ando, you can meet some dealer sponsorship on forums, but I really understand the love for Estonia here. You can get a tier 2 grand for the price of tier 4. In the price range of Estonia are Boston, W.Hoffman, and Estonia beats them hands down. Or you can buy some other smaller tier2-tier3 grands for the price of Estonia, but size is size - Estonia can be still a better value, IMO.

Kawai RX-2 is other beloved piano here, and exactly by the same reason - at its price range it offers extremely good value.

What about quality distinction, I can admire Bosendorfer or Fazioli, but the love would be only theoretical - their pianos are absolutely out of reach for me.

What about quality of Estonia pianos, Mark's example shows that there could be problem pianos among them. But it is covered by the factory warranty though.

So you're saying your hyping is just not as great as hyping by others?

Estonia makes a very small number of pianos per year. Therefore, the fact that dealers are scrambling for them should be of no surprise but rather expected. This has been pointed out to you many times.

PLU - It has also "been pointed out to you many times" that your public diatribe against Norbert has become very tiresome.

There is no reason that Norbert shouldn't stand behind the brands which he carries. That is not "hype." It is being a good dealer.

Me too.

Thanks for your post, Turandot. I actually understood what you were saying. I was just trying to further the discussion.

Not really.

It's the number of his posts that make it unquestionably hype. More than all the PW dealers combined by a huge margin. This is why many others besides me have said he same thing and even other dealers have complained.

In fact, I'd go as far as saying his endless hyping actually hurts these makes. Or do you think all the other dealers, who avoid the endless self congratulations and self promotion are just not being good dealers? You can't have it both ways.

Again and as usual, Mr Anonymous's above claim is false.

My posts about any of our brands including Estonia are far less these days than their [prospective] owners reporting about them.

Insider tip: those dealers not or hardly posting here are selling the majority of available pianos.

The smart ones I guess.....

Norbert

Rich,

I don't know if that's possible. The thread seems to have gone into a laundry spin cycle where coins have come out of trouser pockets and can be heard rattling around in the drum.

How bout a what if?

It's been my observation that retailers give up a brand more often because of problems in their supply chain than because of anything to do with product quality. What happens if Estonia (like virtually every other maker) looks toward Asia, does not increase production, and availability becomes eve more of an issue for you guys than it is now?

Is the Estonia factory operating at full capacity?

Hard to source is very fair. It's hard for me to source at times, and I'm the dealer.

Regional relevance and sometimes local dominance is possible for even the smallest makers. Little choices from dealers can really influence a local market. We did that for several brands in Atlanta.

Estonia is creeping into more prominent European dealers, but supplying current dealers and diversifying into new markets must be a difficult balance. I saw Gerd Finkenstein add Estonia to their roster. If the company decided to expand some, I think they would easily find customers, but as companies grow, they have different problems.

I trust the leadership to keep the product's identity over ambitions to be in every market. Thankfully, some of my customers are willing to travel like hotcat to discover what Estonia offers them. Actually, yesterday I had 2 customers drive 6 hrs (each way) to buy and another drive 4 hrs (each way) to narrow down (their second daylong trip).

It is.

Well Steve. I expected someone from the power grid to respond, bu not you. After all, you've never stocked Estonia, never been its consultant, and don't personally own one. In fact your only possible business interest (trifling at best ) would be those nice ads in Pianobuyer that Estonia and at least four of its devoted retailers have entrusted to you.

So, if factory is at full capacity, you've got the hands that nave always fed you queueing up for more product, you've got Geerd Finkenstein waitng in the wings to open up Europe, and Asia beckons, what do you do short of increasing capacity? Is it loyalty or leverage?

The business answer would seem to be that you use your leverage.... keep increasing the wholesale and/or stiffening the order terms hoping to not go beyond the sweet spot. It seems like the formula for a lot of high-ticket pianos. And...having a higher sales price will fatten your tier points on Pianobuyer

Maybe Hotcat was smart to get in when he did.

I believe Estonia pianos are hand-made pianos, so no point to increase production if you do not have enough experts to produce same high quality instruments

Shouldn't that be "ceased"? And that is probably what this thread should be as well.

Well, I'm a "she," not a "he," not that it matters! Anyway I'm highly amused and grateful that my almost first post has gotten so much traffic.

After my Estonia arrives I will plan to give honest, objective updates. In the meantime, I'm trying to get my house humid enough for the new arrival, and waiting for my new rug to be delivered. What with all this nesting I feel like I'm expecting a baby.

In a way, you are!

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!

I echo that! Most threads about new purchases elicit friendly responses. This one took a different turn ...

Again you are operating on a false premise. I have no earnings from advertising in Piano Buyer, and haven't for almost two years.

I believe that Mark's "issue" with his piano was deemed to be defective strings.
It was with this understanding that I wrote my post. I don't believe there is a failing in my understanding to assume that faulty strings would easily be argued as something that falls under the umbrella of warranty coverage.

Yes, I'm looking into getting a Venta. For now I'm just using a cheap Vicks steam vaporizer. So far, in just a half a day it's moved from 20% to 28% so I figure that's good progress.

Did you get the piano saver system?

Yes, I got the Dampp-Chaser.

Speaking of echo chambers, the echo chamber extraordinaire enters stage left: our peripatetic passionate peddler of piddling piano publications proposes a paragraph to posit a point that is persistently posed and patently perverse.

You actually appear to be in agreement with me that Estonia is presently almost exclusively a US brand that is not marketed in Europe and therefore also not a respected, successful European piano brand, any more than if Wurlitzer were built in China and sold exclusively in Somalia could it be called a respected and successful US piano brand.

There is no dispute on the what. The dispute seems to be on the " Why ". However, here we also would appear to be in agreement on the face of it that the US, oblivious to the history, is an easy market for Estonia compared to trying to turn around their brand image in Europe. It is a matter of opportunism.

If, given the limited production inherent on this kind of manufacturing, other markets become more promising than the US, then the same kind of opportunism may lead Estonia to raise prices making their instruments less of a good value or focus on those markets and abandon the US in the same way it abandoned Europe, rather than undergo the significant risks involved in attempting to scale up antiquated production methods.

excellent choice!