I wasn’t sure where to put this, so I went with Off Topic.
I just noticed that Drop has raised prices on their products such as HD6XX’s, HD58X’s, Elex’s, etc.
I guess it was bound to happen.
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Hello,
Yes, unfortunately, the amplifier manufacturers have done it before, so the rest is unfortunately following suit.
The excuse for this is clearly exaggerated, to be honest.
Instead of keeping the market with price stability, you throw away this stability for something that will take years to recover.
It’s simply time to have less manufacturing in Asia.
The whole misery originated there and they benefit from it more than anyone else.
Manufacturers need to rethink and manufacture more on their own doorstep and become less dependent.
Then people will be able to expect something reasonable for their money again and will be happy to pay the price for it.
It is not for nothing that critics say that people are getting their fingers burnt by new purchases at the moment.
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Would love to see more manufacturing return to North America, but it’s not realistic. Prices would have to raise very high before a lot of manufacturing would be profitable over here. Or even affordable for the majority. Most people want Focal quality at Wal-Mart pricing. 
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Such a shame. The desire to screw the consumer never wanes from these people, it seems. To me the “things will go exponentially higher” if companies finally decide to be brave and pull their manufacturing out of China is misleading. Yes, prices will have to rise a little bit due to the fact that these manufacturers will have to relocate and then pay a human wage to the people that build these things. Most consumers understand this and won’t object to a reasonable rise. But let’s be fair, consumers have gotten used to the current pricing structure and unreasonably expect it to stay that way. SO the consumer has to brave and be willing to accept a reasonable rise in pricing.
But they most likely won’t stop there. They won’t revise their profit model because they got used to using the slave labor that is being used now. So yeah, it’s very unlikely that anything will come home to be built. These people aren’t brave enough to take a stand and do the right thing. Instead, they will continue to be puppets and continue to manufacture there. AND raise their prices! I sort of anticipated this, which is why I got what I could now. For the time being, I’m more or less set. I’m not buying anything else for a long while. They can prey on someone else.
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america is getting a ton of manufacturing back. just have faith, takes time. not sure it will help prices any. but at least stuff is coming back.
and its all a scam. the rich, just got a hell of a lot richer, because of covid.
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Agreed. I hope you are correct about the MFG coming home. I haven’t really heard or read much about it, but that is good to hear. And you are right, I didn’t even mention the “COVID” excuse. I’m not sure the word COVID even revolves around the actual virus anymore. That ship has sailed already! But I’ll just leave that there. This thread is about Drop and their price hikes. Which reflects on the predatory nature of the industry in general.
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Don’t forget, you can’t blame the Chinese for their success (outside of exploting their own people).
Rich Americans and Canadians went to China looking to cut costs and screwing all their own employees. China never came over here and stole our factories. Our rich, ruling class gave them away.
And then Wal-Mart convinced everyone that everything should be cheap, cheap, cheap.
I ran my own business for fourteen years, selling fitness equipment. My biggest brand was Body Solid strength equipment. My best selling bench, by far, was the FID31. That is a flat/incline/decline bench. Great unit and I sold it for $299.00 for years. I would get asked every week or two why I didn’t sell Canadian made equipment. I replied that Canadian gear would be too expensive and people repeatedly said, “I would gladly pay a premium to support Canadian companies and Canadian workers”. I thought it was all bullshit, but it went on for years.
I was doing a big commercial job locally and the supplier for this job was a small outfit in British Columbia. I had an idea and talked to my supplier. He made a beautiful FID bench that listed at $549.00. Since we had a job coming my way anyway (Vancouver to Halifax, about 6,000Kms.), the shipping for the benches would essentially be free. I asked if he could give me a better price for 10 benches that I would try to promote to homeowners and he did. This bench is way beefier, heavier and nicer in every possible way. This bench would last any homeowner for decades, if not generations. I priced it at $399.00 and after a few months I went down to $375.00. Would you like to guess how many of these I sold to homeowners? Not a single one in about 15 months. They all went to condo gyms, hotels, community centre’s, fitness centre’s, etc.
Not one person to walk in off the street would pay the premium to buy Canadian. And the same for all of my high end clients that would spend $5K, $10K and higher on their home fitness centres.
People are cheap and just want the minimum acceptable quality.
I can’t imagine manufacturing ever coming back to Canada unless it is niche manufacturing or completely automated.
Owners are too greedy, people are too cheap and unions took it too far.
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I get what you are saying. I happen to be the guy that did buy that American bench over the Chinese one. For a marginal rise in cost, I can totally justify it. Got a much better product. But when the gap just gets stupid and you know full well there is profit taking or elitism going on, you have to draw the line and say no. The richie-riches, they don’t care. They just buy no matter how ridiculous the price. More power to them.
Really, this discussion shouldn’t be about Chinese products, per se. Not all Chinese stuff is crap or budget. There are plenty of reasons why one would not want to buy Chinese and what their evil bullshit has done to the world, but that is kind of a different discussion. I prefer to keep with this tier structure that seems to rule the audio game, that being budget, mid-fi and high end. No matter who’s it is. It just seems like things pricewise are getting out of control, especially on the higher end stuff. If it keeps up There won’t be mid-fi anymore and we are going to get priced right out of the market. That would sour a lot of people’s enjoyment of this hobby. And that would be sad, I think. I dunno, we will see how things go.
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I hear you but I feel lucky enough that I have doing this dance since 2015. I have discovered that mid-fi is my thing and I have some pretty great products. I won’t say end-game or that I am finished shopping, but the upgrade urge is much weaker now.
As @MON used to say, when I asked for advice, “What do you feel is lacking or needs to be improved?” I feel that my gear now is pretty nice and I have enough variety to be happy. Of course there is always something else out there. I am currently waiting on a very cheap amp (MT-602) to play with.
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I know what you mean. I have been playing around with audio stuff in a casual way most of my life. But I have only been getting more serious about audio from a gear perspective for about a year. I used to look through the gear catalogs my brother would have years ago and just laugh my ass off at the prices I would see there. Look at me now! I’m chasing that dragon.
But yeah, I’m happy to land and live in the world of mid-fi. It’s what I can comfortably do, and there is some great gear out there that I can easily live with. I am enjoying what I currently have very much. And I didn’t have to sell my soul to get it. I have an idea where I want to go next, but frankly when I look at the pricing to make that next jump I am repulsed. So who knows, this may be the end of the road for me. And if it is that would not be such a bad thing. I’m just buying music now.
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Everybody has been increasing prices recently unfortunately :(. I still think that value in the head-fi space keeps getting better though.
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I agree. The entry level and mid-fi categories offer Amazing gear for very reasonable prices.
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A whole thread about price increases and not a single mention of the word inflation? The usd monetary base has increased by 500% since 2008 or in other words: For every single 1 usd there are now 6 usd. Now is there 6 times more stuff today than in 2008? Surely not. The question isn’t so much, why stuff gets more expensive now, but why didn’t we see price increases earlier. Outsourcing manufacturing jobs to Asia and creating bullshit industries in the USA won’t help resolve the problem, but it didn’t create it in the first place. That is the accomplishment of the US fed.