Let’s take the example of excellent $10,000 speakers with in-house custom drivers. Most people have no idea how much the drivers cost, so you never read about it in reviews and you don’t have hens showing up to nit pick them on part cost.
There’s no way those retail store speakers have more than $1,000 in drivers. You can’t maintain a speaker company for more than that. In addition, even with brands I really really like, I posit they are closer to 5-7% of cost in drivers. So they may spend $750 in the drivers, while selling you a $10,000 speaker.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but I am saying that your opinion of the speaker brand and quality will be altered just by knowing the cost of the drivers. That Class-A rating and glowing show reports will absolutely have you reaching for your wallet, and calling them giant-killers so long as you have no idea of the driver cost.
The exact same speaker, with the same review, and performance is suddenly not worth a listen when you know the actual driver cost. And this is where the small cottage builder is at a complete disadvantage. They may in fact use more expensive parts than the mega-brands but you don't know the mega-brand part cost so you can't look down on them the same way.
So please for heaven’s sake stop doing that to little brands with off the shelf components when they are great products and amazing deals. We need more cottage-industry builders, not fewer.