@March Audio doesn't do production anywhere in the same order of magnitude as either Schiit nor JDS.
If you have no idea what you're talking about, then don't and stop embarrassing yourself .
You mean like applying your individual, hand-made design process of a single case to justify that of a large-scale manufacturing process? You have yourself to blame for being outed for making such a flawed comparison, after having thrown one assertive comment after another about your supposed proficiency in the field in that very same comment. The fact that you in response are lashing out at me, just demonstrates that even further (on top of the fact that you clearly are aggrieved).
March Audio may not do production anywhere in the same order of magnitude as either Schiit or JDS, but they still are in in an order of magnitude higher than your single one, and are also doing it through a manufacturing process. That includes the KTB itself, which doesn't cost $99 for an ODM partner to back-order.
Unfortunately there are totally clueless Internet experts who have no experience or knowledge in the area who like to pontificate.
You have to ignore them. They are idiots. You have to be an idiot to pontificate about things which you have no knowledge. It's embarrassing to watch.
You are right. Outside of my educational wisdom, but also my own experience and also general distrust of non-accountable structures (like corporations), I have no knowledge of your specific business, due to lack of documentation and data of your enterprise and its manufacturing process. Nevertheless, it is a manufacturing process, and it is a business built solely on the prospect of profit, as you just noted, as we all agreed. I don’t see how that has ever been in contention, as the question here is the worth of your product, due to the cost of an alternative with the similar technology. One that users in here tried to justify, by claiming that the price increase was due to increased manufacturing costs of the added case.
The fact that you come into this discussion, throwing an “idiots” fit, and not really providing much information, but still expect to be taken seriously when rationalizing your product’s price, is not very convincing. In fact, it only encourages me to push this matter even further. Especially when you criticize me about not knowing the BOM, when you’re not ready to even provide that very BOM yourself. Your contractor provides this to you, so you are more than welcome to provide us with the price of the entirety of the process, or the case itself, for us.
You very carefully point out the need for a business to make a profit. Then let’s apply that simple truism to Khadas, who, as you acknowledge here, are selling the KTB with a profit in mind. Now, I have no hard data to go by here, but I think it’s rational to assume that the R&D, as well as the process of producing electronic circuits alone, from photolithographic techniques even down to the solder of the components, is, at least comparatively, a far more complex procedure. Also, Khadas already is responsible for the assembly line operating procedure, most of quality control (outside of the additional QC of their ODM clients), product assembly, firmware burning, etc. In other words, pretty much all of the complex and cost-expensive heavy lifting is done by them, when making the KTB. All these apply for themselves as well when they sell it for a consumer price of $99.
All that you add on in costs, other than additional QC-input and the raw product, is manufacture and assembly cost of the additional case. I’m curious to know through which partner you do that, as Khadas, on their own ODM page, note that “We have professional designers who can do both Industrial and Mechanical Design for your product”, in regards to the question of “enclosure design”. They even design the packaging for the product, upon request. I have feeling it's nowhere close to $320, or even $100 -- either by Khadas, or any other third party.