Renner USA Response

[Lloyd Meyer]

Dear Colleagues,

We no longer monitor this forum on a regular basis, so we appreciate when techs do forward items of which we should be aware.  In this regard, we have been asked to respond to a comment from a UK technician that Renner USA sells directly to the public.  I believe the reference was to the "great unwashed".  Another question forwarded to us asked the extent of our catalog.

First, let me emphasize that we do not sell to the public.  This is a very firm policy which has successfully withstood efforts to circumvent by very determined consumers who have purchased from other supply houses.  We have a popular website with several thousand hits a month, so it's impossible to keep retail customers from trying to contact us directly.  However, we rarely respond and never provide product or price information with the exception of tools.  Other industries including the medical profession (if you can believe that) also purchase our tools, so these are made available to technicians and others with a typical shopping cart approach.  

We have had retail customers provide price quotes for action parts from other suppliers and distributors, so we know there are other businesses (sometimes individuals) doing this.  There are also a couple of websites offering piano parts which, as one of your members easily discerned, were purchased from regular supply houses, marked up, and then offered to the public.  These kinds of Internet operations have surfaced in nearly every product category, and it is difficult for consumers and even some piano technicians to know the difference between legitimate businesses and those that are not.  One of these operations used to even advocate the public doing their own piano repairs.  I don't know if this is still happening.  American Piano Supply used to supply parts to these individuals in the past.  However, with the acquisition by Schaff that practice, to the best of my knowledge, has ceased.  The management at Schaff, in my experience, are very professional and take great care in these matters as do we.  

Renner USA does not sell through distributors.  We only sell direct to piano technicians, piano manufacturers and rebuilders so we can assure the proper technical support and know our products are being used correctly.  You will therefore, not find Renner products on any of those websites.  Our website is primarily designed to support professional piano technicians by educating the public about the importance of quality replacement parts.  There are no prices and no on-line catalog available to the public.  You will notice our website is different from others in this regard if you have taken the time to go through the action parts feature sections.  

Our U.S. Catalog includes a very comprehensive assortment of wippens, shanks & flanges, hammerheads, etc.  We actually use a virtual catalog in the form of a Sample Parts Kit so that the parts can be tested in the piano before ordering.  The component underlever system we invented a few years ago and the turbo wip represent products that didn't exist before and represent important new opportunities for expanded services and income.  

The U.S. catalog, however, does not include all of the parts available in our international Renner catalog to which some of the international techs have referred.  American Piano Supply and Schaff Piano Supply have always carried a good inventory of those kinds of general catalog parts and we haven't felt the necessity to also stock them since many of those parts like tuning pins, special screws, piano wire, etc. aren't made by Renner and can be purchased as easily from them.  We do make those parts available on a special order basis to our regular customers who are familiar with them and can order in larger quantities as does the manufacturing sector.

Renner action parts and hammerheads are really our primary business and where we have focused our investment and efforts in the U.S.  This is why we only sell direct and not through distributors.  It also makes our prices much lower than if we sold through third parties.  Competitive parts are generally sold through several layers of distribution which brings their prices close or, in some cases, even higher than ours.

Please accept that the foregoing is not intended as a commercial.  Every time I add that qualifier, I get a private e-mail from Jim Bryant telling me not to worry about that, just keep contributing from time to time.  We'll try to do that but, as mentioned earlier, we aren't following the various threads so if there is particular information you need from us just forward it to our website and I'll try to respond personally.

Lloyd Meyer
Renner USA