They would if they would look into the companies and if they would do a google search/look at the company sites for dealers, they definitely would have heard about these two. ELAC is Benjamin Miracord, a company that has been around for a very long time.
Jamo, before being purchased by Klipsch, was the #3 producer of finished speaker units (speakers in boxes) worldwide, behind Bose and the Harman Group. I don't know when you became interested in audio, but if it was before 2000, you should have seen their speakers in a lot of stores. They didn't sell to many/any big box stores, but the specialists definitely were a major part of their dealer network. One reason Klipsch bought the company is due to Jamo having CE designation and that's necessary if a company wants to sell their products in the rest of the world. They consolidated the company stock in a holding company before the sale and one reason the company was sold is that the founders wanted to retire; they began in '68, in a small shed- pretty amazing, if you think about it. By '94, they were the largest speaker manufacturer in Europe.
If you knew how many speakers these two companies have sold, you wouldn't call them 'off-brand'.
Independent companies are 'off-brand'? ALL of the major conglomerates started as small companies and being part of a major corporation doesn't mean they make better products than the "off-brands", it just means they can buy in quantities that cause their price/unit to be lower.
