PS Audio Revises Marketing to a Direct Sales Only Model

I know that everybody says "Brick & Mortar Stores are Dead / Yesterday’s way of shopping"

However - when it comes to spending several thousand dollars (or, at least a grand and a half and UP), call me crazy, but I WANT to touch, feel, and in this case HEAR something BEFORE I buy it.

For a Boutique product like high(ish)-End Audio - (which caters to a small, select group of consumers): it would be difficult to operate "Factory Showrooms" where you can look and listen, but still have to order on-line, except for places where lots of people have lots of disposable income or a huge thruput of visitors. (LA Area, NYC, Vegas, Scottsdale, maybe Chicago...) This leaves most of us in fly-over-country with nearly no way to get our hands on something like this, other than buy it and return it if we don’t like it.

I only put so much faith in on-line reviews - experience tells me that they can be biased and/or altered.

For companies that choose to go "Direct-ONLY" = then, they should expect to have GENEROUS return / "home audition" policies.

If they reduce their MSRP on-line a bit because they do not need to leave as much room for dealer mark-up, then maybe it would be a GOOD thing. (But we’ll just have to wait-and-see, no?)

the next problem we encounter is that most dealers these days are merely a sales desk for a one off order, for an inquisitive customer.

things are so close and tight, that no one really stocks anything anymore.

Gone are the days when you could see the delivery truck showing up at the audio shop and watch 10-20-50 pieces from a given audio company be delivered to the shop and shuffled into the stock room of the shop.

Or where you walk into the shop and see the main listening area floor covered with stacks of new gear boxes, 10x of a given integrated amp, 6 boxes of a given tuner or CD player, 10x turntables, etc.

Changing times, tighter finances, internet markets, and so on, all killed it off. We saw the first signs of it when the market was still in good shape, with all the cross territory sales of one given sales location, until the companies involved shut that particular dealer down.

the buyers and the marketing/sales methods have put themselves in the drivers seat,and killed off the very product companies they wish to buy from. That aspect combined with the commercial/monetary/financial scenario we are now facing globally.

I’m just rambling, and this is not a perfect explanation by a long shot. But the real scenario heads off in similar directions to what I speak on. And we will all see it differently.

the point is, a distributor is supposed to stock large amounts of a product from a given company, and be the elastic delivery source point of singles or multiples of a given product, for a given dealer. that is what they are paid for.


Note that Daniel of Plurison and Audio Plus, probably the most successful large high end audio distribution company on the planet, just sold his company off to other interests.

The audio distribution model is dead. Internet killed the audio star.

Direct sales is all that remains, essentially, re potential for success and future existence. The other models are just hanging on, and have not yet got the memo....

One last point, the buyers are certainly not innocent in this demise of the model. Their position is essentially contradictory. They want the company to be around to give them what they want when they want .,.at the same time they want the product for as low a price as possible, and even free, if it can be arranged, or forced.

People would and do pay if they can and have the cash for it, but the economy is being tanked by gamesmanship at the federal financial level by inside players..and those players seem to be insistent on a slow choke-hold into a death spiral that moves slow enough that people don’t see it for what it is. the tick-tick-tick of slow elimination of the prior us middle class, as they used to be called, when they existed. Exhausted and used up via proxy war. Apparently... purposely so. A two-fer, by the hidden players, as that’s how they roll. (they don't want any veterans coming back, veterans talk too much..)

Now even the bigger players (in audio) are feeling the water rising to overcome them, re the distribution of the higher end components with better (more financially comfortable) markets..now signing that even it.... has exhausted itself.

Whatever the final end game is, whether it is a slow motion thing or a fast moment, it is getting close. Definitely closer than it is further.

Do Parasound and PS Audio generally compete or market themselves at similar levels of quality / performance, at least in the preamp/amplifier markets?  Don't know a lot about either brand (dealers I've been to don't carry either), serious question, but I see a lot of recommendations on a'gon for both.  Thanks!

If there was any competition it is over now. I doubt Parasound will do direct sales. Because they have their stuff assembled in Taiwan they are very competitive and apparently the stores love them. In my day it was NAD. It was just great stuff for the money. NAD never had something like the JC-1 or Parasound's Phono amps which are also killer. kren006, for most people it is all about the money. Where can I get the most performance for my dollar. Very few of us get to go into this on an unlimited budget and I hope by now most of us realize that just because something costs more does not necessarily mean it is better. There are real values out there like the Benchmark AHB2, their DACs and ADCs. 

Teo_audio., the successful dealers today like Singer in NYC and Goodwin's High End in Boston are in areas with large populations of wealthy people who just want a nice system and have no price limitations. So they let people at stores like these supply and set up systems for them. They are not about to play around with wires. Sometimes a theater set is required as well as cabinetry. 
This business is enough to keep them going but they do sell individual pieces and they will bend over for proven customers letting them do things like try amps at home etc. As soon as you walk in the door you will be evaluated to determine if you are "qualified." A guy that drives up in a Porsche is more likely to be qualified than the guy that drives up in a Ford Escape. 
Stores outside of wealthy metropolitan areas are disappearing. There just is not enough high end business to keep them going. What are they going to do, compete with Best Buy and the internet?