2020, Chapter 10
120 Months of “Flavor of the Month”
And here we are, 10 years in, 120 months of “flavor of the month.”
A Sincere Thank You
So what does this all mean? This means we owe all of you a huge thank-you! For our earliest customers, thanks for taking the chance. For everyone who has waited through a backorder, please accept our deepest apologies—even today it’s hard to keep up. For everyone who has made the choice to buy a Schiit product, thank you!
No lie, it’s a balancing act. Not a day goes by without some neat idea crossing my desk. People want a Modius with a built-in headphone amp for all-in-one functionality. That would be cool, but would it be right? Wouldn’t it be better to do a matching headphone amp? Others want a full-fledged recording interface in the same form factor. Again, neat, but is that us? Better phone preamps, bigger equalizers, NOS DACs, bigger tube amps, heck, speakers and headphones…we get asked about a lot of stuff. And a lot of it is interesting. Maybe not interesting enough to produce, but maybe enough to play with. So we do a prototype. And see if we get excited about it.
The Reality of Today
“Well, hell, why are you bringing out new products like Modius if you can’t keep stuff in stock?” someone cries.
And, without an in-depth knowledge of our processes, that’s a logical question.
But here’s the deal: Modius has been in motion since February of last year, when I started complaining to Mike and Dave that we needed an inexpensive balanced DAC to pair with our larger products. The first prototypes were last summer. The chassis was costed and ordered at that time. Kits were scheduled, chassis deliveries were scheduled, we had staff ready to make them…so, you know what? We’re gonna
damn well make them!
Not only that, we have some more products in the same situation—designed, planned, ordered, ready to rock—that will also be happening shortly. Probably also while we have backorders of other products that you’d reeeeeealllly realllllllllly like to have. Sorry about that. It’s not lack of focus. It’s simply that things have become less certain, because one critical part missing from a kit means everything stops…and if that part goes from 5 weeks to 20 weeks, that can be a looooong wait.
“So what does that mean?” you ask. “No transport?”
Well, we’ll see on the transport. That continues apace. Metal has been ordered. Metal’s also been ordered for one other, er, ambitious new product. If we’re lucky, you’ll see both of those this year. And there are several smaller things that are so far down the pipe that we’ll be launching those as well.
But no guarantees—I’m calling this the Bigfoot or Zombies clause, officially.
And, here’s the deal: the slowdown has been nice. I’ve been able to focus on some stuff you might consider monumentally boring, but is actually very important as we grow. Stuff like process control. (One of our boardhouses sometimes cooks parts, one like to do random solder-ball bukkake—these are relatively small percentages of boards, but now now we're actively focusing on helping them improve.) We’re determining where assemblers should do programming and testing for maximum throughput, and where that’s best kept in-house. We’re deploying more automated test. We’re working on ways to simplify packing and shipping (holy hell that takes a long time). We’re improving back-end systems to make things like partial order shipping feasible (necessary for Schiit Schwag, since I mandated that it not impact current shipping).
In other words, we’re doing a lot of grown-up stuff that grown-up companies do. It may seem a bit mundane, but it’s actually helping streamline things tremendously…and it’s improving our products.
What We’ve Accomplished…and Where We’re Going
- Making stuff more affordable. See below. But it’s more than that. I can’t count the times I’ve been told that we’re selling stuff below what we should (or could). Well, yeah, suck my balls, as the man-birds of New York say. We’re doing just fine by making stuff with the same sane margin across the board, regardless of the product. We’re doing fine without bleating about “R&D costs” and “intellectual property.” Yeah, it took 2 person-years for Unison USB. Who cares? Take the cost, apply the multiplier, sell. Done. Want more? We’ve resisted the siren call to go up and up to the car-priced realm. We’ve said that Yggdrasil is our top DAC…and we mean it. So add “not succumbing to price inflation” to the above.
- Helping to mainstream direct sales. I mean, seriously, when we started, selling direct was pretty bizarre. A single semi-well-known example existed in electronics: Emotiva. Yeah, there was Outlaw, too, and maybe a couple of others, but they weren’t exactly top of mind. And I’m being polite. Choosing to sell direct was weeeeeeeiiiird in 2010. I thought long and hard about it before deciding that delivering lower-cost products with a closer relationship to the customer made more sense. I’m thrilled I did, and I’m thrilled that direct is really gaining steam. It’s no longer fringe. It’s mainstream.
- Bringing manufacturing back to the USA. It was super super SUPER SUUUUUPER weird to choose to make things here in 2010. Everyone knew China was “the world’s factory floor” and no sane person would dare to make stuff in a first-world country, at first-world labor prices (and nobody would start employees at almost 3X the national minimum wage in a first-world country, like we do). But we did. And in the face of tariffs and supply chain disruption, this is now seeming a lot more presicent than we ever expected.
- Turning the demographic tide. Largely because of #1 above (which is a helped by #2), we’ve attracted a different demographic. More than 60% of our customers are younger than 36 years old, which is an insane, insane number in high end audio. No “Buick Disease” here. Why? No magic. Mainly because we concentrate on affordable products.
- Changing the tone. When we started, high-end audio was soooooooooooo serious it was painful. We came in with a silly name and seasoned it with a devil-may-care attitude, implying (gasp) that we might actually be having fun! OMG! How could that be? What’s wrong with that company? Hey wait, the products look really good…and sound good…and there you go. Which shouldn’t really be a crazy idea. Music is supposed to be fun!
Surely some amazing things.
Surely.
