Strange take. If Chinese brands didn't want to compete with local retailers then they wouldn't offer direct to consumer sales. It's not about the price, it's about price gouging, there's a difference.
Hard work to get distributors and retailers with you when starting up, thus many kicks off with direct sales and builds a reputation for their products. When the products shows potential/popularity from direct sales and reviews (paid or not), they might choose to hand over some of their profit to the distributors and retailers, as the profit may arrive by higher sales volumes, and by higher sales volumes they have higher production volumes which lowers the production costs and gives them power to negotiate lower prices for parts and so on. If the brand underbids the retailers, the retailers will wash their hands and move on with different brands.
There'a a ton of these budget brand products with direct sales history prior to local retail.
I am somehow led to believe there is an enthusiast perspective issue at play too. Enthusiast customers sometimes approach this as if they were dealing with enthusiasts fellows rather than businesses. These are commercial products aimed at enthusiast customers, and their job is to deliver attractive/sellable products with healthy profits in mind.
Being a gearhead of some sort, my experience is that the manufacturer/brand MUST stick to the RRP's in the various markets, and the same goes for the importers/distributors. The retailers however, may set their own prices to compete, but rest assure, it is not popular if the retailer's price strategies lowers the the customer's willingess to pay whatever target prices the brand may have.
This kind of lock is quite common in all segments for products doing well. If the products are less popular/successful, for instance if retailers had higher hopes and overstocked, it's a different matter. But for a product like th DX 1 II, they sell what they produces and would be able to adjust production to the demand. They "never" flood the market.
For budget IEM's I'd argue the story is different, as the outbid of budget IEM's of similar quality/performance is huge, and prices are at a level where they can't hand over any/much of the profit to retailers, thus most of it is based on direct sales (or indirect through small margin affiliated webshops). Those who stock these hereabout probably just keeps offering them to keep their loyal customers happy and gets their profits from products they really are in the market to sell. It's a zero profit perk.
I ordered the DX1 II directly before it became available from the retailer/importer locally, and I guess I saved 5€ or so loosing the great customer protections we have. I am entirely fine with the price having be set for this market, Topping Store handled vat/customs and everything shipping from China, and I got it on my doorstep on time. Have dealt with Topping support, and they have been great.
This got nothing to do with gouging. It is rather common practice adapting to the markets they are in.
