adamhornsby wrote:

As for Beolit 12, I am swayed more to the Sonos system, it sounds fantastic. And as a retailer I could get it for half price. Loewe also have an air speaker which looks promising. 

😉

What a traitor....!! 😁

Only joking Adam 😂

Bentleyman wrote:

Sorry but I'm not incorrect. I accept that using UK prices is an unfair comparison. But what about using average take-home pay instead....I gave this example as well as my house price analogy. What about using a new car price comparison instead...(1968 v. 2012 prices).

A newly qualified teacher in 1968 had a net take home wage of £54 per month, today it's circa £1,500 per month.

A Beovision 3000 in 1968 cost £400+

On £54 a month it would take you 8 months of pay to buy the BV3000. Todays equivalent TV would be £12,000. So saying that the Avant was the first really expensive B&O tv is plainly incorrect.

I accept joeyboygolf's point that TV's were very expensive back then (so the Avant was not the first really expensive tv obviously), so lets look at a Beomaster instead....

A Beomaster 3000 in 1970 for example cost £135 + 9shillings. This would be 2.5 months pay @ £54 per month and so would equate to circa £4,000 today - very similar to the end of line price of a BS9000.

But we are not talking about top of the line products such as BS9000, we are talking about B&O Play products costing £600-800. Dkatz, Tod and myself have been talking all along about the 'de-valuing' of the brand image/exclusivity. This is what we are trying to say.

I still think that you are wrong. :-) I see your point, but I don't think that the comparison is valid - you'll of course have to compare with the competition, back in '68 ALL TVs were expensive (regardless of brand) ;-) My point was that during the 70's-90's, B&O products often cost 1.5 times more than their Japanese counterparts. Expensive, yes, but not that much more expensive than the competition, and within reach for quite many of those who instead settled for a Sony. For example, when I bought my totl LX tv (as I mentioned in my last post) I was actually thinking of buying a Sony (for 13000 SEK, IIRC) but in the end I spent 3-4000 SEK more and ended up with the LX (B&O's most expensive offering at the time!). I had to dig a little deeper in my wallet and it took me some weeks to make up my mind, but my point is that the B&O was in reach. I finally decided that it was worth the extra money to get the B&O design and build quality, even though I had to wait another month or so to be able to finance it. Ok, not every potential Sony customer had the funds to sped the extra cash on a B&O if they wanted to, but probably quite a few of them. That's not the case today.

The point, however, is that B&O actually used to compete with Sony, Panasonic, Philips etc. Denying that is plain wrong. They also used to be sold at the same stores as those other brands - even in the small town where I grew up (there were four B&O retailers within a 100 km radius, actually, today you'll have to go over 400 km to get to the nearest B&O store). B&O was the choice for those who thought it was worth it to pay some more for design, but this price difference was much smaller then than it is today. That's my point

What's happened since then is that the gap between Sony et al and B&O has widened. Now the B&O costs at least 3-4 times as much, and you have to buy their equipment in separate exclusive shop. The brand HAS changed, they have obviously chosen to go more exclusive during the last 10-15 years. I'm ok with that, even though it excludes me as a possible customer when it comes to TVs. Denying this change is incorrect, check old pricelists from B&O and Sony/Philips/etc if you don't believe me.

Nickyg63 – I agree with you that the B&O TVs these days are overpriced, but again I must reinstate that whilst most other companies outsourced their TV production B&O did not. A lot of the money you are going goes into the craftsmanship of this TV, the hand assembly, the materials, and Danish labour costs. If you are looking for a high quality Plasma or LED that's made in Europe or Japan, you will be hardpressed to find one for less than the price of the B&O with the same quality of materials and the same labour intensity of assembly. 

You are right that the “picture quality” of these TVs is much less distinguishable now than it was before. I completely agree with you on this. This has more to do with the standardization of the HD standard and the fact that perhaps there is nothing that can be done to improve the quality. I myself do not like Plasma's or LED's that much because of the refresh rates. Whenever there is an action sequence it streaks. Of course it's better with 240hz than 120hz, etc... but still it bothers me so much that I don't even want to own one of these flat-panels and prefer to stick to CRTs until that issue is resolved completely.

Yes I've always said that you can get a hifi system that sounds better for the price, the point is that besides TVs most of the B&O equipment hasn't gone up in price as I stated with some of their products from early 90s to early 00s. But there are other considerations when comparing to other brands: will it have better build quality? Will it have the latest (or even futuristic) design that won't go out of style? Will it be made of the best materials? Will it be mass produced in a developing country or hand assembled in a developed one? It's exactly these considerations that brought me to like B&O products in the first place and exactly the reasons I feel that the BS8 and Beolit12 abandon these ideals.

I agree that what B&O are doing is an excellent business strategy, but as some stated I am afraid it will eventually outsource more and more of their production and become like Bose, just a mass manufactured soulless corporation with OK sounding products with lower than average materials, etc...  Bose used to be decent decades ago as were B&W and other brands before they become overly commercialized and started mass-producing in China.

Cheapening the brand is not just about selling it for 199, what they are selling it for is way overpriced for a product where the labour cost was next to nothing. The mass production itself is what cheapens the brand. The fact that anyone can go into an Apple store and buy a B&O product (that's not even manufactured by B&O) just like a Bose or Apple product, is exactly what cheapens the brand! Luxury brands should not be doing this. Yes they have a few high street stores but those stores are beautiful places to be with excellent products, why ruin it with cheap plasticky toys in comparison? B&O going so mainstream for the masses is exactly what will turn me off from the brand. I know you may not agree but it's the reason I have a Lotus (they have some of the lowest production numbers in automobiles and are fairly reasonably priced and handbuilt in England), why I love smaller Japanese brands that still produce Jeans with raw indigo from Fukushima hand died rope in a vat and use pre-WWII machines that produce a selvedge denim that were abandoned in favour of mass-production in other countries. If Lotus suddenly goes from producing thousands or 10s of thousands of cars by hand to mass producing millions of cars completely by robots and selling them for $20,000 instead of $50-70,000 I will completely and utterly loose respect for the brand as I am doing for B&O. On top of that I will be embarrassed to buy a Lotus as I will to buy many B&O products now. My bragging rights will be taken away from me in many ways, I won't be “proud” of owning those products anymore.

The point is they COULD HAVE SURVIVED had they not outsourced. They sell far more units than smaller producers that charge the same amount and still handmake in Denmark and other countries and manage to survive. B&Os problem is that they became a corporation, they started to think more about profit, about paying out millions to their execs and CEO and for shareprices to go up. They still produce metals and plastics that they could sell to other companies, they still have class-d amplifier technologies that they license to other companies, they could do consulting work. They DID diversify in those ways and upped the brands image with that, showing their expertise. They could have gone at it and still made a profit, but people are just greedy! That's all there is to it... If smaller companies that are even more handmade can survive so can B&O that far outsells most other high end audio brands...

Flappo – Bentley's are still made in England by hand as they were before. Just because VW bought them doesn't mean they are suddenly any worse than they were. Saying that they are suddenly some tarted up VW is ignorant. Lotus is owned by Proton but there are NO proton parts in the production, it is not made in Malaysia, and it in fact all they do is pump money into the company and help them with Formula 1, etc...

Yes B&O have outsourced production to Japan before, but that is completely different. In the 80s and early 90s Japan was going through an economic bubble and was the most expensive country in the world. They also produced some of the best hifi products in the world and the labour cost was and still is one of the highest in the world (although less than Denmarks). The point is that they outsourced to a master audio manufacturer for a high labour cost to a country that was middle income with some of the best audio equipment some of which competed with B&O at the time! I had a Beosystem 10 and it was FAR from cheap looking, in fact it was the sleekest looking boombox ever made, most people thought it was a stereo from 2000 not a boombox from 1989...

Moxxey – I am only 27 so younger than both you and Bentleyman. I am not in the greater than 35 category you mention yet I disagree with where B&O is going. It's a generalization to say that all people under 35 will suddenly like B&Os direction or a young generation will suddenly go for their new products. There are many people under that age that own the higher end B&O products and are happy with them. Many of them are young bankers, software startups, lawyers, all kinds of people that can afford B&O equipment at an earlier age and that will go out and spend the extra money for the exclusivity and show of success that they think accompanies B&O products, obviously if certain products become so cheap so that exclusivity and show of success will die with it and alienate many of those noveu-rich category of people who buy B&O exactly for those reasons. When B&O becomes available to everyone, then those types of people who did buy the most high end expensive products will stop buying them, therefore they will make less sales in those products. The lower end products will become best sellers as most people can afford it, and suddenly B&O will realise that they suddenly make no sales in the higher end as people just prefer to buy entry-level as they can't afford or don't want to invest in the higher end stuff if they can buy B&O for cheap. So they start outsourcing everything and building cheaper products and become like Bose has become! This is the future I see for B&O and it's a sad one!

Flappo – In regards to Apple, they are not a high end luxury manufacturer of goods. They are a mass-producer of mass consumer products. They are fairly decent quality but they are a far cry from a high end audio producer. Name one producer that produces super high end audio that has outsourced? Most have not, especially niche producers like B&O... Apple outsourcing made Jobs and other execs even more money but that doesn't mean that they paid their employees well. Look at all the controversy regarding that. To top it off they don't have their own factory that they opened their, Foxconn produces products for other companies. Apple from the beginning wanted to make products for the masses that are not too expensive. B&O has always been more of a luxury high end manufacturer or a/v equipment and was never much into mass producing at the levels of apple until recently. So the two are completely incomparable. There are many other reasons why Apple didn't manufacture in the US and many of them have to do with not only labour costs but also environmental factors (in China you can dump waste a lot more than you can here), etc... China is great if you want to make a product that has millions and millions of units to be shipped but 1. Computer and electronic products are in a different category to high end audio and 2. I am not interested in buying a product that has millions upon millions of units sold every year, that is exactly why I like and buy B&O!

TerryM – As adamhornsby mentioned a subsidiary of Miele produces some vacuums for the EASTERN market. BMW and Mercedes and other brands have factories in China and Mexico producing for those markets specifically and not for elsewhere. Where was your Drier made by the way?

Yes B&W has lowered its brand image for me and since most people can afford to buy a lot of B&W speakers these days, it is not the exclusive high end brand it used to be. Why would I buy a Nautlius speaker when I can buy Dali? Goldmund? Eggleston? Lansche? Dynaudio? Levinson? Etc... so many others for that price range or less from companies that haven't ruined their image and haven't outsourced. In fact I am afraid that B&O is becoming exactly what B&W has become. It's like buying a Ford and everyone answers that they have a Ford as well and you have to explain no but I have the Ford GT... Well nobody cares, it's still a Ford to them. B&W is still B&W to most people an affordable brand that produces substandard made in China speakers... with the exception of a few high end ones...

Henrik – The gap you talk about is only within the TV sector. This might be because CRTs were cheaper to produce than LEDs for example and there are many other factors involved I am sure. B&O did NOT compete with Sony, Philips, etc... in terms of Audio equipment however and that has always been more expensive than those mainstream brands as I mentioned and haven't gone up in price as much as the TVs have.

Nobody seems to have told me yet where my Beosound 2 and Earphones from 2006 were made? :-)

Interesting article in regards to Apple and outsourcing: 

Most of you are not adressing all of my points but simply ignore most and only adress one of the dozen or so points I make in my lengthy replies (which are lengthy because I like to adress every point that everyone makes!) Again I will ask the question which nobody seems to be able to answer:

If China is so amazingly great at manufacturing products (as good or better than the west) and if nobody really cares where things are manufactured because nobody bothers to look as most people here say, then why is it that ALL professional level products are made in the developed world? Canon 1D, Nikon D1, Hasselblad and Leica Camera's all made in Japan, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Phase One Digital backs (made in Denmark). Nearly all high end audio which I mentioned dozens of times is made in the developed world. Miele (made in Germany with some manufacturing in Austria and Czech). All professional cine camera's and accessories made in the USA, Germany, UK, France, etc... Panasonic Toughbook (made in Japan)... Even the companies that outsource: including B&O keep their professional products being made in their coutnries and outsource the rest then they could make even more money outsourcing everything but OBVIOUSLY they don't think that China's manufacturing is up to par for these professional line products... Why? because professionals want things that will last a long time, that will not break easily under stress, something that is of a higher fit and finish (much of it by hand), etc...

DKatz nearly all if not all the professional products you mention are low volume, non mass market, non consumer items. I suspect these products do not lend themselves to the type of production which China excels at.

A friend of mine who is the electronics manufacturing industry does agree that the outsourcing to China is a bad thing long term. He puts it down to a short-term business model applied by Western Companies, whereas the Chinese are taking a long term view and are building products to price rather than cost i.e. undercut the market by 30%, destroy the competition, reap the rewards in 10-20 years time. I can understand why companies outsource, although I am not at all sure it is a good thing, but not for xenophobic reasons.

Just watched the BBC series "How to Make" - there are some excellent British companies manufacturing high quality products for the world market McLaren, Rolls Royce, Astrium. I also spotted some photos in Esquire of some factories making fabrics/clothes for the high end fashion industry (John Smedley being one) - real craft products - but rather depressingly their facilities seemed Dickensian, looked as though no investment had been made in decades. Hopefully B&O will continue along the former rather than the latter route within their own production facilities in Denmark and avoid outsourcing everything in the long term. The "Designed and Made in Denmark" is a great marketing tag, much better than "Designed in Denmark"

Dkatz I totally agree with you and whenever i've said it, ive been knocked down by a certain few. 

This is why I find it amuzing that some think the BS8 is such a marvellous cheap B&O. What a joke B&O is having on its customers. From what I can see, only the B&O customers are really picking these Chinese products up. I stick to my guns that no product made in China is a top quality one that will last.

My 18 month old MacBook is now falling to pieces (as I said, it is the most beautifully looked after thing ever), my 8 week old Made in China earphones are faulty etc.  I find the whole thing amuzing, it's as though B&O loyal customers are yet again being taken for a ride.  So let me get this straight. It's a snobby pretentious company that used to produce beautiful equipment in Denmark, but now outsources to China and then gets its CEO fake guy to say look at this wonderful thing  isn't it great, it'll cost thre times more than anything like it but its a B&O, well if you don't look at the rear of it   oh and as long as you dont really need to listen to it!

It's horrifying, just horrifying!

Dkatz wrote:

in terms of Audio equipment however and that has always been more expensive than those mainstream brands as I mentioned and haven't gone up in price as much as the TVs have

Dkatz wrote:

the point is that besides TVs most of the B&O equipment hasn't gone up in price as I stated with some of their products from early 90s to early 00s

This isn't the case - Beolab 6000/8000 and also Beosound 1 all virtually doubled in price over that time - and Bsnd9000 was over £1000 more when it finished ( around a 50% increase)

Given the fairly static design (ie most tooling costs and assembly set-up costs covered in early years) and the longevity in the range,  I would suggest that  these price rises are actually very unusual in retail, and are certainly way above inflation.

In fact, the trade price of Beosound 1 when it finished was more than the original retail price !!

Can't recall the absolute amounts, and don't have the time to look them up, but your much-repeated assertion that the audio range prices stayed low/almost static compared to the TV's isn't correct.   Given the TV range changed wholesale from CRT to panel, ther is one reason that prices leapt from about 1.5 times high street brands to multiples of 2, 3 or more..albeit panel prices have since dropped a lot  ... but the audio prices simply went up and up and up.

As I said earlier, whilst I accept some of your points about how outsourcing isn't always ideal, or the conditions in OEM suppliers always perfect,  these are issues that are, in effect, largely out of B&O's control. 

They must attract "new blood", sadly there are not enough afluent 27yr old buyers like you, prepare to invest in the range as it stands, so something had to be done.  "Play" is an attempt to address this - as was BS8 (really, the first "Play" product ?? ) and initial signs are these products will be far more effective at doing that job than serene, serenata and BS3 ( all items I own and enjoy using - but singularly ignored by most of your peers)

If you and Bentleyman were typical of late 20's - late 30's buyers, I am sure b&o would currently be in a dfiiferent position - but, after 26 years in audio retail ( since you were, literally, in nappies aged 1) I assure you that you are not in any way a reflection of your own generation.  A niche market is, I think, the correct term for you and your (few) peers.

ps - the share price has virtually double in the last month - so it seems the market boadly agrees that Play is a good attempt at broadening the range/appeal.

Dkatz wrote:

Most of you are not adressing all of my points but simply ignore most and only adress one of the dozen or so points I make in my lengthy replies (which are lengthy because I like to adress every point that everyone makes!) Again I will ask the question which nobody seems to be able to answer:

If China is so amazingly great at manufacturing products (as good or better than the west) and if nobody really cares where things are manufactured because nobody bothers to look as most people here say, then why is it that ALL professional level products are made in the developed world? Canon 1D, Nikon D1, Hasselblad and Leica Camera's all made in Japan, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Phase One Digital backs (made in Denmark). Nearly all high end audio which I mentioned dozens of times is made in the developed world. Miele (made in Germany with some manufacturing in Austria and Czech). All professional cine camera's and accessories made in the USA, Germany, UK, France, etc... Panasonic Toughbook (made in Japan)... Even the companies that outsource: including B&O keep their professional products being made in their coutnries and outsource the rest then they could make even more money outsourcing everything but OBVIOUSLY they don't think that China's manufacturing is up to par for these professional line products... Why? because professionals want things that will last a long time, that will not break easily under stress, something that is of a higher fit and finish (much of it by hand), etc...

Perhaps we can approach this a different way - maybe you can identify the components or production processes used in the building of the BL5, B&O's flagship speaker, that require time-served and experienced hand craftsmen that are employed in Denmark but seemingly unavailable in China?

Dkatz wrote:

Again I will ask the question which nobody seems to be able to answer:

If China is so amazingly great at manufacturing products (as good or better than the west) and if nobody really cares where things are manufactured because nobody bothers to look as most people here say, then why is it that ALL professional level products are made in the developed world?

The answer is in your question.

It is 2012... perhaps it is time to redefine what constitutes: "the developed world."

Or, at least admit that while perhaps not all of China has made the slow, progressive march into modern society -a good bit of it has not just crawled into it, but leapt to the front of the line.

I would suggest that their independent space program would be classified as "professional level."