ATC amps work in class a up to 2/3 of rated output.
I have no idea about Meridian, was never interested in their gear.
AVI use their own class AB bipolar amps in their active speakers.
Quested Audio uses MC2 Audio amps (very excellent class AB jobs) and XTA digital xovers/speaker management.
PMC uses Bryston amps and class d in their 'activated' and lesser actives AFAIK. Possibly Hypex according to rumours.
I have no idea about Meridian, was never interested in their gear.
AVI use their own class AB bipolar amps in their active speakers.
Quested Audio uses MC2 Audio amps (very excellent class AB jobs) and XTA digital xovers/speaker management.
PMC uses Bryston amps and class d in their 'activated' and lesser actives AFAIK. Possibly Hypex according to rumours.
Hi Mike,
My experience is from another business but some rules are common..
First, its all about money balance.
From that perspective you have to count next:
My experience is from another business but some rules are common..
First, its all about money balance.
From that perspective you have to count next:
- World financial situation. Can you be better and cheaper than Behringer or such companies... What are costs?
- Competition... Before all, try to make loudspeakers from all categories, sell them and you will see...
- Buyers and price. As mentioned...
- Production. If you have not money to pay workers for months without sale, what will happen?
- Are you designer? Can you make speakers by yourself? In case of crashes in company concerning relationships you can find yourself alone. If you can pay everything, for what period of time it will work? Think about rights, patents etc.
- If you go out of business, what will happen?
Last edited:
I find most of these comments very strange. Why is it that there are thousands of speaker producers around the world if it is so impossible to make a living from it? Isn't it true that most speakers sound really really bad? Or haven't you noticed? Anyone who has the talent to put a good sounding speaker on the market will have a good chance. Success will be very slow. It takes decades of dedication to earn recognition in any field of work. Keep your company as a side project to a paying job for now. Be dilligent. And don't let people drag you down to their level. Good grief.
Last edited:
Hello,
We start the speaker company some years ago with a philiosphy of true and high performance PA (yes, you look for hifi, but maybe my words be usefull) system at best price.
we run the small biz and do the best we could, and join the competition with brands like JBL, EV, Meyer and Martin in some tenders.
and after demonstration and some workshops , project owners use our products for the performance and quality.
for this job we learned also painting and became good box carpenter! to discover what we are looking to become KNOW HOW in each part and choose the right way to increase our profit. that finaly let us to find ourself as a competitor also with mid class Chinese made products.
some experience to share with you.
- have a philosophy in your mind. and discover what you want to say to your customer (Beauty? quality? performance? technology? power? or all?)
- always keep in mind that you will have dealers or maybe distributors, so you should apply good discount for them as important as advertises. to make them happy to work on your product or brand.
- work and research as high as you can on each part (also the smallest) of your manufacturing process. I mean the expensive process is not the best always, sometimes you can reach some way with much less cost that works much better than the expensive way you choose, this need experience and time, and make good profit when find the such answer for production.
- list all the component manufacurers and request for catalog and OEM price list of their current products. do NOT limit just to some wellknown component brands if you want to sell your brand not their brand.
- about the box designer, it may make you stop on the begining so you can use some box design software. and if you can pay for design, its better to request for a sample.
- you have the measurement tools to find out what s the error on your speker system but they dont guaranty the quality smell! so trust your ears after all or ask your friends to tell you the result and place some blind test A/B compare.
- make some more speakers of your choice and ask the users to test it. and tell you the errors or highlights. so you can find out, that, do they reach the philosophy of sound that you had in mind.
- about the financial of the speaker company, so many of the friends apply well so read them exactly
- note that in beggining of the job you may dont have profit that may let you STOP. but you pay for time and experience.
- if you did the job well, you can have more profit also in components!
you are not supposed to do all the job, make a balance between speaker factory and speaker biz company
enjoy the smell of baltic birch plywood during CNC process.
Majid
We start the speaker company some years ago with a philiosphy of true and high performance PA (yes, you look for hifi, but maybe my words be usefull) system at best price.
we run the small biz and do the best we could, and join the competition with brands like JBL, EV, Meyer and Martin in some tenders.
and after demonstration and some workshops , project owners use our products for the performance and quality.
for this job we learned also painting and became good box carpenter! to discover what we are looking to become KNOW HOW in each part and choose the right way to increase our profit. that finaly let us to find ourself as a competitor also with mid class Chinese made products.
some experience to share with you.
- have a philosophy in your mind. and discover what you want to say to your customer (Beauty? quality? performance? technology? power? or all?)
- always keep in mind that you will have dealers or maybe distributors, so you should apply good discount for them as important as advertises. to make them happy to work on your product or brand.
- work and research as high as you can on each part (also the smallest) of your manufacturing process. I mean the expensive process is not the best always, sometimes you can reach some way with much less cost that works much better than the expensive way you choose, this need experience and time, and make good profit when find the such answer for production.
- list all the component manufacurers and request for catalog and OEM price list of their current products. do NOT limit just to some wellknown component brands if you want to sell your brand not their brand.
- about the box designer, it may make you stop on the begining so you can use some box design software. and if you can pay for design, its better to request for a sample.
- you have the measurement tools to find out what s the error on your speker system but they dont guaranty the quality smell! so trust your ears after all or ask your friends to tell you the result and place some blind test A/B compare.
- make some more speakers of your choice and ask the users to test it. and tell you the errors or highlights. so you can find out, that, do they reach the philosophy of sound that you had in mind.
- about the financial of the speaker company, so many of the friends apply well so read them exactly
- note that in beggining of the job you may dont have profit that may let you STOP. but you pay for time and experience.
- if you did the job well, you can have more profit also in components!
you are not supposed to do all the job, make a balance between speaker factory and speaker biz company
enjoy the smell of baltic birch plywood during CNC process.
Majid
The OP said he had taken business management courses.
I don't think so.
Or, if he did, they were not particularly good ones.
The MAIN issue for a startup is one thing and one thing ONLY: capitalization.
The amount of cash you can muster will dictate almost 100% what you can and can not do. Period. That will tell you how you must operate, and what you can buy and build.
Overheads. Working solo? No overheads. Hire ONE SINGLE PERSON? Major overheads and grief.
After that you need to "run the numbers" backwards. Start with your finished product, look at the retail price point, and start subtracting ALL of your costs, including gas for your car and the electricity for the place, phone, and the cost of parts, and the cost of having stuff done for you, etc... also the "soft" costs, if you are using distributors or other resellers. Now you know what your margin is. Probably you will find that given your predetermined pricing it is nil.
But let's say it's not nil.
Now multiply that small amount x the number of sales = reasonable yearly income.
Divide by 12 = sales per month, divide by 4 = sales per week.
Now you are starting to see what ur up against ASSUMING for the moment that you can sell even one unit.
How many pieces will you have to buy for your first "run"?
How big is your first "run"?
No outside mfr is going to make you 12 speaker cabinets. Maybe as a prototype, maybe. But what if there is something not so good with them? 12 boxes of junk.
Look at how you are going to "best case" meet your income goals within 3 years, and then figure out how much $$ that will take, and then look at the "not quite best case".
Run some numbers.
You can not "farm out" the design of your speaker, unless you get lucky you will end up with an unknown result.
IF your marketing depends on "look" and only need a somewhat "run-of-the-mill" sonic result, then you need to figure out who your buyers are, in terms of demographics, and how you will reach them.
My advice on this - to anyone for that matter: do it as a "hobby", make and sell product, and learn at least the supply chains and manufacturing aspects. See if anyone wants what you make locally, then see if you can ramp it up and branch out. Otherwise you need a boatload of money.
WHY do you need a boatload of money?
MARKETING.
Even today, you have to market your product and get it seen by 1,000 people for every single sale you make, IF you have a really desirable product. Unless, of course, ur selling by word of mouth, which is a tricky business model at best...
It's not an easy business, and we haven't even talked about what to do IF you actually start small and have some success... that can kill you too.
Then too, there is a line between making stuff and giving yourself an income and a job and running a "business". Different stuff, different scale, different requirements.
My advice, go back to school, get an MBA. Build speakers for fun.
_-_-bear
I don't think so.
Or, if he did, they were not particularly good ones.
The MAIN issue for a startup is one thing and one thing ONLY: capitalization.
The amount of cash you can muster will dictate almost 100% what you can and can not do. Period. That will tell you how you must operate, and what you can buy and build.
Overheads. Working solo? No overheads. Hire ONE SINGLE PERSON? Major overheads and grief.
After that you need to "run the numbers" backwards. Start with your finished product, look at the retail price point, and start subtracting ALL of your costs, including gas for your car and the electricity for the place, phone, and the cost of parts, and the cost of having stuff done for you, etc... also the "soft" costs, if you are using distributors or other resellers. Now you know what your margin is. Probably you will find that given your predetermined pricing it is nil.
But let's say it's not nil.
Now multiply that small amount x the number of sales = reasonable yearly income.
Divide by 12 = sales per month, divide by 4 = sales per week.
Now you are starting to see what ur up against ASSUMING for the moment that you can sell even one unit.
How many pieces will you have to buy for your first "run"?
How big is your first "run"?
No outside mfr is going to make you 12 speaker cabinets. Maybe as a prototype, maybe. But what if there is something not so good with them? 12 boxes of junk.
Look at how you are going to "best case" meet your income goals within 3 years, and then figure out how much $$ that will take, and then look at the "not quite best case".
Run some numbers.
You can not "farm out" the design of your speaker, unless you get lucky you will end up with an unknown result.
IF your marketing depends on "look" and only need a somewhat "run-of-the-mill" sonic result, then you need to figure out who your buyers are, in terms of demographics, and how you will reach them.
My advice on this - to anyone for that matter: do it as a "hobby", make and sell product, and learn at least the supply chains and manufacturing aspects. See if anyone wants what you make locally, then see if you can ramp it up and branch out. Otherwise you need a boatload of money.
WHY do you need a boatload of money?
MARKETING.
Even today, you have to market your product and get it seen by 1,000 people for every single sale you make, IF you have a really desirable product. Unless, of course, ur selling by word of mouth, which is a tricky business model at best...
It's not an easy business, and we haven't even talked about what to do IF you actually start small and have some success... that can kill you too.
Then too, there is a line between making stuff and giving yourself an income and a job and running a "business". Different stuff, different scale, different requirements.
My advice, go back to school, get an MBA. Build speakers for fun.
_-_-bear
Interesting (business) in my view. Competition is strong from China with 10,000 units a model, "business people" also say that you need to be ready, with investment/development capital, to lose money for the next couple 5/10 years if you want to go abroad/international...
Last edited:
This is a fascinating thread with lots of interesting comments.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, though, I don't think this can be done without a big breakthrough, in terms of physics, design, materials or the like. Look at all the big speaker companies of the past -- they were invention-driven, commercializing a breakthrough of some kind. If they didn't have a breakthrough, why would anyone have cared?
I've been in various rooms at hifi trade shows sitting next to (very chatty) magazine reviewers, and they really want to know: what is the technological novelty? What's getting patented? What's the rationale behind whatever exotic materials or techniques? In other words, why is this thing not a "me too" product? (Of course they are generally naive and easily fooled by whatever jargon...)
Going forward -without- a breakthrough seems seems to imply that "these aren't really better sonically but they are slighly improved in terms of X," with X being aesthetics, price, warranty, availability, WAF, hipster buzz, whatever. But not sound.
One exception to the breakthrough "requirement" would be something retro / vintage-inspired and (by today's standards) huge. Some guys hit 60 and want to recapture the past, and maybe they have a dedicated room so size and WAF are irrelevant.
The folks building that stuff don't really do it for the money, though. They are living the hobby and the business subsidizes their addiction
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, though, I don't think this can be done without a big breakthrough, in terms of physics, design, materials or the like. Look at all the big speaker companies of the past -- they were invention-driven, commercializing a breakthrough of some kind. If they didn't have a breakthrough, why would anyone have cared?
I've been in various rooms at hifi trade shows sitting next to (very chatty) magazine reviewers, and they really want to know: what is the technological novelty? What's getting patented? What's the rationale behind whatever exotic materials or techniques? In other words, why is this thing not a "me too" product? (Of course they are generally naive and easily fooled by whatever jargon...)
Going forward -without- a breakthrough seems seems to imply that "these aren't really better sonically but they are slighly improved in terms of X," with X being aesthetics, price, warranty, availability, WAF, hipster buzz, whatever. But not sound.
One exception to the breakthrough "requirement" would be something retro / vintage-inspired and (by today's standards) huge. Some guys hit 60 and want to recapture the past, and maybe they have a dedicated room so size and WAF are irrelevant.
The folks building that stuff don't really do it for the money, though. They are living the hobby and the business subsidizes their addiction
One of my favorite quotes that applies to most all of what we know in this economy world:
"All wealth is created and all jobs are created, by risk taking entrepreneurs".
To anyone wondering about that quote?, think of where you are employed right now! Someone at one time took the risk to venture out on their own, or had a dream and went for it!..
Many fail at it for all kinds of reasons, some make a decent living, some grow corporations, some grow massive industry or franchises, and on and on..
Do your research, be wise, learn from those before you, and pay attention to those that you see as mentors etc.. For example, a plumber who decides to venture out on his/her own, they will have people in that trade that they can refer to, learn from, and respect. Usually the guy that's already been doing that trade for 30-40 years etc.
The odds are against you in the speaker selling/manufacturing business compared to the plumber example, but it's not impossible! And certainly if it wasn't for people that took that risk, or thought outside of the normal routine they're in, we wouldn't have most all of what we know today!
Cheers and good luck!
"All wealth is created and all jobs are created, by risk taking entrepreneurs".
To anyone wondering about that quote?, think of where you are employed right now! Someone at one time took the risk to venture out on their own, or had a dream and went for it!..
Many fail at it for all kinds of reasons, some make a decent living, some grow corporations, some grow massive industry or franchises, and on and on..
Do your research, be wise, learn from those before you, and pay attention to those that you see as mentors etc.. For example, a plumber who decides to venture out on his/her own, they will have people in that trade that they can refer to, learn from, and respect. Usually the guy that's already been doing that trade for 30-40 years etc.
The odds are against you in the speaker selling/manufacturing business compared to the plumber example, but it's not impossible! And certainly if it wasn't for people that took that risk, or thought outside of the normal routine they're in, we wouldn't have most all of what we know today!
Cheers and good luck!
Last edited:
Interesting topic. It reads as if the speaker market isn't just a saturated marked, but is actually a declining market. Unlike in the golden days of audio, there are now so many things people can spend their cash on. An iPod and a docking station seems to be all most people want. But I have a feeling that if you had a really special product, you should still be able to make a good business out of it, right? I'd like to hear the opinions of some of the industry professionals around here. Speaker dave? Gedlee? Tom Danley? Am I missing anyone ?
@ Mike, I think you need a good business plan. It would seem your products have little to nothing to distinguish themselves from the competition. How are you going to get customers to buy your product?
I guess you should try and do some best practice benchmarking.
Does anybody know an example of a new speaker business that is doing really well? I'm thinking Emerald Physics, maybe? Are there others? Unfortunately many nice speaker companies with rich histories and good products went bankrupt in recent years. What went wrong in their cases and what did the ones who have survived do well?
EDIT: By the way, in contrary to what some other posters have said, I think that pretty good speakers can be had for little money these days. It's going to be hard to compete with the big boys sound-per-dollar-wise. You'll have to aim at the high-end to be competitive.
?@ Mike, I think you need a good business plan. It would seem your products have little to nothing to distinguish themselves from the competition. How are you going to get customers to buy your product?
I guess you should try and do some best practice benchmarking.
Does anybody know an example of a new speaker business that is doing really well? I'm thinking Emerald Physics, maybe? Are there others? Unfortunately many nice speaker companies with rich histories and good products went bankrupt in recent years. What went wrong in their cases and what did the ones who have survived do well?
EDIT: By the way, in contrary to what some other posters have said, I think that pretty good speakers can be had for little money these days. It's going to be hard to compete with the big boys sound-per-dollar-wise. You'll have to aim at the high-end to be competitive.
Last edited:
Looks of the product and sound will do the trick, the end user normal does not understand the physics and background the product.
So you can come up with good theory it will not be to interest of the end user who want to like what he sees when he or she buys a new toy.
And what is the right price tag, to make enough sales compared to your profit and production capacity.
So you can come up with good theory it will not be to interest of the end user who want to like what he sees when he or she buys a new toy.
And what is the right price tag, to make enough sales compared to your profit and production capacity.
Old guys with the money to buy high end speakers mostly aren't on social media. Probably half of those want a name to brag about as they can't hear anyway, but have to brag at the country club what their Macintosh is playing through. You HAVE to win them as they have the money.
Most everyone 20 to 30 is completely deaf from ear buds, and those 30 to 40 from car stereos. So your target is older. I am way older and can still hear better than any of my Nephews. (testing tweeters just the other day) We still sit and listen to music. No movie, no surround, no distractions. A speaker that may be worth making is called a hearing aid. A lot of people are going to need them!
Dealers, reps, ad guys, pub guys, publication guys, show guys, suppliers, subs, union managers, the list goes on. All "nice" people to deal with. Just so you are prepared.
What do you think it will take to get placed on Cruchfield or Audio Advisor? How do you expect to get rave reviews from serious pubs like Stereophile, among others. How do yo expect to get in the top ten on Google? It takes more than a really good pair of speakers.
I wish you luck. Start soon so you have time to do it several times. Save you r best name for about the third time.
Quite a generalization. Ryan (tuxedocivic) doesn't seem deaf to me, just in need of practice, quite a few other local youngsters that are also carrying the torch.
dave
PS: the TVR in your name refer to the obscure British sports car? My boss at the hifi shop had one...
I totally disagree tvrgeek. I wouldn't waste my time with those buyers. Like you said, they want a name brand, which this guy doesn't have. Young people my age want a new era of hifi. I have an idea of what that looks like. Hifi iPod dock anyone? I just built one and in the process of another. Hifi home theatre? Ya, big bucks there. Hifi stereo as it was once known, is nearly dead.
Thanks Dave, care to train an eager learner?
Thanks Dave, care to train an eager learner?
The key point to focus on is the difference between a viable business and something that is more or less a job or a hobby that makes a small profit.
Demographics are of critical importance, that is part of understanding your market and so who your customer(s) are.
Speakers for two channel hi-fi are a small segment of the total speaker market. Higher quality speakers are yet a smaller segment. Subtract all home theater and all speakers sold through mass marketers. Now divide that by all the companies that make speakers... now you're not even one of them when you start...
_-_-bear
Demographics are of critical importance, that is part of understanding your market and so who your customer(s) are.
Speakers for two channel hi-fi are a small segment of the total speaker market. Higher quality speakers are yet a smaller segment. Subtract all home theater and all speakers sold through mass marketers. Now divide that by all the companies that make speakers... now you're not even one of them when you start...
_-_-bear
I can understand the attraction of wanting to make gear that you like as a hobbyist for a living or at least partial income. I've thought about doing so myself at times, but apart from dealing with all the issues of marketing etc, the two huge negatives for me were;
- once it becomes a business, it's not a hobby any more and the business side of it will almost certainly screw with the hobbyist pleasure aspect.
- dealing with audiophiles.
- once it becomes a business, it's not a hobby any more and the business side of it will almost certainly screw with the hobbyist pleasure aspect.
- dealing with audiophiles.
care to train an eager learner?
I can help. The generalized goal is 10,000 hrs of training (in any endeavor). I was lucky to get an intense 9 years and hit 10k well before i was 30.
dave
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.