[Target1]

If one were to open up a headphone only store in a good location (say downtown New York City) how do you think it would fair. I'm talking a place, where they have every product imaginable, both for audition, and purchase. I'm sure the start up cost (especially for a good location) would be massive, but it seems to me that with the internet as it is such an establishment might be novel enough to survive. I for one would travel the 300 miles from my home, and pay a couple extra dollars to have all the equipment I'm thinking of purchasing in one easy place to audition for a day.

Mark

PS I've been to quite a few audio shops that have a decent selection of headphones, but the amp selection is horrid, and the sellers are almost all speaker buffs that no very little about headphones.

 

[VicAjax]

hmmm.... it'd might be dodgy... retail rents in NYC are pretty outrageous, and the turnaround/profit margin on headphones might be prohibitive. then again, if you managed to find a space near, say, the apple store... that could be workable, depending on your lease.

there'd certainly be a couple dozen head-fiers frequenting the shop.

i know! you should put a lounge in the back, selling coffee, snacks, maybe beer and whine. with comfy, plush sofas and various listening stations.

you could do it like stereolab's amorphous body center installation:

 

[dokebi]

Too small of a market and too high of a risk to do this in metro ny. Relatively speaking, Head-fi and other headphone related communities are extremely small.

 

[srapps55]

I think an even bigger problem is you would never get it off the ground. Manufacturers typically like to have "preferred" status with a retailer, and I'm not sure Sennheiser would be happy sharing space with Beyer or AKG, nor Ety with Shure and Westone. Would be a tough negotiation.

 

[gshan]

If you have a lot of capital, come over to San Francisco my friend. The majority of cans I see people in the street wearing are those $40+ black/silver Sony closed-types that you can find at Circuit City. If they're not wearing those, they're wearing IPOD buds. The best I've seen were HD5xx on a coworker, and a skater wearing PortaPros. Please, come save us...