On Tuesday, December 2, 2003, at 06:55 AM, Marcel Carey wrote: > So I guess soon enough WalMart will sell asian pianos??? No, they're on Ebay. > > Cheap imports really hurt the piano industry in North America if you > ask me. Japan took us by low prices and killed many of our factories. > Mind you our quality was not what it should have been, but just the > same, piano craftsmen lost their jobs. > > Just my 2 cents, > > Marcel Carey, RPT > Sherbrooke, QC This is exactly the relevance of the story to our list. Not to mention, the shrinking state budgets due to loss of income taxes on the jobs which are being moved overseas, which, in turn, cut our maintenance budgets and keep our CAUT salaries at the levels where we are forced to buy everything at Wal Mart. Wal Mart affects everything about what we do. Why don't you try to go out and find a decent tool at your local hardware store? You can't. Because we have here the same effect as the Aeolian effect had on the piano industry, which was a recent topic. Wal Mart, Home Depot, and Lowes offer mediocre to cheap quality tools to compete with each other, squeezing out higher end tools, because they simply aren't carrying them. In our own piano industry, we've seen the number of suppliers of quality domestic tools and supplies dwindle to one (with exception of course, of some smaller tool makers), with foreign Asian imports controlling the costs - and the quality - of the domestic tools and supplies we can purchase. Now, if Wal Mart could sell health insurance.... Jeff Jeff Tanner, RPT School Of Music University of South Carolina
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