I always have wondered this. What should be the perfect price for a speaker (cost + margins + overheads + commissions)?
I don't know if one can call it perfect, but generally a Good pricing will have 40-50% of the pricing attributed towards the Actual cost of making the product.
Actual cost includes; Price of Components used, Labour costs involved, any Procurement, Manufacturing, R&D, Supply chain and Commercial Overheads, Manufacturer Margin)
The Remaining 50% make up the costs incurred in Logistics and Transportation, Distributor and Dealer Margins, Taxes and Duties, Warranty overhead and Insurance overheads)
However depending on the Target segment of the Brand all these things will have a huge variance. A Budget, mass market brand like Taga or Wharfdale usually have cut throat pricing - so you can expect cost cutting on many fronts (right from standard designs to minimal R&D to packaging). The Economies of Scale make great impact here and the related stakeholders gain profit by pushing out large volumes of speakers. However these brands rely on having huge Distribution, n number of dealers and periodic advertisements to make their sale. Usually, lower - medium brands have high % of Dealer margins. This is not only applicable to speakers, from consumer electronics to apparel and retail, any trade that relies on volumes, will have high % of Dealer margins.
A boutique audio brand like say a Joseph Audio or Ayon Audio usually have heavy cost in the first place. Simply cos some use exotic materials some ship components from one end of the world to other end just cos they cannot compromise on quality, some might have invested decades and decades of R&D in their design, some may choose to build speakers in their land, where labour costs are very high. If you notice most of these brands do not go after high advertisements or offers, and relay on Exhibitions / audio shows, because their target segment is limited. From what i have seen, purely from % scenario, dealers of these brands have less % as margins. Also, dealers for such brands have some pre-requisites, like listening rooms, dedicated HT that are mandated by the brand itself. So technically the dealer has to absorb these costs somewhere !!
At the end of the day Dealers earn their bread by different means, some make $$$ by pushing x10 some make $$$ by pushing 2.
It takes 13 months to build a Rolls Royce and one Toyota leaves the Factory every 13 min. The Rolls is ~10Cr and the base Toyota is ~8L. I would say both of them are perfectly priced, since both do pretty well in terms of their balance sheets