My point wasn't to debate the word boutique, it was more along the lines of paying $2,000 some odd dollars for a sketchy 12W combo. The marketing for this shite is insane. Buyer beware.
Yeah....that's basically what I meant. I just didn't make all the jumps.
When the first boutique amp builders (e.g., Jim Marshall) came about, it was because they were making amps in the back of their shop and selling them there, rather than having a distribution network and getting them other places. And they kind of took over the business. (Wasn't Jim Marshall a drummer?)
When some of these modern "boutique" guys
started, the same basic thing was probably true....they happened to be interested in electronics and/or were repairing amps, decided to mod them, then decided to build them, and opened a shop to sell them. Or it took over their repair business. Or they outgrew the back room of the shop they worked in. Or they transitioned from assembling full rigs and perhaps building components to mostly building products on a still relatively small but bigger than custom scale. Most of them were one of those, unless I'm mistaken.
E.g., more or less they all opened a boutique for their products. The term very well may have meant that they were only sold in the maker's dedicated boutiques....the original definition.
IDK whether it was someone who knew something about marketing or people just inferring things from most boutiques being focused on the high-end of whatever market. Because...well, why would anyone want to open a Firefly or Vintage (the brand) boutique instead of selling a whole range of guitars? Especially after you had to compete with Amazon and Guitar Center. But, at some point that original definition (that fit, at least for a while) got conflated with high-end, despite not directly meaning it. And everyone started using it wrong.
In a very real way, Fractal is more "boutique" than Tone King. They both make
great products, and they're both very much high end...but only one of them has a distribution network.
