In a late-August newsletter, PS Audio announced a major change in how it does business. In the United States, its home market, the company stopped selling its products through dealers and opted for a direct, online-only sales model. Outside the US, it will continue to sell through authorized dealers.
The modern PS Audio—the company that began life in 1997 when Paul McGowan and his wife Terri bought back the company Paul had cofounded—has always sold its products online, and the earlier, pre-Internet version of the company always sold direct. But until now, PS Audio also sold their products through a network of authorized dealers. In 2017—the date of Stereophile‘s most recent full review of a PS Audio product—the company reported 65 US retailers, almost all the bricks-and-mortar sort.
PS Audio’s Bill Leebens told me that dealers were notified about the change some time before the late-August public announcement.
Soon after they were notified, dealers were no longer able to order stock, but they could still place drop-shipment orders through mid-September. They could also, of course, continue to sell their existing stock of PS Audio products until it was gone.
In addition to bricks-and-mortar stores, PS Audio’s new direct, online-only sales policy affects online-only retailers such as Music Direct and Underwood HiFi. The Music Direct website showed no obvious response to the news, but on Labor Day weekend—when I am writing this—Underwood’s website indicated that they were clearing out their supply of Stellar Gain Cell DAC/preamps for roughly 20% below retail, while supplies last. No other PS Audio products were listed.
In recent years, PS Audio has appeared to be one of the hi-fi industry’s success stories—an image reinforced by McGowan’s new memoir, reviewed elsewhere in this issue. Why would a successful company alter its operating model so fundamentally?
That late-August press release had little to say about the why, instead stressing the company’s ongoing commitment to customer service and some customer-friendly practices that, while not strictly linked to the change in the sales model, are clearly part of the same overarching strategy. The press release promised free same-day shipping on all orders and the option to return unwanted merchandise after an audition period of up to 30 days, with return shipping also paid for by PS Audio. Additionally, if a product under warranty fails or develops a fault, the company will pay for round-trip shipping, with the assurance that repair work will be turned around within 48 hours. Considering how much some of those products weigh—the PS Audio Power Plant 20 is 96lb—that seems like a nice deal.
I asked Leebens why an apparently successful company would want to change course so radically. Part of the answer is that it’s not such a radical shift. It comes down, he told me, to simplifying the company’s operations. Over time, more and more of the company’s sales have gone online, to the point where direct sales and dropshipped dealer orders—orders taken by dealers but fulfilled by PS Audio’s warehouse—constitute a very large portion of the company’s domestic sales. Changing customer mindsets (among other factors) mean that even many customers who buy through dealers turn to the company—online or over the phone—for product support. Finally, it’s much simpler to maintain a single domestic distribution channel than it is to sell direct and through dealers.
(Speculating now: There are some other obvious advantages to a direct-sales–only model that Leebens didn’t mention. Direct sales mean you don’t have to give dealers a cut. It also ensures that everyone pays the same price—that dealer discounts don’t cause headaches.)
In short, PS Audio’s course adjustment looks like the latest in an endless list of examples of Internet-facilitated disintermediation. There’s a sense of inevitability about it. Downtowns hollowed out as shopping malls thrived. Shopping malls hollowed out when online sales surged. Local travel agents, movie-rental stores, record stores, and other retail venues have become scarce (or gone away completely) as their industries shifted online. In my New York neighborhood, the only remaining retail businesses I can think of are a grocery store, a liquor store, and a stationery store—and I live in Manhattan. (There are still some restaurants here, and plenty of places to get a “blowout”—apparently that’s like getting your hair done but with no cutting—or to have your nails done or your eyebrows threaded, whatever that is.) When, recently, I needed a pair of shoelaces, I ventured well beyond my neighborhood but failed to find any and had to order online.
Audio dealers are, of course, already far less plentiful than they used to be. PS Audio’s change could thus be viewed as a harbinger of more change or a continuation of a well-established trend. Surely it’s both.
Dealers I spoke to acknowledged PS Audio’s right to do business any way they choose, but, because they see PS Audio’s success as partly a result of their own hard work selling the company’s products, they feel betrayed. “It’s like being married for 15 years and then going out and sleeping with another woman,” one now-former PS Audio dealer, who asked not to be named, told me by telephone.
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