When you manufacture a luxury product, you don’t care about “many people”, or even “most people”. You care about people buying luxury products, which is a minority.
And before you call me an arrogant prick, this in no way whatsoever hurts the people who can’t afford it. All you have to do is not buy it, look the other way, and not give a ****.
hahaha.
i've bought designer things before.
thing is, most arent what they used to be.
once it was unique craftmanship and long times to build.
not so much now. if at all...
we've outsourced so much manufacturing to China and cheap labour and the quality control has improved so much.
look at Nike shoes. they still retail at higher end of market. Made in China for $10 to manufacturer. $200 on shelves.
this is where tariffs are stupid. the same manufacturer can make the same quality shoe and sell it direct (minus branding) to you for $20 and double their profit. you can pay the tariff (on the $10 or less declared item cost) and get it for less than $30. same materials. same build quality.
all tariffs are going to do is move people away from the middle man distribution model.
a speaker isnt a luxury item.
there's nothing unique or valuable about it.
there's no rose water scented tanned hide of an endangered species performed on one moon alignment with Jupiter...
it's simply tuned bits of metal and audio drivers and speaker.
packaged nicely. at a high price.
we owned a Porsche Macan. the basic model was extremely plasticy (we had a loan one during a service). every option was like $500 or $5000. sure the leather trim interior package made it feel so much better. and the sales and aftersales experience is great. the car even performed well. but later we bought a VW Tourareg. same drive platform. the top model was almost the same interior feel.
there's nothing miraculous about a $350000 car. except they arent common.
and that's fine if that's all you care about.
same with wine.
i can taste the difference between a $5 bottle and $20 bottle. after that... it gets marginal. i prefer the $20 champagne-style Aussie bubbles to Moet (who own the Aussie winery).
the days of luxury brands are nearly over. so 90s.
kids here are wearing cheap no brand stuff from shops their grandparents shop at.
they inhabit a different world with different values.
they cant afford to buy homes.
they buy differently with different value systems.
a speaker made with recycled aluminium is more likely to be bought by them.