factorydirectsound.com sells Klipsch at cost!

[Daddy Dee]

My take on this thread:

I am personally delighted to have an authorized Klipsch dealer as a member of this forum and believe that other forum members would agree. Also that members of this forum would eagerly stop in Chiparoo's store to complete his day by asking to demo gear and bother him all at the same time.

Further, forum members, IMO would be pleased to browse his website. There is obviously energetic support for authorized dealers. I'd say this is a pretty sympathetic audience for dealers trying to compete with pirate/grey market gear sold on the internet.

Chiparoo, there are folks who want to show up at your place. Welcome.

[chipperooh]

I am a dealer, but not the Factorysounddirect guy. I posted the site to expose it!

[chipperooh]

my website is under construction: www.hometheatershowrooms.com. My store is in Greensboro, NC. We sell Klipsch, Kef, Jamo, NAD, Denon, others... We are a custom retailer since 1997.

[PhilH]

Chip:

Welcome to the Klipsch team! I just talked with Dan at your store as a follow-up to the call you made to us on Monday. We do appreciate and understand your concerns, and as David and Trey have already stated here, we have a public statement here on our website (the "Unauthorized Dealer Warning), and have an active team that monitors and acts against these sites that, as I have found after over 4 years in dealing with all of them covertly, consistently deceive their customers. I have had no products shipped yet with charges for them to my card, obviously used products shipped, damaged products shipped, even dusty products shipped. The first fact is that no matter what these sites claim, the products they claim to come from Klipsch have no Klipsch warranty whatsoever. If you are not satisfied with the yes, opened box product in nearly all cases, then they not only charge you the exorbitant (yes, that is part of the way they get you) shipping charges to return it, they charge you a restocking fee to boot! When they cannot get product to ship to you, they lie and say that we are backordered on it and cannot ship it to them. We do not ship anything to these unscrupulous sellers, whether it be product or parts.

Last January, we filed several lawsuits against the major offending sites and were very successful in significantly reducing our brand presence on these and many other sites. There are still some sites out there though who just don't "get it": we will continue to do everything necessary to protect the Klipsch brand from unscrupulous "here today, gone tomorrow" sellers and will not stop in our efforts until their deception of our customers, both loyal and new, has ended!

PhilH

[Trey Cannon]

Chip,

I too welcome you to the forum...You will find a fine bunch of folks here. Some from your area. I am sure you will have their support as well as ours in pointing other members to "real" dealer like yourself. We are proud to have dealers that care about the product and dealing in an honest manner.

If ever you have questions about a product or need our help in any way, Please drop us / me a line.

[Allan Songer]

There is NOTHING wrong with a "66% to 100% markup" on Klipsch speakers. Anyone who complains about margins like this has NEVER been in the retail business. Without gross margins above 30-40% and without MASSIVE volume, no "independent" dealer could POSSIBLY survive. Pay a little extra, support the mom and pop, pay your LOCAL and STATE taxes and we will all be better off in the long run. Otherwise you'll be buying Chinese-made Klipsch at Wal*Mart in a few years and all those nice folks in Indy and Hope will be WORKING at Wal*Mart or flipping burgers!

[middlecreekguy]

The mark-up on stereo cartridges is twice that of speakers. Just a fact of life.

[lipinski]

huh. very interesting thread.

Message to the Moderators:

as an individual with a significant future purchase in mind and a loyal owner of a pair of Forte's for 15 years, I have to say that I'm very disappointed in the fact that my only choice that I have to get local representation about Klipsch products is Ultimate Electronics. ick. I went there saying that I wanted to build a home theater incorporating my forte's as the mains. The 20 somethin' year old new very little about forte's. was very willing to sell me whatever reference line speaker that I could afford. He was willing to make the recommendation that the reference line speakers "were a good match". Their answer regarding anything from the heritage line is that "they can get them". They don't even have gd heritage speaker for me to listen to. I offered to carry my forte's to the showroom to listen to them with the refernces, but all in all. This is a lousy situation.

Since then I've spent untold hours reading hundreds of threads coming to the conclusion that I need to find an Academy to buy from ebay and trying continuing to read/study/investigate what speakers to buy for surrounds and rears. However, I don't think I'm going to get a hell of a lot of help from Ultimate. I'm find significantly more sound advice from this forum.

When I bought my Forte's (in Austin, Texas) there was a locally owned shop in business named, Hi Fidelity. Sadly, they went out of business; and that's the real problem here.

This is the background behind me having to admit that I was seriously considering buying Klipsch products from ebay. Not just the Academy, but reference bookshelf speakers for other rooms. Because as others have said, with speakers; foregoing the warranty is a real possibility. If you're not getting sound advice from the local dealers; what are you getting? I'm can imagine Klipsch having a program to find the best dealers they can. However, many have the dilema of living in a town without a hi end retailer.

Ultimate Electronics is not a substitute for one IMO. On the other hand, Klipsch could work to get the heritage line into UE; train all those folks; and maybe the situation would be better. nah.

[dkp]

----------------

On 11/27/2004 8:03:55 PM lipinski wrote:

huh. very interesting thread.

Message to the Moderators:

as an individual with a significant future purchase in mind and a loyal owner of a pair of Forte's for 15 years, I have to say that I'm very disappointed in the fact that my only choice that I have to get local representation about Klipsch products is Ultimate Electronics. ick. I went there saying that I wanted to build a home theater incorporating my forte's as the mains. The 20 somethin' year old new very little about forte's. was very willing to sell me whatever reference line speaker that I could afford. He was willing to make the recommendation that the reference line speakers "were a good match". Their answer regarding anything from the heritage line is that "they can get them". They don't even have gd heritage speaker for me to listen to. I offered to carry my forte's to the showroom to listen to them with the refernces, but all in all. This is a lousy situation.

Since then I've spent untold hours reading hundreds of threads coming to the conclusion that I need to find an Academy to buy from ebay and trying continuing to read/study/investigate what speakers to buy for surrounds and rears. However, I don't think I'm going to get a hell of a lot of help from Ultimate. I'm find significantly more sound advice from this forum.

When I bought my Forte's (in Austin, Texas) there was a locally owned shop in business named, Hi Fidelity. Sadly, they went out of business; and that's the real problem here.

This is the background behind me having to admit that I was seriously considering buying Klipsch products from ebay. Not just the Academy, but reference bookshelf speakers for other rooms. Because as others have said, with speakers; foregoing the warranty is a real possibility. If you're not getting sound advice from the local dealers; what are you getting? I'm can imagine Klipsch having a program to find the best dealers they can. However, many have the dilema of living in a town without a hi end retailer.

Ultimate Electronics is not a substitute for one IMO. On the other hand, Klipsch could work to get the heritage line into UE; train all those folks; and maybe the situation would be better. nah.

----------------

lipinski-I heard that Klipsch is working on something right now to get dealers to display Heritage models.

[psg]

On 11/27/2004 10:42:48 AM Allan Songer wrote:

There is NOTHING wrong with a "66% to 100% markup" on Klipsch speakers.

Nothing wrong for those selling them I suppose. But I'm told the markup on amplifiers is much lower.

Anyone who complains about margins like this has NEVER been in the retail business.

You're right. I'm in that 99.99% of the population.

Without gross margins above 30-40% and without MASSIVE volume, no "independent" dealer could POSSIBLY survive. Pay a little extra, support the mom and pop, pay your LOCAL and STATE taxes and we will all be better off in the long run. Otherwise you'll be buying Chinese-made Klipsch at Wal*Mart in a few years and all those nice folks in Indy and Hope will be WORKING at Wal*Mart or flipping burgers!

Well, I can't get Heritage within 500 km of me, possibly more. The local Klipsch dealer is not a Mom & Pop store; it's a chain (www.dumoulin.ca). They are expensive, their display is crappy, the salespeople know little about the product and don't know of the existence of the Heritage line. Now tell me again why i should buy there?

I have yet to get a good demo of the Reference line! Maybe someday someone from the forum will provide one to me over a beer. That would be nice. A lot nicer than my local store...

[lynnm]

"There is NOTHING wrong with a "66% to 100% markup" on Klipsch speakers."

Damned Straight!

As a former retailer ( LOST MY *** ). I can honestly state that a 66% - 100% markup is barely adequate.

Most people do not understand the difference between Markup and Gross and Net Profit. ( Markup = Selling Price - Cost Price ).

Gross Profit = Selling Price - Landed Cost ( Landed Cost = Seller's Purchase Cost + Applicable Taxes + Freight ). For the sake of argument let's say the gross amounts to $900.00

His salesperson will have to be paid 15-25% of the gross ( $135-$225.00).Thus we arrive at a profit in the neighbourhood of $615-$715.

This will then be further reduced by additional overhead costs ( rent/mortgage interest + advertising + utilities + interest on operating loan + cost of support staff salaries etc.)

In sum unless one can sell a sh**load of stuff at a decent price .. The odds are that one will find themselves sitting in front of a computer trying to explain basic economics to the short sighted.

[psg]

The odds are that one will find themselves sitting in front of a computer trying to explain basic economics to the short sighted.

So I guess I should feel targetted by that.

But the fact remains that my local brick store is not providing an adequate service to justify hundreds of dollars from me. I can order a product as well as they can; They don't stock the high end Klipsch anyway, so I can't audition it before I buy. I have zero incentive to give them 50% more than I can find elsewhere. Part of that might be being in Canada, with artifically elevated prices compared to local brands such as Paradigm.

I'm sorry, but I'd rather buy direct (if that were possible) and give Klipsch my hard-earned money. They actually make the things, remember? My local store doesn't do much to deserve as much money as Klipsch gets.

[ctruett]

1st time poster here. I'm having some of the same problems that everybody here is having.

1 - I like to buy from the internet. It's a whole lot easier. I would guess that 80% of my purchases come from the internet. I very rarely like to get out in traffic to go hear somebody try to sell me something when I have already done my own research. I remember going to Best Buy and asking if "MD" on the car stero was for mini disc? I already knew, but wanted reassurance. The punk kid said, "NO! (with a laugh) That means multi-disc." Like the post before this one, why should I give my money to them when they don't know anything? I was at Circuit City and heard the sales person tell 5 people in a row that the speaker systems were the exact same ones that he had in his house. They were all different speaker systems.

2 - I am looking for the reference line speakers. I have been for over a year now. When I first started looking last year, there were at least a dozen websites that sold this line. I didn't buy because I knew I was about to move and we didn't have that money laying around to be spent. Now after we have moved and I think we have the spare cash, it's hard to find them.

3 - I went today to our local dealer. Yes, I fought the downtown traffic to actually find the shop. As if traffic wasn't enough, there had to be a funeral and road work going on. He seemed to be a cool guy. He gave me a brief demo with a music cd. However, I already had it in my mind that these were the ones that I wanted to purchase. Then he changed the price on me 3 times. Each time, the price went up. The last time he changed it was right after he asked where I worked.

I couldn't find the door out with all the red flags popping up. He of course, went through the spill of not buying them off of the internet and to buy from him and he will repair them anytime it is needed. Then the next sentence was that they should never need repairing. "They should last without any wear and tear for 90 years." Which gives me the impression that a warranty isn't really needed.

4 - So I go back online just to check against his quote. Now there are only 2 stores that sell them online. A few others sell through ebay. Even with paying the shipping, I can get a better price.

5 - Since I always buy from the internet, I must always be getting grey market goods or fakes. However, I never have problems with anything. Everything I have saved money on, has worked well.

Like one of the last posts, why can't Klipsch just sell direct? Bose has their own stores. Sony has started their on stores. Why not Klipsch?

I'm still seeking a reference speaker package!