While I am not an employee of any institution at the moment, I do operate on a contractural basis with several schools and large churches. There have been indications of belt tightening but nothing dramatic so far. At Lafayette College and Lehigh University, private liberal arts colleges with aproximately 30 pianos each in inventory and decent size concert programs (Lafayette's Williams Center for the Arts 475 seats and Lehigh's Zoellner Arts Center 1,400) the endowments took a hit but as has been mention now is a good time to buy,and that seems to be the direction these schools are taking. Warren Buffet says the markets always come back and I think serious investors follow this. Both schools have put a hold on rebuilding for one year and the COLA is all that we can expect for an increase, but unless there is a further significant decline in the big picture I think we will be back on track next year. East Stroudsburg University (35 pianos and 450 seat hall) which is a state school, is a year behind that in response. While they have tightened the COLA the limiting of rebuilding won't occur until the following year as funds were already encumbered for 09-10. Even our school districts and churches haven't been affected significantly. Other than a few negotiating points, mainly being soft on big projects, they are operating as usual. One area that has been affected across the board is purchase of new instruments either for replacement or expansion of the inventories. I don't see that coming back until mid 2010 or early 2011. I sympathize with our dealer network. This is the most difficult of times for them. For independent technicians, however, the news in general is good, people are maintaining what they have, but being cautious about large purchases. I live in the Central Eastern part of Pennsylvania and we are close to New York and Philadelphia. This area has not been hit all that hard. Real estate while devaluing slightly is holding its own and job loss is under the national average. If I could just figure out how to get in line for the bail out scam... Chris Solliday Registered Piano Technician -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20090610/a3c640db/attachment-0001.htm>
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