Wilsons new flagship

People should not be offended if someone wants to pay $800K+ for a pair of speakers.  I know people who place bets on sporting events of $750K.  If you are making $1 million a day, do you really care about cost vs. state of the art?  Don’t think so.  It may not be what I would spend on a system, but I am no where near that league.  

As for Wilson’s pricing decisions . . . They are in business to make money, not to charge for assembling parts.  There are numerous hidden costs, such as R&D, salaries, cost of manufacturing facilities, insurance, benefits, taxes .  .. in other words, there are all sorts of costs that go into making a speaker besides adding up the cost of the parts and the mystery materials.  I am not trying to justify Wilson’s or any other manufacturer’s pricing decisions, especially regarding the aforementioned $110K for a custom paint, which under any theory seems ridiculously excessive, but microeconomic theory says that if your pricing is not at the intersection of supply and demand, you will lose money, which in theory causes price correction. Isn’t that the ultimate issue?  Don’t like the price, don’t buy it?

@moto_man 

Well said.  The free market is a wonderful system.  Wilson Audio employs about 50 people, plus supporting suppliers, dealers, marketing entities, and various businesses and individuals in their operational chain.  Perhaps a few hundred people have good jobs related to the existence of Wilson Audio and their rich clientele.   

I was at the THE show in LA yesterday ( which BTW was a BIG let down). Anyhow, i had a very interesting conversation that relates to this thread with a knowledgable and nice manufacturer there. Essentially, he was telling me that pricing high end gear is a very tricky thing, because if he was to price his new top level gear at a number that most would consider as reasonable ( say below $10K) he would then create an impression with some ’cork sniffers’ that this gear was not that good! OTOH, if he prices the gear at a price that is in the stratosphere, he creates demand and an impression among the same cork sniffers that the gear is what he says it is..the best he can deliver. This sales psychology is unfortunately prevalent in the hobby for two reasons I believe, one is what he says, and two because there are some folk to whom the price can never be too high!  These folks are simply buying by price...nothing more. ( many times it is their rep who does the buying, the actual buyer has nothing to do with buying anything). 

For the manufacturer it is simply easier to sell just a few at huge mark-up than many at small mark-ups. Particularly if one is a small endeavor with limited supply capacity, which almost all of these folks are.