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Is anybody here at all *listening* to the piano end user,i.e. consumer-pianist-customer him/herself?

Or are we making all kinds of assumptions on their behalf?

If he/she is entirely happy with the purchase, enjoys the piano every day - for years that is - then why would anybody insist of having to add what Larry rightfully called above - the final [irrevelant] 5% 'improvement'??

Even if you prep a Fazioli for the next 4 weeks
[which most likely wouldn't need it to begin with
] nobody can guarantee that - as a result - you would like it necessarily any better and.... buy it!

Unless you already *have*.

And never forget it's nice to give customers some surprises.

By perhaps giving them some extra free service when they need it - but least expect it.

In years to come.

[2nd free lesson in good business consulting.... ]

norbert

It also leaves nice warm fuzzies in the wallet of the technician.

We'll have to disagree here CJQ.

I have never used this forum as a billboard for my store. I have never advertised prices in my signature or solicited business on this forum.
The fact that my store name is in my signature is to clearly represent that I am a dealer representing a certain group of makers.

You have no idea what our pricing policies are so how in the world can you assume that he bought it for thousands less?

The client did say that he wished he had purchased it from us because of the support.

He believed he made the wrong choice before entering our store. Hopefully my referral of a good technician changed his mind.

The dealer he bought it from routinely sells out of their territory with no real after sale service to support the customer. The client bought this piano based not only on price but on a promise, a promise the original dealer did not keep. That dealer wanted to move a unit. Perhaps his client will come on this thread at some point and reveal the details of his transaction. I don't feel it is my place to do this.

Cristopher:

How is this an 'extended sales pitch'? The dealers who have contributed to this thread have done so for the sake of discussion on prepping pianos. We've offered many approaches to prepping, but no one has used this thread to sell their pianos. I would think that if nothing else, a piano buyer reading this would add this discussion to his checklist of things to consider when purchasing a piano. Isn't that what this forum's about?

I appreciate this discussion more than any recent thread I can remember. Everybody who has posted so far has done a public service that outweighs any hurt feelings that may have resulted. Many thanks gentlemen!

Larry,

I am glad you joined in, and offered your very valid perspective. I actually started this post because of what you wrote in another thread, about 4 hours worth of prep getting a Hallet & Davis grand to an acceptable level, and another 16 hours worth of work not making any or much difference.

I want to respond to your articulate and well thought out thread.
First, about Bechstein. We have 5 or 6 Bechstein grands in our service clientel that are less than 10 years old. They are certainly fine pianos, and no doubt the approach taken by the Bechstein people at the factory was one of high integrity and skill. I had never heard that Bechstein completes their pianos and then takes another 6 months to break them in before delivery. Astonishing. From our records and experience, I would put the Bechstein in a category with Bluthner, Bosendorfer, etc. regarding factory prep and stability. I have not seen the Bechstein recommendations about dealer prep, but I imagine they are not all that different from Bluthner, Bosendorfer, Steingraeber etc. As an aside, one of our clients has a 5'11" Bechstein from around 1990 that has a sticker on the plate that says "Seasoned for the North American Climate". We would take a similar approach to prep work with a Bechstein as with a Bluthner. You may feel that much of the work we do is wasteful and unnecessary, we feel it improves our product. To each their own.

KB, your family carried Bechsteins, did you approach them any differently than your Bosendorfers or Steingraebers?

Regarding taking this approach with every single piano being sales spin, you may not believe it, but it is standard operating proceduere for our new grand pianos. It was not my intention to appear boastful, just to offer my perspective. You may think I am full of it, and that's fine. I would be dissapointed if you didn't give me the benefit of the doubt, as I respect and enjoy your posts here.

As to your being able to prep a cheap grand piano to a perfectly acceptable level in 4 hours, I am sure this is true. I don't want to debate what acceptable means, but I don't doubt what you are claiming. I am sure we also can get a cheap piano to an acceptable level in 4 hours. We do it all the time for our service clients. As to the remaining 16 hours yielding 5% improvement, that is debatable, but even 1% overall improvement to the way a piano sounds or plays, to me, is significant. I find small improvements to be accumulative, and really make the differance.

If potential clients find our approach wasteful, extreme, excessive etc. we will probably not sell them a piano. Many people don't relate to our approach.

Again, I am glad you joined in here, because I think many will really benefit from what you have to say on this topic.

So it seems that even out of the professionals there are those who know the standard, and those who don't. Of course those who don't think they do, because the standard they work to is the highest that they know. I think those that know this higher standard though, can't go back to a lower level of service. And those who don't know this standard find it completely unecessary, or a bunch of "hubbub".

You can show someone the difference between boxed wine (not the fancy boxed wine mind you) and a ten dollar bottle very easily. It's a bit harder though to convince someone that there's a difference between a 50 dollar bottle and a 500 dollar bottle.
I'm sure though, that once someone has been drinking $500 bottles of wine for awhile, they will have a hard time going back.
I don't say this with a snobby tone as some must be thinking. I've never had a $500 bottle of wine, so I don't know that I can appreciate the difference. But I know there are people who can. And rather than tell them they're silly for having the taste they do, I commend them for having the level of appreciation necessary.

And I commend them on the money neccesary.

It's exactly the higher standard we're after and nobody in the world is adhering to it any better or with any more regularity/consistency than the factories within the Austro-Germany-Italy triangle.

Don't forget these guys are watching over each others shoulders just as the guys from BMW, Mercedes or Audi do.

I have received and delivered pianos from Germany [and even Estonia!] straight to my waiting - sometimes impatient - customers.

Including concert halls.

Without ever even the slightest,anywhere near serious, complaint.

web page

And some of them have posted their experiences here.

And a number of techs fighting over who will be selected to do the "after-factory-prep-service" later.

A few weeks ....later, that is!

norbert

Thanks, Keith. It is my opinion that spending the extra time you're talking about on a lower to midrange piano is wasteful for a couple of reasons. It isn't because it won't help the piano, and it isn't because the clientele for it don't deserve it. It's because 99.999% of them can't tell, and would much prefer to save the extra money. Second, it's because in an unstable piano of modest construction (how's *that* for saying "cheap"..... ) it simply isn't going to last long enough to provide much benefit. The pianos will change too much during breakin.

The typical buyer for a Chinese or Korean piano (or Japanese, for that matter) are more interested in price than they are subtle nuances of improvement yielded from extreme attention to detail in prepwork. They don't care if you spent 2 hours hand polishing the capstans, they just want the keys to go up and down smoothly. If given the choice between having them go up and down even more smoothly and saving an extra 200 bucks on the piano, they'll take the money. I would be amazed, if you took two pianos just alike, gave one just enough work to be in good tune, evenly voiced, and the action work smoothly, and took the other one to the highest level of perfection you were capable of without altering or adding something else to the piano, the vast majority of your customers for those types of pianos couldn't tell the difference. But they *can* tell the difference in price. They can't absorb all the "tech talk" involved in explaining why it is desirable to have that extra 5% improvement, and the one the guy has down the street plays just fine, but is cheaper.

Now - a question - if you lose the customer because they couldn't appreciate the finer level of prepwork on a price point piano and they buy from the guy down the street who could save them 500$ on the same or similar piano, who loses?

The customer.

Sure, you lost a sale. Your competitor made a sale. But the one that lost the most is your customer. Why? Because you are capable of providing your *customer* a far superior level of after the sale service. And they've made the wrong choice, thinking they saved 500$. This customer saved 500$ on the price, but in the process will never realize the full potential of what they purchased, because the other dealer probably isn't going to see that they get it. Given that the goal isn't to bring glory to yourself, but to offer a meaningful benefit to the piano owner, this is an important point.

To me, while I'm not trying to tell you how to run your business or telling you you're doing it "wrong", it makes more sense to get that price point piano good enough to be pleasing, and make the sale. Once they are your customer, the relationship with these folks changes. Now you are their *dealer*. Now, you are in a position to take time and educate them. Now, you can work with them to develop their instrument to its full potential, and you can do it as the piano breaks in. The customer wins, because they have the support of a caring dealer who is willing to educate them, work with them, and capable of making quality improvements to their piano. As Allstate would say, "they're in good hands".

The highly knowledgeable, sophisticated musician buying an expensive premium piano is handled differently, and the pianos he's looking at are different as well. Now you can start doing more on the front end if you wish. Personally, I preferred to let the Bechstein technicians present *their* work to the customer, and then build a relationship with the potential buyer by working with him/her to detail the piano to *their* preferences. That meant the really detailed stuff happened once they had a particular piano in mind. These customers are aware of the costs of tailoring an instrument to their desires, and the cost factor becomes less of an issue.

Just my thoughts.

good post Larry.

It helps me to be able to see what "others" in the industry think, and I think we've had a very good discussion here.

True, KB!

And when you really look at it, you dont have to go the "my-piano-more expensive-because-of-my-blahblahblah-work" route at all.

Just fire the salesman [weasel.... ] and stick the saved commission into the piano with more service.

Without becoming more expensive!

[free 3rd lesson in running a successful piano business.. ]

norbert

ummmm, that would be the end of my job Norbert!

plus... there'd then be nobody there to do the prep.... double loss!

No, you would be even more busy!!

It's the competition's sales weasels.... you'll send packing!

norbert

Because he bought a piano 3000 miles away and paid for shipping it back. Nobody does this to save 2oo bucks. I also know some 'east coast' pricing on 30-40k ish pianos that is 5-10 thousand dollars less than mid and west coast.

Since you did not provide pricing, I made a guess. Since you continue not to provide pricing, I guess I'll have to stick with my guess.

If the case you are quoting is someone who paid just a few hundred dollars or even a couple of thousand dollars less buying a piano 3000 miles away, then they really are not particularly clever shoppers.


Oh, the dreaded out of territory monsters. Why not drop the brand name if they do not support the kind of rigorous channel support you are in favor of?

That would be helpful, let's hope they come forward.

(Norbert - I can't even begin to tell if your posts are all drug-induced or your alter ego wirtting for you. Either way, I rarely understand what it is you are attempting to communicate ?)

Larry,

You've appeared to say 2 conflicting things: 1; Bechstein and other top pianos don't need hours of prep and 2; it makes more sense to prep a top piano than spend 4+ hours on a cheap piano ??

I quite like KB's wine analogy. We most oft have differing personal standards and once used to them, apply them generally. What I consider to be the "best" prep possible (within 2 days of work) may be similar but not quite equal to KB, or Keith or Cohen. Nonetheless, it has been verified that from the mouths of the top piano builders, they fully expect qualified Techs to perform this kind of re-regulation of action and tone. They may not have your standard in mind, and those of us following theirs, may not either.

P.s, During a lunch with Luc Boulay (head of Pleyel distribution) when discussing this kind of prep, he said "this is normal and represents the TVA or Tax on Added Value".
I enjoy $50-$200 bottles of French wine, my wife prefers the $15 Beaujolais. Different perceptions and/or education of quality.

"Oh, the dreaded out of territory monsters. Why not drop the brand name if they do not support the kind of rigorous channel support you are in favor of?"


Christopher, I'm pretty sure that if there are "territories", then this manufacturer does support a dealer network. This doesn't stop dealers from exploiting this though (including a few in your area). It should be the manufacturer who drops the dealer, not the dealer dropping the manufacturer.
Why should Alex be punished for someone else breaking the rules?

And why aren't you understanding at all of this problem?
Does nobody see the importance of a dealer network for properly representing pianos? If it's not important, let's all just order pianos directly from the manufacturer.
... wait... how would we choose which one we want? University sales?

Cohen

I do not really agree with your statements about Yamaha or Kawai arriving in such great condition as to not need this prep either.

That would suggest that a Steingraeber or Bosendorfer is in a lesser state of function than the superbly regulated Yamahas ??

For a Yamaha (in my experience) their greatest needs are in tone production. While overall regulation is acceptable, it is by no means perfect or even better than let's say Sauter of Schimmel (which I often do full preps on).

KB,

Somewhere between University sales and "20 hour concert preparation for every piano" type dealers, lies the truth about what I think most people want from a dealer.

CJQ,

CJQ,


I don't favor rigorous sales channels as you put it.

I favor a dealer having the ethics to be up front about what a piano needs once it has been delivered into the home and their ability to render that service.

I favor a dealer getting to know the expectations of the client and giving the proper advice, even if it means losing a sale.

How do you know what west and midwest pricing is? What is your source for such information? You present your opinion as if it is unimpeachable. A dealer network's pricing can vary greatly from county to county in any given state. With this being the case how can any person state that this is the westcoast,midwest or eastcoast price?

incidently price the client paid included delivery.

You assume to much here CJQ. I have nothing against clients buying outside of their local area. I only hope that they first preview the piano and do their homework. I would hope that the dealer informs them about the service the piano they are about to purchase will require.

Don't confuse or assume my intent here.

This clients regretted his purchase. I would have sold him the piano for the same price and given him the best service that we are capable of.

In the end a dealer moved a unit and a customer is unhappy with their purchase.

It looks as if only one party won here.