The bane of the audio industry throughout the 70's and 80's was the mail order retailer. Such a business generally had a single warehouse/distribution center, and a staff of less than knowledgeable "order-takers" and a well put together catalog. It wasn't at all uncommon for the mail order guy to even suggest to his customers that they go to their local hi-fi retailer, get all the info they can from him, and then buy from the mail order company at a lower price. There were a few notable exceptions to this "rule," Crutchfield being one of them, but this was pretty much "par for the course." Many retailers flatly refused to purchase items from a manufacturer who did business with mail order guys.

Today's nemesis is the online retailer, particularly in the DJ business. Here, more often than not, is a young male (generally in his early to mid twenties) who puts together a website, downloads and copies manufacturer's online catalogs, and lists everything at a price far less than the standard "brick and mortar" retailers sell the items for. This sharpie even has the audacity to ask each manufacturer (whose products he claims to carry, but actually doesn't, as he has no warehouse whatsoever) to "drop ship" those products for him. "Drop ship" is an industry term used when the manufacturer doesn't ship the ordered product to the retailer who ordered it, but rather, to the customer who purchased the item from that retailer. This saves the online retailer even more money, since he doesn't have to concern himself with shipping either. Basically, the DJ online retailer can do his entire business from his computer in his bedroom!

Many DJ suppliers (Stanton, for example) have cracked down on online retailers, and refuse to knowingly do business with them. I don't believe that there are too many such retailers in the audio industry of this ilk, and some reputable online retailers (The Needle Doctor, for example) don't operate in the manner I previously described.

So, why did I bother saying any of this? Well, to my horror, just this morning, when I logged onto Sound Thinking, I saw a pop-up ad for DAK - someone I knew in my past, and had thought was long gone from this buiness.

Drew Alan Kaplan (DAK) is a pleasant enough fellow, but I've never much cared for his manner of doing business, and personally experienced the nationwide wrath of all my ADC dealers (when I worked for ADC) when DAK printed a two-page, color ad for a BSR EQ (identical to a particular ADC model) and stated in his lengthy description that it was the same thing as the ADC, and even went so far as to list the "suggested retail," and the dealer cost for the ADC unit! The ADC unit had a dealer cost of $227.97. and generally sold at retail for $299.95.


DAK's BSR equivalent (in fact, the identical unit, but without chrome buttons and plastic ones instead) sold for $149.95!

DAK also had an insatiable desire to sell dbx "Soundfield" speakers, but no one at dbx would dare go near him. That is, until BSR sold both the ADC and dbx division to Carillon Technology Inc. (CTI), who then disbanded the dbx consumer division entirely, and allowed DAK to sell a genuine P.O.S. with the "dbx Soundfield" nomenclature, which was anything but a true Soundfield loudspeaker. In short, it was nothing other than flat out fraud. At the time, DAK epitomized all that was wrong with mail order retailers.

I thought DAK had long ago disappeared, but this morning, there he was in bright, capital letters on the top of Sound Thinking's home page, featuring his online business. This is NOT the kind of advertiser who belongs here.

That's my two cents, and then some.

Being totally in the dark regarding this very interesting question, I asked JP to throw some light in the matter. Bellow is his reply to my question, which I hope also clarifies your doubts regarding how hard Sound Thinking thinks:

Quote:

The advertising banner is placed there by the host and the contents are determined by Google. The Google bots go through our pages, add them to the search index, and at the same time use words to cue in on to determine the advertisements to place at the top. We can't do anything to change what's in there. However, there is the possibility to pay the host a certain amount to remove the banner ads for a set number of page views. We could do that, but it would rapidly start adding up.

That's a fine answer, and I no longer have any concerns about Sound Thinking and what I mistakenly thought was its choice of advertisers. Cyberspace is an odd place....

What shocks me most is that you got a pop-up. What are those?