Originally Posted by
Asliang
Well honestly I don't know the economics of this AT ALL. But I would say one way to test that market would be to explore the costs of maybe hiring someone just to go to the major trade shows (AXPONA, RMAF, LA Audio Show, The Home Entertainment show, etc). I believe Salk is an ID brand that shows up at most of these shows so maybe you could ask them for details? They seem to have a market for high end ID speakers (soundscapes, exoticas).
I know a lot of small vendors that sell headphones all manage to show up at the tradeshows. However, I understand the economics of headphones is quite different from speakers, for example RMAF or Canjam the vendors just rent a booth/table for about $600-1000. Whereas for speakers you would have to at the minimum rent a show room, which would cost you about $3-4k for standard show room. Plus you have to pay to ship and insure the speakers, and hire somebody to present the speakers for you (some vendors just wing it and will just hire local kids and have them hand out brochures, others have long term employees represent them).
I mean you could dip your toes and do a show exhibit and see how many extra orders you get--assuming you are looking to expand your market for certain models. This will obviously involve some expense, but at least in the headphone space, it seems like a lot of vendors show up, even small ones, so the economics of it must make sense even for smaller operations to advertise at these shows (after all it's a way to immediately demo multiple brands against each other, even if it's in a somewhat sub-optimal noisy show floor). I can't imagine the cost being the biggest issue, probably time and energy is the biggest thing here.