Small scale speaker business?

[bigwill]

Is it possible these days to make any money from building loudspeakers? Not as a huge business, just selling the odd pair..

If I could get the cabinets professionally made & nice looking, a speaker that cost say �0„5500 to make could probably sell for �0„51000 and probably beat anything commercial for that much

Even selling just one every month would be a helpful income boost, and hopefully word of mouth between quite well off people will improve business

The intention of this isn't a huge money making venture, just a little money on the side.. (and the enjoyment of building speakers)

Edit: If your browser has trouble showing the pound symbol make sure your browser is set to Western encoding

[Taco]

I tried the following charsets , but none work.

8859-15
8859-1
Win-1252
UTF-8

Back to the question, I think it is difficult to beat a commercial loudspeaker. If it's that easy others already did that. Also do not underestimate the importance of the "brand".

[Lindell]

Sure with $200k in marketing.......

[richie00boy]

It's very tough, as me and a friend have found out. There is a lot of stigma against an unknown brand.

edit: I'm in the UK and still can't fathom out your money.

[Svante]

Originally posted by bigwill
Is it possible these days to make any money from building loudspeakers? Not as a huge business, just selling the odd pair..

I think the way to find out is to build a couple of pairs, spread the word around friends that you are selling, and take it from there. If the speakers are good and decent looking your friends will do the advertising. If it grows, it grows. If it doesn't, then you have at least tried it.

That's my 5 öre.

[ShinOBIWAN]

Originally posted by Taco
Also do not underestimate the importance of the "brand".

Good point.

Brand is everything to the average consumer. Its the whole reason why average speaker manufacturers with a long history and many glowing reviews continue to expand their user base. It doesn't matter that you could get more for your money because the brand and the looks are what count for most folks.

If you use well known and well respected drive units thats a good start. Build them pretty and market them with lots enthusiasm would also help. You'd also need to be able to demo them to prospective buyers.

It going to be tough though. As an example, look at Linkwitz's Orion. One of the better loudspeaker around yet most folks would laugh at it and go buy a pair of B&W.

[bigwill]

Oh I definately agree with the importance people place in brands. If I were to do this I'd partly rely on word of mouth (hopefully they would sound good enough for this to happen ) to spread the popularity.

[gary f]

As an experienced salesman told me:
Make the prettiest box you can, with whatever cheap/junk drivers and cheapest crossover you can find. Anyway, nobody care about the sound!

it's exagerated, but still partly true. Bose is still a reference in quality audio for most people.

My experience is that very few people will spend serious money on a unknown brand loudspeaker unless they know you personnaly. So it's better start with cheaper stuff... and make it look pretty.

[bigwill]

Hmm

I guess I could come up with a visually appealing design which is also cheap but carefully designed so it actually does sound good.

If only there was a super quick way to build speaker cabinets

[bigwill]

I could use pleasing sounding speakers like Fostex full rangers along with helper woofers

The helper woofers could be 8 inchers mounted in a tall but slim transmission line. They could be shaped in such a way to be a conversation piece...