Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Is the end near for German & high-end European piano makers?

As I read through these posts a couple things occur to me. First, when I was starting out in this business back in the 1960s most entry level pianos would have been considered junk by today’s standards. Even the middle range of the market was nothing to get really excited about. For the pianist of advanced, or advancing, skills it was necessary to head toward the top end of the market.

By comparison even today’s entry level pianos are significantly better instruments. The computer and automated machinery has made this possible. That and the adaptation of some of those lower cost components we see frequently maligned here. There are a number of Asian pianos available at quite reasonable prices that put to shame many of the mid-priced pianos of the 1960s and 1970s. And there are a few that rival the European pianos that were available at the time. In other words to get a piano of reasonable performance it is no longer necessary to spend a king’s ransom.

Second, pianos tend to last for a while. I see the analogy being made with the car industry. But cars have a rather limited lifespan when compared to a piano of reasonable quality. In the U.S. both the car market and the piano market are saturated. Still, the car market more-or-less thrives. Cars wear out or are compared with new cars having significantly improved performance and/or desirable features.

Contrast this with the piano market in which we can find instruments made to essentially the same acoustical and structural design they had in the 1870s and 1880s. They are made faster and somewhat better because of that automated machinery I mentioned above but they offer little incentive to the owner of a reasonably good piano to upgrade. Upgrade to what? So the industry writes off a significant portion of its potential market to the instruments it built forty or eighty or more years ago.

Third, the music industry (not just the piano industry) has allowed music education in our public schools to languish. Even with all the research that is being done on finding a causal link between the early study of musical instruments (and in particular piano and keyboard) it is a rare school administrator or school board member who is aware of any of it. Can you imagine what would happen if even one study found that a young boy or girl being taught to play some sport enhanced their intellectual abilities and improved their learning capabilities?

Yes, lifestyles are changing but in part that is due to the significantly better marketing efforts of competitive toys and activities.

ddf

Great post Del.

It is unlikely that Bosendorfer, Fazioli, et. al. can build materially more pianos than they do without compromising that which has made them noteworthy. Take the total costs of that limited production (about 300 in Bosendorfer's case), add to that a reasonable return on investment and you arrive at a figure. If Bosendorfer was artificially "jacking up the wholesale pricing" to make uncommon profits they would not have needed BAG or Yamaha to bail them out.

Apply a traditional markup and you arrive at a certain MSRP. Market conditions and dealer positions will dictate degrees of discounting.

Kurtman is suggesting either thinner margins at the manufacturer and the retailer and or supply side thinking of selling more pianos "let's make it up in volume". Supply side thinking is not in the cards for Tier 1 type instruments. There is just not that kind of elasticity in the retail market and the manufacturing side of top tier pianos.

It is my understanding that the top tier manufactureres ie. Bosendorfer and Fazioli are selling all the pianos they are making.

Top tier pianos are not now and never have intended to be the average Joe's piano.

Marty, you hit the nail on the head.

This is not a "make it up in volume" issue.

Yes, and there's a few others...

But what really counts is what's going out the door at dealer level. Manufacturers often sell several units at once, only few makes would be among those at retail leve.

There, perhaps will be the biggest change in future and I have some aweful premonitions of what lies ahead for some.

Norbert