A speaker maker has to sell a pair of speakers for at least 10x what the drivers cost. I’m sorry but the math of getting a speaker out the door, and getting a retailer to make space for it, plus service overhead, yada yada, means you simply cannot sell a speaker for parts cost.
Not to be argumentative, but probably more like 15x (as you note further down): manufacturers get a discount on the shelf price of drivers, and we have to factor in the cost of other materials, of prototypes, of XO components which when used once are often discarded later, and... in all of this, the designers & the builders have to actually survive until they start receiving money for the speakers they designed!
What I am saying is that all vertically integrated speaker makers enjoy financial benefits over those which are not.
That is a logical inference except for the fact that large manufacturers, like Scan Seas, etc, benefit from economies of scale that smaller comapnies (like ATC) probably do not.
Having said that, ATC recently replaced the tweet it was outsourcing with one of its own manufacture -- so there must be a financial benefit there!
(and I, too, am using ATC as an example; in real terms, I find their speakers are bvery good and reasonably priced for the sound they offer...)