Actually no offense to Schiit but looking at the list of products that Schiit offers, it now has 8 amps under $400.
maybe a new customer who decided that they will purchase an amp from Schiit will have a hard time choosing which one to get.
This is incorrect, based on the big-brand truism that "simpler--like the Apple laptop lineup--is better." As I've said before, we have no evidence of "paralysis by analysis" amongst our customers.
It is also incorrect based on the way the products are portrayed. We actually have:
1. Two gaming/communication amp/DACs, called out as a separate category.
2. Three modular amps or amp/DACs, called out as a separate category. (Of which one is tube.)
3. Five "pure" headphone amps, called out as a separate category. (Of which two are tube and three are solid state.)
In our experience, people usually select by (a) price, (b) category, (c) type.
Hence, prices on the product list page.
Hence breakdown by category.
And hence easy selection by type (a photo showing a tube sticking out of an amp puts it in a certain category, for example--a plus for some people, a minus for others.
The reality is, while you may think all products "under $400" are about the same price, there's a huge difference between, say, a Fulla 3 at $99 and a Lyr Multibit at $699 when someone is starting out, even though the two products have similar feature sets.
Hell, there's a huge difference between $99 and $199 to many of our customers. A lot of companies have forgotten that, and that's one reason high end audio is in the state that it's in. It's super-hard to get started when people call $2500 "entry level." And yes, I've heard this many times--our entire line shoved into the "entry level" ghetto. Cool. This is where we want to be.
You need to be careful of extending a big brand truism to a small, niche market, because, as I think I said in the first chapter, the rules are very very very very different there. You're taking research from companies that spend our annual revenue in a week on advertising. There's no congruence there. Should we also spend tonnage on the unboxing experience, like the simplicity mongers do? Again, there's not a direct correlation. Remember, I played this game for 20 years--and one of the most important things we had to do was to get our typically small and niche customers off of all the big-brand groupthink spew, because it didn't work from them.
Despite the size of our line, we are most frequently criticized for not having an even broader selection of products. Does this mean we need more products? Probably not, but maybe yes. The reality is the line will grow and shrink based on what people like, what we like, availability of parts (mainly tubes), our ability to service and support the products, and other factors. We'll always be too big for some and too small for others.
As I've said before, I hope we make something that delights you as much as it does us...but if not, there are plenty of great products out there.
