ORIGINAL MESSAGE: I was notified that we'll be meeting with the Kawai people today, about their program to put Kawai's in our University. If any of you are familiar with this program, I'd appreciate hearing your opinions and what kind of problems I might need to expect, along with any advantages........... ------------------------------- REPLY: We have been negotiating a similar offer here at Dartmouth College with Yamaha. I was suspicious at first because I did not want to abandon our inventory to be at the whim of Yamaha's discretion about renewing a yearly contract. But the deal sounds pretty sweet: the local Yamaha dealer will supply us with as many pianos as we want, whether it's one or twenty. There is no commitment to purchase, and the dealer will move and store our inventory at no charge. There is no rental fee, but we provide insurance. At the end of the year the dealer gets to use the Dartmouth mailing list, Dartmouth's name in advertising, and Dartmouth facilities, for a special 3-day sale of the instruments. A small percentage of the profits goes to the Music Dept. If the sale is successful, we start over again with new pianos. Period. I know several schools, including Yale, have signed up for this already. I would be interested to hear from anybody who is doing this with Yamaha. As I said, we're not committed yet, we have a few hurdles to jump here at Dartmouth, but it sounds workable for something like 20% of our inventory. Danny Dover,RPT Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
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