Opinions on Magnepans sales/marketing approach to

Wendell will need to soon move on with an estate plan. That will trigger being acquired by one of the mega buck hedge funds. ARC was the latest to need an 'estate' bailout. Small companies no matter how profitable they are, need liquidity so they can fund the owner's retirement and pass on the wealth created to the heirs. The trade off for customers is that production will need to grow and marketing vastly expanded. Distribution of the product will need to increase. I would not be surprised to see Maggies at Best Buys hi end business.

Funny! :-)

BTW my initial post/question was about business judgement and current dealer situation not about the character of the folks at Magnepan or dealers. Everyone at Magnepan I have ever talked with have been helpful and wonderful to work with over the last 25+ years I have owned Maggies

Having said that the fact is in the DC/Baltimore area you cannot hear 20.7s a 14k flagship speaker for Magnepan. You can however hear many Wilson, Avalon, Magico, Meridian models costing 2-6 times their price.

I am not really sure what that says but I do find myself asking how many dealers have actually heard the 20.7 and if not how can they recommend them? What is their "value add" if they themselves have not heard them?

Not crying poverty and I have been a Maggie guy forever, but I still cannot see spending 14k on something I have not heard.

Thanks for feedback.

I suggest next vacation plan a trip to Boston, enjoy the sites and listen to the 20.7.

This is probably a naive question, but I'll ask it anyway: Why don't middle-sized manufacturers like Magnepan built 5 or so pairs of "demo-only speakers" that they will ship to potential customers to audition in their home for a fee? Here are some thoughts on how it might work...

--The fee is just enough to allow the manufacturer to break even on the cost of construction/shipping/logistics for the "lending program." They don't make money on the fee, to keep it as low as possible.

--Maybe the customer is allowed to keep the speakers for 1 week, and then the shipping/freight company picks them up from him and ships them to the next potential customer. In other words, the speakers never go back to the manufacturer unless they develop a problem. They simply circulate from potential customer to potential customer.

--After his 1 week in-home demo, if the customer wants to proceed, he then buys a new pair FROM HIS LOCAL DEALER, who provides him with all the subsequent support he needs. That way the dealer doesn't have to stock the speaker and the customer gets to hear it the way he wants, i.e. in his own home with his own equipment. Everybody's happy.

--Maybe the lending program is ONLY FOR SELECT MODELS, so that the local dealer isn't cut out of the picture too much. And maybe the lending program is coordinated through the dealer, so that the dealer can do a certain amount of "filtering" for the manufacturer, to weed out the crazies.

--The cost of the in-home demo may of course get expensive if the speakers are very large/heavy, due to freight costs. But the folks who can afford large/heavy/expensive speakers can probably also afford a more expensive demo, given that they may be about to spend more than $10K, $20K, $30K... And for smaller speakers, amps, preamps, etc., the cost of freight is much less burdensome.

--Since the lending program is through the manufacturer, it costs the local dealer exactly $0. That should diminish the implicit or explicit pressure dealers sometimes apply when they agree to an in-home demo of their store's stock.

I, for one, would be VERY tempted to participate in a lending program like this, and I suspect there are plenty of other audiophiles who would feel the same way.

Bryon