[tk3]

High end custom IEMs cost a lot of money, I've always been curious about where this money goes.
For example, the flagship model from some popular companies like Ultimate Ears used to cost some extravagant amount of money.
I think it was like $1700, but the price seems to have gone down a bit nowadays.
 
Where does the bulk of this investment go, is it the drivers? Probably not, AFAIK they don't cost a lot of money.
The labour? Having to create each pair individually and managing each customer's information involves a lot of time that requires man power.
Or perhaps because the product is created in very small quantities, rather than mass production?
Or a combination of all these factors and more?
 
Anyone have any experience with the production side of customs that can shed some light on this?
 
 
(P.S: this is just genuine curiosity, not a "how dare a business actually want to make profit!11" type of post)

 

[DaBomb77766]

It's definitely just an example of diminishing returns.  While they will sound outstanding, probably better than any universal out there, I doubt they'll sound $1000 better.  Part of the reason why they'd cost so much (not sure, just guessing here) is probably due to low production numbers, high amount of labour gone into each set, and a general lack of competition at such a high level.  If you've noticed, lately good IEMs have been getting cheaper and cheaper, largely due to the competition from chinese brands such as soundmagic, meelectric and hifiman.  Fischer Audio fits into this category too, though they're russian.
 
I'm sure that the amount it actually costs to build the customs, parts and labour included, is probably well less than half of what they sell them for.  However, these companies do give outstanding customer service, something that can't always be said for cheaper chinese brands.  That's always worth something, along with the warranty.
 
Perhaps if an inexpensive chinese company were to be thrown into the mix with customs some day we'd see some change in pricing, but until then I'm not so sure.  Labour is expensive outside of china.  Though some new companies are offering customs for pretty cheap (1964ears and kozee, for example).