Why price of Tannoy speakers from online retailers in UK is cheaper than in US

The prices at Son Ultime are unbelievable

I feel this is the number one reason you see audio companies starting to direct sell so there is not the middle man taking a cut. This lowers their prices 15-30% across the board. the distributor is a love hate relationship. Love the overseas products we see but hate the mark up.

 try  it when your distributor is in another country, always hated giving a cut to a company in another country altogether then either the source country or destination country.  

Best hunting grounds for used English speakers good as new are Canadian cities .

The problem, so to speak, with the direct sale model is that most of the companies doing it are small and haven’t been building speakers for very long. They can’t touch the long-established brands like B&W, Focal, Tannoy, etc in accumulated R&D and manufacturing know-how. They can’t match the economies of scale. Their cabinet designs tend to be more simplistic (I’m not talking about just making the outside of the box a really pretty finish). They usually have to outsource critical parts like drivers, rather than building from scratch and truly optimizing as a whole for their own builds. They’re also not able to throw the money at very exotic builds and materials like a Magico.

I’ll buy a Tannoy all day over any direct-sale speaker. Just wish the prices hadn’t gone up so much recently (e.g. Canterbury GR jumping from some 27K list to 36K in the last year).