If you want some proper statistics from the office of National Statistics, the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2022 (provisional results) shows the following figures for median and mean gross annual pay:
All full-time employees £33,000 median, £39,966 mean
Full-time male employees £35,260 median, £43,343 mean
All employees £27,756 median and £33,402 mean
But self-employed people and those with their own companies are not included in the above
My streaming-only hifi system has a current new equivalent price not far short of £50k. (That is not what I spent, as much secondhand). I also have another few £k worth of surplus gear I will sell in the near future. But looking back over the past 20 years or so I think my average (assessedannually) spend on hifi stuff has been of the order of 2.5% of net family income (my wife and myself). When I sell those few things that average spend of course will drop a touch. I don’t envisage any more purchases for a long time. For reference our net income in the last year before retiring in 2021 was a tad over £80k, now less than half. 20 years ago it was more like £50k,
Our gross expenditure on cars (buying and running) is a bit more fiddly to calculate but probably averaged somewhere between 2% and 3% of net income over the same period (maintaining two cars), so not far off the same as hifi.
It would take too much effort going back further in time, but my gut feeling is that on average my percentage spend over 50+ years of hifi upgrading has probably been in a similar ballpark.
Holidays, on the other hand, at least in the past decade have been considerably greater proportion of income…
they are entry to the Uniti range
What Naim needs next I think is to come back into the market with a shoebox sized range to offer what the original Nait and 62/140 did… That’s how you encourage people into your brand from the bottom up.
Jonathan
Yep
Think Naim and their local distributors need to come back to earth.
You’re in good form today Pete 
He’s such a silly lad 
I suspect Naim know their target and have communicated this to distributors. Not only that, but I would bet things are going according to plan even in regions like ANZ where some feel the pricing has gone bananas.
What we often forget is that, as a customer, we do not represent the whole market and companies shift away from customer bases all the time.
I’ve been at three companies in the past that did this. They had long established and loyal customer bases. They could in fact continue on those paths continuing to make products that make them happy. But in all cases the execs saw a fork in the road. Down one road was the same type of customers and types of product and pricing structure. Down the other a different offering with different structure. And the sure knowledge that if the latter road is chosen it may appeal to a vastly more profitable audience but that clearly they would have to just cut loose the existing customer base (or at least 80% of them). They couldn’t do both. They all chose to forge new markets, prosper, and grow and wave goodbye to nearly all the established base.
It looks like the end is nigh if you’re one of the customers walking away but the truth is, you just aren’t part of that brand’s future vision. Naim seemed to have chosen a new path when they axed speakers, entry level pre and power amps, shoeboxes, active crossovers, higher end CD players etc.
As an older customer, I dislike all those changes. The reality is they still make excellent products at prices their target is willing to pay (to a large degree) and that I am simply no longer the target. And that’s almost certainly by intentional corporate steering and not a massive blunder as some interpret.
No one’s ever questioned their quality and their products.
I hear what you’re saying but IMO they have made a huge blunder here down under on pricing
It’s a very small market here , I can’t see how their market share will expand or attracting a new base of customers will work out
Linn must also be going after that new customer base as well then
I think we only see it from the perspective of what we, the established base, would stomach for pricing on upgrades or projecting back as if we were starting out.
We don’t see their numbers. We can only speculate and your guess is certainly as valid (if not moreso - I’m not in ANZ) than mine. But my guess is they are selling a few less units at a lot more margin to a type of customer we wouldn’t recognise.
The problem is that Naim are a niche product here and need to be managed accordingly. However they’re distributed here by a mega distributor that seems to think Naim was just another notch on their belt. There’s been little to no marketing since they’ve taken them over and seem to not care.
I think so. My dealer recently dropped Linn after decades of dealing with them. The prices are crazy. Cost performance low. Customers coming into a specialist hifi shop are aware of other options.
But they are getting picked up by downtown Tokyo department stores on the same floors flogging Hermes and Gucci.
Linn tried that approach with a department store here in Australia
Fell on their arse
Thats partly cause no one goes into department stores these days.
Indeed - a complete flawed strategy here
However may work in Tokyo for example , different mindset there
Time will tell of course. If it is as bad as you say, then in 2 years from now, there’ll be no Naim or Linn East of Singapore.
I’m betting Naim are doing better than it seems to us legacy customers.
From what I’m hearing the main sellers here are the muso’s and One box Uniti range
It’s a different market to the likes of us ( although some here have both ).
They could be selling truck loads of those products, I don’t know