Saddest O of the Week

[Les Smith]

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.
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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.
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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