Crutchfield does seem like a strange marriage with Thiel, but think: Who really believes nonaudiophiles will be ordering a $249 receiver and a $10K (or even $2K) pair of speakers? The only people who will be taking advantage of this arrangement are folks who might have gone to a high end store and bought Thiels anyway, except they don't live close enough to a dealer (or don't like the dealer they do live close to). As for why Thiel chose Crutchfield over MD or AA, the answer is probably HT (think PowerPoints and PowerPlanes) -- that and the fact that I bet the Crutchfield catalog reaches 50X the customer base of the other two combined. I seriously doubt Crutchfield reps will be expected to sell up the Thiels to mid-fi customers unfamiliar with the product. Assuming Crutchfield is competent to basically just take and process what orders they get -- which I'm sure must be the case if Thiel selected them for this -- then I don't see any downside for Thiel's image, just upside for Crutchfield's. It's a convenient way for Thiel to outsource the marketing, order-taking and payment-processing aspects of factory-direct sales, which take up time and manpower they probably don't have to spare, with a nice dose of extra publicity thrown into the bargain (that they wouldn't get from selling through their own website), while for their part Crutchfield won't have to stock or ship product. I don't see this arrangement hurting Thiel's dealer base much if at all, but it's easily enough ended if it doesn't produce or go smoothly.
