What worries me is the collapse of the dealer networks and retail arket. When I started in the business 30 years ago, Albuquerque had everal full size dealers: Steinway/Wurlitzer, Baldwin (two stores), imball (two stores), Yamaha, plus smaller concerns selling Young hang, Everett, Lowrey/Story & Clark (shopping mall), not counting ome folks selling used instruments. All were locally owned and easonably prosperous. Today, the latest Steinway dealer is going out f business, and once it is gone we will be left with a fairly new tore selling Yamaha, Schimmel and generally top end grands, a mall tore selling Chinese product, and a small concern selling digitals nd stocking one or two Kawai acoustics. Period. No used, no nothing lse. In those 30 years, Albuquerque metro has at least tripled in opulation. That is downright sobering. Regards, red Sturm Part of the reason dealers are shutting their doors is not just slower sales, but lack of funding from financial institutions. As with a lot of business, banks and lending agencies are very particular to whom they give credit. So there are fewer and fewer companies willing to do the flooring that dealers depend on to put pianos in their showrooms. On the used side, it's getting very hard for a used piano dealer to stay in business because of the inexpensive pianos from China and Indonesia. When I had my piano store, I was able to buy a half way decent used piano for $500 - $700 and sell it for $1500 - $2000. But now, there are new pianos that sell for a couple of hundred dollars more, that look much better. And forget about rebuilt grands. I used to be able to buy a small Howard or Gulbransen grand, rebuild it, and get $4-5000 for it. But between what we have to pay for parts and overhead, and what new small Chinese pianos are selling for, there is no market for them any more. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> To: caut <caut at ptg.org> Sent: Tue, Oct 12, 2010 8:40 am Subject: Re: [CAUT] cutting departments On Oct 12, 2010, at 8:07 AM, Laurence Libin wrote: > The linked article and comments have important implications for techs. Be prepared! Laurence Here at UNM it seems like the liberal arts and humanities may be tagnating or shrinking, but the performing arts, especially music and ilm, are expanding rapidly. Studio art as well. What worries me is the collapse of the dealer networks and retail arket. When I started in the business 30 years ago, Albuquerque had everal full size dealers: Steinway/Wurlitzer, Baldwin (two stores), imball (two stores), Yamaha, plus smaller concerns selling Young hang, Everett, Lowrey/Story & Clark (shopping mall), not counting ome folks selling used instruments. All were locally owned and easonably prosperous. Today, the latest Steinway dealer is going out f business, and once it is gone we will be left with a fairly new tore selling Yamaha, Schimmel and generally top end grands, a mall tore selling Chinese product, and a small concern selling digitals nd stocking one or two Kawai acoustics. Period. No used, no nothing lse. In those 30 years, Albuquerque metro has at least tripled in opulation. That is downright sobering. Regards, red Sturm ssturm at unm.edu ttp://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm ttp://www.youtube.com/fredsturm ttp://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/FredSturm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20101013/41679e7d/attachment-0001.htm>
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