Lexington, KY–based Thiel Audio has announced that it will partner with Charlottesville, VA–based Crutchfield to offer its speakers online and in Crutchfield brick-and-mortar outlets. Thiel has been famously reluctant to go online, having established itself through its canny vetting of potential retail partners. It kept its distribution clean.

Based on conversations I've had with Kathy Gornik and Jim Thiel, Thiel's worry was that too many Internet retailers sold based solely on price, offering little customer service or authority. Those are areas of Crutchfield's expertise—one competing speaker manufacturer told me at HE2007 that Thiel's move made perfect sense. "Crutchfield's phone people know more about hi-fi than many specialty retail employees," he said. "And you know that Crutchfield is going to sell on merits, not price. If I could buy a Thiel speaker from a store that served me as well as Crutchfield, I'd want to buy locally, but that's not a possibility for a whole lot of the US—and they get that catalog everywhere."

Having written technical articles for Crutchfields' website, I can attest to that. Those folks know their stuff—and even my mom got that catalog.

Crutchfield will carry 10 of Thiel's 15 loudspeakers, including floorstanding, in-wall, and on-wall loudspeakers, topping off at the $10,900/pair price point, well shy of Thiel's $16000/pair top-of-the-line model.