"The cheapest part of the business is the product materials. A $300.00 B&W costs them ~$30.00 to manufacture. Basically it would be around 1/10 what it ends up being retailed for with everyone taking their cut along the way. "

This has been a basic truth about the retail price of electronics equipment, at least audio equipment versus the cost of the parts that go into them since time immemorial. There was a time when many if not most audiophiles built their own equipment or at least some of it. Amplifiers, preamplifiers, tuners could be built from kits if you didn't want to become educated in electronics and build your own. Even tube manuals had schematics for typical amplifier designs in the back and magazines like Radio Electronics always published excellent designs you could build from scratch. As for loudspeakers, many people built their own and even today you can buy pre packaged kits with enclosures in every state of completion from basic plans to completly finished cabinets. Heathkit used to offer kits for building you own Altec Lansing and AR3a louspeakers which performed reportedly identically to the factory assembled versions when the instructions were followed.

Considering that any idiot can mount drivers in a box and call himself a speaker manufacturer, it seems a shame that most people are too busy, too lazy, too unwilling to spend the time and effort to build anything on their own. Unless you have a special unique product that can only be purchased from a manufacturer such as a magneplanar full range unit, it seems a shame that people waste so much money on audio equipment. IMO, when people stopped tinkering with equipment, this hobby died. Now they change out a speaker wire and think that they have made a great discovery.