Had you ever heard of IKKO before this? I hadn't, and I'm at least adjacent to the hifi and audio nerd crowd.

Apple have a reputation and brand that allows them to charge premium prices.

IKKO seems, at least to me, to be effectively a disposable brand. If their reputation goes bad, their only reals costs are setting up a new website/AliExpress Store/Amazon seller account.

To expand on what I was trying to say:

Yes, you can run with disposable brands. It's a perfectly viable business strategy in many cases.

However: if you do that you are missing out on the benefits of building a good reputation. Even in the cases, where your product _is_ actually good.

So another perfectly valid business strategy is to build a longer lasting brand. Like Apple has done. (Or countless other companies.)

In most markets we see both kinds of strategies at play. As a customer, you can usually decide which kind of strategy you give your money to.