I just thought I'd take a moment or two to somewhat qualify my remarks on the impending demise of the acoustic piano. Since most of the techs on this list live and work in the US my remarks were directed to them and concerned the demise of the US-made acoustic piano. The facts are avail- able to all. You can draw your own conclusions. Im my opinion, the "revolution" occured when Japan started exporting AND selling pianos to the US. Bouyed by their success and determined the jump on the bandwagon, the South Koreans started building knock-offs of those successful Japanese pianos AND selling them. Later, the Chinese, the Rus- sians and others starting building knock-offs of the SK knock-offs and pretty soon the whole world was inundated such pianos. Even here in the US, where for so long we had led the way in piano-design and technology, we became followers--witness Steinway's invlovement with Kawai and Bald- win's with Samick. What is the current state of the US piano industry? Consider this: In 1910--almost a century ago--we produced more pianos than the rest of the world COMBINED. In 1910, for the first time, US piano sales reached the 100 MILLION DOLLAR mark! That's 100 million _1910_ dollars, about the equivalent of 2 BILLION 1998 dollars. Further, since the average price of a piano in 1910 was LESS THAN $300, the number of pianos actual- ly SOLD was about 350,000. Now someone's going to have to help me out here, but does anyone out there know what the total US piano industry output was in 1997, in terms of the number of pianos sold and the sales revenue they generated? How does that compare with the 350,000 units sold in 1910 and with that 2 billion dollar figure( 1910 to 19998 dollar conversion)? OK. Those are our GROSS figures. Now for some refinement, to give us a true picture. ========================================================================== Here's where it gets interesting. Many of you probably came close to fal- ling out of your computer chairs recently, when Newton made the statement that Kimball actually built some pretty decent pianos, once-upon-a-time. Yeah, it WAS a LONG time ago--right after the turn-of-the-century, to be specific--but those early Kimballs were and are highly regarded. One of the things that made them so special is that they were built "in-house". That is to say that Kimball built all the parts--the plates, the actions, the keys, etc.--THEMSELVES. Those early pianos weren't built from out- sourced parts. In that respect early Kimballs were like earlier Steinways. Wow! did you ever think you'd see the words Kimball and Steinway in the same sentence! :-) In the early part of the century, however--the age of the "commercial piano"--companies like Kimball were the exception, rather than the rule. Piano manufacturers--led by the example of Joseph Hale--were out-sourcing like crazy. Just like today? No, not just like today. There was a HUGE difference. In the early part of the century, when a piano company turn- ed to out-sourcing, they bought their parts from American companies pro- ducing those parts right here in America. The end result, therefor, was was a US-made piano built ENTIRELY of parts made right here in the US by US manufacturers. In 1910, 350,000 such pianos were sold and generated revenues of 100 million dollars. Are you with me, so far? Now let's jump ahead to 1998 once again and consider those 1997 sales figures, or, if they're not available, 1996's. In order to make a fair comparison with 1910, lets take the number of US pianos built and ELIMINATE any that contain parts that are not built by a US manu- facturer building them here in the US. For example, any pianos which contain parts built by a US manufacturer but built OUTSIDE the US would have to be eliminated, as would any piano built with parts built out- side the US by a foreign manufacturer. Likewise, any pianos containing parts built by a non-US manufacturer--even if the parts, themselves, WERE built here in the US--would also have to be eliminated. Now subtract those pianos we have just eliminated from those gross sales figures. How many units do you have now and how much revenue did they generate? After you've located a magnifying glass with which to read the final figures, com- pare them with the 350,000 units sold in 1910 and the 2 billion dollars (converted 1910 dollars) those sales generated. So just how well IS the US-built acoustic piano doing today? As I said at the beginning, draw your own conclusions. ========================================================================== A couple of more comments. Someone recently mentioned that the Chinese are soon going to have a gazillion people all learning how to play the piano. Perhaps, but whose pianos do you think they are going to be play- ing, OURS? Hardly. They're going to be playing CHINESE pianos and I as- sume that most people on this list are aware that the word JUNK refers to BOTH a Chinese boat AND a Chinese piano. A Gazillion Chinese people buying a gazillion Chinese pianos aren't going to help the sales of US-built pianos in the slightest. Nor are those sales going to benefit you, the US piano technician, either. Not unless you're plannning on moving to China in an effort to expand your business. If you do, the language bar- rier isn't the only problem you face. Scheduling appointments is going to be a little more difficult, since less than 1% of the Chinese people own a telephone. And, since the average tuning will likely only generate about .25 when converted to US dollars, you'll probably have to slightly increase your workload to maintain the income and standard-of-living to which you've grown accustomed. Nevertheless, there will be SOME compensa- tions. When your customer reads the fine print in the LIFE-TIME warranty and discovers that the instrument has to be returned to the manufacturer for such repairs at HIS expense, at least he won't be faced with having to ship the piano from the US all the way back to China. He'll already be there! And so will YOU . Then all you'll have to do is hope that it's not the rainy-season, or the dirt road might be too muddy to allow the ox-cart to transport the piano back to the Pearl River Industrial Com- plex for repair. One thing is certain, given a Gazillion Chinese pianos to work on, you'll never have to worry about sitting around waiting for the phone to ring--and that's sure a good thing, 'cause like I said, you won't HAVE a phone! :-) Les Smith lessmith@buffnet.net
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