesting to interrogate ourself and others about the question the OP propose anyway, saying the opposite is simply bad faith....There is worst thread than this one to say the least...

Like i said for me quality of design/pricing and timing are  the keys for the survival, i will pose advertising method in a wide sense only third....And Esthetic fourth.... 😊

There are hundreds of reasons why one speaker brand succeeds and another fails - just like other businesses. I can cite one great speaker brand that went out of business (it didn't really fail) for a very particular reason. When Jim Thiel died his speaker company ended because there was no successor to his engineering talent. His obsession with time and phase coherency using first order crossovers and custom designed and house-built drivers was labeled "impossible" by one of his competitors.

Another example is Apogee speakers. I don't know as much about them as Thiel (see Thiel Owner's thread) but I did know a dealer well who retailed them. I was saving up for a pair of Duetta II's and he indulged me to listen to them once every few weeks. I went into the store one day and they were gone. I asked what happened and he told me he dropped the line. I was crestfallen but he said he was at the point where he couldn't have sold them to me in good conscience. He knew that I had two small kids and he said that the speakers were so susceptible to damage from little fingers, or cats, or other dangers in a typical home that he couldn't retail them. He had had a couple pairs damaged in his showroom and he had several owners return them and demand warranty repair because they got damaged by a minor incident. I'm not sure if this is the major reason Apogee failed but it was certainly a factor.

My point is that there is an individual story behind every business failure. I started a consumer products business which failed after 11 years and there's no way I could cite a single reason.

...by Jove, nearly an existentialist moment for a thread....!

*s*  I think I'll lurk for now....but anytime y'all start talking omni's (Ohm, Walsh, and the like)...