Starting a new Hi-Fi audio brand

You are THE TRUTH my friend!
I can only correct a little: "Limited liability" type of company registration is close to 500-1000EUR setup in different fees, you can make it done for ~200EUR one time if you do everything yourself, not that hard, but then the fun begins: depending on the country you need to have startup capital - ~3000EUR in my country, then you have to be employed yourself and hire someone to make accounting. That is easily 2-3k/month with minimal salary of ~900EUR/neto, don't remember the exact numbers, will take a look, it is an interesting subject. That LTD company is more or less a must, if you go for VAT registerred subject.
If you are starting business by not registering company, there are some other forms depending on the country - it is much cheaper, but then the liability kinda goes up for you, so for start you can do with ~100EUR/month for various permits.

So, for trading/manufacturing company of 2 persons you MUST make margins (not turnover!) at least ~7-10k EUR/month for it to be alive. Just ALIVE, with minimal wages. If you are on the simpler business side, with "business permits" - you have to be very careful not to get into legal trouble or similar, but then it is still needed ~1k/EUR month/person to survive in EU, without mortgage fees, and double of that for more serious bills and some for rainy days.

1-2 cables/day - ...they have to be with gold, diamonds, snake oil, blackbody generation, dark energy attraction, Bose-Einstein condensate on the sub-molecular level or you name it. Creativity-to-the-ELEVEN level!
I can comment from experience - just as Chris did. In my country of residence (Belgium), it cost me exactly 1000 euro to set up my business with a silent partner (my brother). Accounting is done these days mostly automated - I upload all invoices, bills etc every 3 months (cost me an hour and a half every three months) and accounting runs about 600 euro per year, with the first year double that. I would be daft to hire a fulltime accountant who spends the day twiddling his tumbs!

I am with Chris. All you armchair advisers have absolutely no clue.
At least have the decency to stop discouraging someone based on pie in the sky.

Jan
 
I can comment from experience - just as Chris did. In my country of residence (Belgium), it cost me exactly 1000 euro to set up my business with a silent partner (my brother). Accounting is done these days mostly automated - I upload all invoices, bills etc every 3 months (cost me an hour and a half every three months) and accounting runs about 600 euro per year, with the first year double that. I would be daft to hire a fulltime accountant who spends the day twiddling his tumbs!

I am with Chris. All you armchair advisers have absolutely no clue.
At least have the decency to stop discouraging someone based on pie in the sky.

Jan

It depends on the regulation, depends on the business type, depends on the "corporation" type. Even if EU should be pretty uniform, but still there are many many different requirements from country to country. In my country there are at least 4 different legal types to start business and requirements differ for them a lot.

Show your muscles plz: tell me how many businesses as legal entities you had/have as a part owner or full owner? Just tell the number. It does not matter if they were successful or not. How many of them were/are registered VAT holder?
 
Nothing personally to you - please don't be offended, that was not my intend. But in general I read many comments from people, don't remember who, like the need to hire an accountant for thousands, for example. Someone who had done what the OP was trying to do would know that's unnecessary.
That what was triggered my response. Let us try to help the OP with actual experience, not scare him with random horror stories.

Jan
 
When I was fifteen, I had my eyes on the prize. I started planning and discussing my options of building very high quality yet reasonably priced speaker systems, maybe two or three models only and bringing them to the masses. The affordable Cadillac if you will.
By the time I was twenty, I had learned a lot more about why not than why.
But you never did and have regretted it ever since? You must have been so worldly by the age of 20. Good for you.

Hi-Fi said “ My background as an employee includes 10 years of managing two small-medium-sized Hi-Fi and High-End loudspeaker factories in the EU. So, my core skills are deep knowledge of the market and production nuances.” Not exactly a whippersnapper then....
Perhaps our valued members missed the part about ‘when you are learning’
65 and still learning.
That said, I was lucky enough to hang my skates up yesterday.
Now that you've come down from your high roof, have you thought about doing some positive motivational contributions in your spare time?
 
Modern "hifi" equipment is controlled using a remote control. This contrasts with vintage hifi equipment which had all kinds of knobs and levers. I miss the appearance and hands on experience with modern hifi. A new hifi equipment using vintage style controls will definitely appeal to me as a potential buyer.
 
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