Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Confession #4 billion

I think a lot of stores are feeling that they have to decide whether to focus on high end audio, keep their margins, but with relatively low sales levels, or to focus on home theater, cut their costs and margins, and have a chance to grow or at least remain reasonably large. I guess your store has made their choice.

I imagine they are making those changes in the hope that they *won't* go away.

It's sad, really. Even if dealer A does a good job and adds value, if dealers B, C and D do a crappy job then we start to lose faith in dealers and end up buying online at the lowest price we can find and rely on communities like this to provide the support and guidance that we used to get from dealers.

I have to admit I have seen so much bad info from dealers in the last couple of years (while my friends were shopping for HT systems) that it's hard to argue in favour of the old "reasonable margins, experienced staff" dealer model any more except for the high end / low volume suppliers who can afford to be picky about who resells their gear.