Ha! I was trying not to mention DG! A lot of people regard Darkglass as the Apple of the pedal world and I'd tend to agree. No, people don't mind Doug taking the eye out of their head and coming back for the socket, and I don't think it's because he's invented something new, at least not in the early days (B3K design shows more than a passing resemblance to other well known and well established stomp boxes), there's certainly been a lot of strides lately, but they had the customer base by the short and curlies by then!
DG's marketing is spot on. Something Ashdown don't do that well.
They didn't jump into the market at current prices, they gradually built up to it. Something Ashdown are doing donkey backwards by the looks of it.
Ashdown will say they're not trying to be Darkglass, but they have to play in the same game, and to be successful they need a USP better than "spot the VU" (what's VU is that? Why the one that made the first line of pedals entirely too big!)