Moderators, if this post is inappropriate then please it
"...offering finished speakers would open up a potentially much larger market."
Yes but... that comes with it's own downsides Unless you would be building
each speaker to order with reasonable lead times. I think that a large part of
why many of us are here is because GR Research is different from most other
audio companies. Danny gives DIY'ers a slice of high-end at an affordable cost.
That he shares truely useful knowledge quite openly is priceless. I feel that
making available flat-packs for most of GR Research's designs might be a
less risky investment and be more inline with Danny's current business model?
A question for Danny and the builders: Has previous runs of flat-packs been
worthwhile?
If you guys have built speakers, then you know the interest in lower dollar ones, as far as your time, isn't that practical. It doesn't take that much more time for large speakers than it does bookshelves once you got production operations going, yet the bookshelves aren't worth nearly as much. Here's the thing, whether or not it's in a price range everyone wants, it's going to be something Danny's mind deliberately cooked up with a lot of intention after years of compromise with other companies completed speakers. And yet you won't ever be able to say there isn't serious quality and intention behind the kits.
Too much merger in business tends to dilute some aspects. Danny's been at the fore front of offering maybe the best DIY kits for quality and service, for a lot of years. He hasn't been fooling around with dependency on others. A lot of young business minds are interested in dependencies, but I got to tell you where I live is RIPE with it. What I can also tell you is that it doesn't pull as much weight as things people straight up want. There's idea appeal, and there's money actually spent; they're not the same thing. A great example is community anything shops/studios, if there isn't a very large backer that wants it to simply exist, then it won't. We're over-burden with ideas and things to do anymore, but what we actually spend money on and do reflects a better picture than what we tend to say. That being said I think some of you might be under-crediting the community on AudioCircle, because no matter how good of a contributor Danny is, not even he would be encouraged to do so if the patronage was a headache.
The flat packs are great, utterly unbeatable at the price! Perhaps having them built into the website would be very nice. That being said, what kind of technology might be employed in the future to change all of this? That question I love.