Why the huge increase in the price of Sonus Farber Amanti G5 speakers.

@robertc_f 

I completely agree with your post. I agree with value... etc. 

But on a tangent. 

Luxury goods I have bought in the past have always surpassed my expectation on performance as well as aesthetics. I have come to expect it. High end audio, automobiles, cameras, binoculars, and telescopes for instance. When it comes to performance... while I might have been dubious... the reality has always been, they outperform my expectation... often from what I think is possible. There is one very different category: Watchs. 

As a kid I always thought that a "successful man" would own a Rolex when in his fifties or sixties. So in my late fifties I started my research. Like all things I research like crazy then verify my assumptions with some intermediate purchase before a full commitment. So, I bought a nice Tag Heuer watch. A couple grand or so. The crystal bezel was amazing... but it could not keep time. It was off by several seconds a day! I did more research and found that mechanical watches are considered really accurate at one second a day! I can get a cheap digital that outperforms that. I was really disillusioned. I got the Tag adjusted and it kept time to one second a day. 

I worked in Japan a lot of the time. The trains run to the second on time, sometimes with different trains leaving 30 seconds apart. Adjusting and keeping your watch to the second is difficult with a mechanical watch like Tag or Rolex. So, I abandoned the whole category. Without performance, I could not give a hoot. 

Ultimately I purchased a Seiko Astron which automatically changes time by GPS when you pop up in a new time zone and is good to a thousandth of a second for centuries. Get of the plane and walk around outside and it figures out where you are and exactly what time it is. So, there is the performance... good looking... but not like a Rolex. 

All of this is like talking about slide rules now that Apple Watches are virtually mandatory for health monitoring of us old people like me... who are prone to prattle on about irrelevant topics... so sorry. 

I have been wondering about how the tariffs would work. The retail price depends upon the wholesalers MSRP. The dealer's profit is derived from a portion of the MSRP, somewhere between 40% to 60%. So, if the manufacturer adds 10% the new MSRP will include 40% to 60% profit for the dealer. That means a $2,000 tarrif will add $4,000 to the retail price. Thus, the Sonus Faber Olympica Nova I just purchased for $18,000 are now $22,000. I had to wait about a month for my black speaders. The ones that showed wood grain had longer waits. I guess Sonus Faber figures that if almost everything they ship to the U.S. is already sold, they can get away with a 20% increase to the MSRP. And I don't think dealers can lower that MSRP, although they can give you deals on other things. I got extra money for my trade-ins.

@audio-b-dog 

I don’t think everything that SF makes and sends to the US is already sold as my Amati G5’s were at my store in less than two weeks and delivered shortly thereafter. However, I doubt that they have more than a few pairs of their more expensive models warehoused here. Also the price and the dealer markup is dictated by the manufacturer.  The G5’s now sell for $43K everywhere in the US, so yeah the dealer probably makes more unless the manufacturer has changed the percentages.

I used to manage retail stores, lumber and hardware. I set prices mostly on the basis that 40 cents out of a dollar would be profit. If the wholesale price went up for any reason, I would still make 40 cents out of a dollar. Target, I think, considered showing the tariff and adding it on to the retail price, but the Whitehouse put a lot of pressure on them not to do that. I don't know how every store is managing the tariffs, but I have to think that a lot of them are looking at the wholesale price and adding on their normal markup. So, in that case, the tariff would be doubled or nearly doubled. 

I asked the dealer who sold me my Sonus Faber Olympica 5 speakers why they had jumped from 18,000 to 22,000 and he said it was because of the tariffs. Although, when I was reading reviews of my SF Olympica Novas, they were priced at 15,000, so there had already been a recent jump that wasn't because of tariffs. So, who knows? Obviously, though, Sonus Faber believes they can sell speakers at this elevated price, and they're probably right. If I were shopping for Sonus Faber speakers today, I'd probably buy the Olympica Nova 3 with one less woofer than the 5. $22,000 would be too high a price for me. When I bought the 5's I was looking in the $15,000 range. I think this will affect what people purchase.

Why the bickering over snorus farberge??? 

I want to rant over the price on magico speakers,  they got about 30% price raised in the last 3 years in Europe.  

To start a post with " why more expensive " is absolutely political and on another note Europe is at this moment at war with Russia ( have been for 3 years soon ) and it's expensive ( what do you think happen price on energy, food ,raw materials among other.. 

As a manufacturer you have the right to price your product whatever you want the rest is up to the customer... 

If you don't like the price ( you need to pay more than you think it's worth) bye something else. 

I would like more discussions about gear no regards of price, like I bought the shunyata omega usb today and it is awesome ( because I did ) and the questions goes " what is better then your previous cable " without the " cable don't make a difference " a$$ hats camping out. 

So the rant is over but I still believe nobody should pay more than they think it's worth and if you spend more than you can afford, seek help 🙂