I'm a 28-year-old dude who just joined this club last year. I can share some of the difficulties when I started this hobby.
#1 Space:
Space probably is the most expensive thing of being an audiophile in a big city like Hong Kong. My listening area, living room, is about 10 x 15 ft, probably worth 230K USD already. It is a luxury to have room to put a pair of speakers.
As you all know, room acoustic is one of the most important performance factors. And the market is really lacking solutions that can help overcome this room acoustic problem. (Dirac Live + MiniDsp is probably the only one)
#2 Store:
In general, it is very difficult to find a place that allow you to listen to the gadget you want, and compare it with others. And without enough comparison, you cannot truly be into this hobby, and find the sound signature that you are looking for.
One of the fun parts of HIFI is to continuously improve the sound. If you never heard a better sound, the systems will be just one of the many gadgets in one's home.
Head-fi is doing a much better job in the above aspects, and this is the reason why headphone is selling extremely well in my city. Everyone is talking about it.
Lastly, I think streaming service is a great area of opportunity. A newcomer like me don't have a music library with, and Spotify and Tidal is a great start for us. We have instant access to millions of song, allow us to explore different music with no cost.