Why the Hi-Fi Industry Hates Repair - the marketing side

Tj wrote about this from the bench. I want to write about it from the side of the wall where the decisions actually get made.

Nobody sits in the room where a product is approved and says, let's build something that has to be thrown away. That's not how it happens, and it's worth saying plainly, because it changes the question. What happens is more ordinary and more damning: repairability is a line item. Ten years of spare parts is a line item. Publishing service information is a line item. Supporting firmware past the warranty is a line item. And line items, in every company I ever worked with, get cut before the launch date.

I sold the dream of permanence for years. That is the uncomfortable part of my side of the wall. The brochure promises a lifetime companion; the product plan assumes a three-to-five-year replacement cycle. Nobody wrote either document looking at the other. The gap between those two documents is where the customer's amplifier ends up in a landfill with a failed two-dollar capacitor in it.

It would be easier to blame malice. Malice would at least be a story with a villain. The truth is margin math wearing a technical costume. Gated service information, dealer-only firmware, parts that quietly disappear from the catalog — these aren't conspiracies. They're the residue of a business model that makes more money selling the next unit than it does keeping this one alive.

I'll tell you what I noticed running marketing at PS Audio and editing a magazine for 97 issues: the companies that stood behind their gear were never the ones struggling. Service is not a cost center to be minimized. It's a loyalty engine. The brands whose dealers could get parts, whose owners could get answers, whose gear held its value — those are the brands people stayed with for thirty years. That isn't sentiment. That's repeat business.

Tj saw PS Audio from the bench and the support desk. I ran its marketing and sat in the rooms. Same employer, same conclusion, two generations: repair is a design choice, and scarcity is easier than service. It's just not as good a business.

Read Tj's piece from the bench: [Why the Hi-Fi Industry Hates Repair](/magazine/why-hifi-industry-hates-repair). Between the two of us, you get the whole wall.