This question comes up surprisingly often. Well, maybe not surprisingly often. But it does come up, and it deserves an honest answer.
F1 sponsorship costs about 50 million euros a year. With that money we could manufacture half a million pairs of headphones. Or buy Henri that Ferrari. Or fund the Death Star's guidance system. We decided to do none of these and instead keep headphone prices at a level that ordinary people can afford.
Advertising is a tax the customer pays
When you buy a big-brand pair of headphones from a store, in addition to the product you also pay for the ad campaign, the celebrity deal, and that logo by the stadium. Every euro spent on advertising is a euro taken away from product development — or a euro added to the price.
We're a 14-person company. We can't afford that, and we don't want to. Our marketing department is basically one guy and this support site. That's enough, because the product speaks for itself. Or the customer speaks for the product to a friend in the sauna. Both work.
So where does the money go?
To Jasse's ear insurance. Not really, but almost.
Most of the money goes where it should: to product development and fine-tuning sound quality. Jasse sits in his studio and tweaks frequency responses until the VMK25.2 sounds better than headphones you pay twice as much for. Then he tweaks a bit more.
The rest goes to service. We have our own service center in Kajaani, because we believe in the crazy idea that a broken device should be repaired instead of thrown into a landfill. It costs. But it's the right thing to do.
And yes, a small slice goes to the Death Star. We're now at 0.00003 percent. We're on schedule.
But awareness?
Awareness is a nice thing. You know what's nicer? A customer who buys headphones, uses them for five years, gets them repaired once, and then buys the next pair. That's our marketing strategy. Not very sexy, but it works.
Raimo always says the best advertisement is a product that doesn't break. Raimo also drives a 1991 Mercedes-Benz W124 and considers everything made after that junk. The man has a point.
Henri, on the other hand, dreams of the day when Valco's logo is on the side of an F1 car. Until then he drives his Alfa Romeo — on the days when it agrees to start.
What if I still want to support Valco?
Buy headphones. Or a speaker. Or both. Tell a friend. Leave a review. That's better advertising than anything 50 million can buy.
And if one day you see Valco's logo on an F1 car, you'll know the Death Star is finished and we have money to burn. Until then, we make headphones.
