What constitutes a "comfortable" living?? If I had 2000 pianos that I only tuned once a year, that would be over 200,000 per year!!! And that's just tuning. And I understand about overhead and all that, but what am I missing here? TODD PIANO WORKS Matthew Todd, Piano Technician (979) 248-9578 http://www.toddpianoworks.com --- On Wed, 12/10/08, wimblees at aol.com <wimblees at aol.com> wrote: From: wimblees at aol.com <wimblees at aol.com> Subject: Re: [pianotech] Piano Technicians and Populations To: fg at floydgadd.com, pianotech at ptg.org Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 6:28 PM Floyd A long time ago, Kimball did some research on this. They claimed that if you take a given geographical area's population, and multiply that number by 19%, that's how many pianos there are in that geographical area. (That doesn't mean that 19% of the population has a piano, but between schools, churches, bars, etc, that's how many pianos there are.) Considering that one piano technician should be able to make a comfortable living with approximately 2000 pianos, you can figure out how many piano technicians are needed in a given geographical area. When I was RVP, I gave that information once at a chapter meeting, where there were 13 tuners in attendance. The next day I learned that one of them had decided to quit the business, because he figured out that there just weren't enough pianos in the area to make a living. Of course, as you indicated, this is not an ironclad rule, and some areas might need more, and some less. But it's gives you a starting point. Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician Mililani, Oahu, HI 808-349-2943 Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -----Original Message----- From: Floyd Gadd <fg at floydgadd.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 4:45 am Subject: [pianotech] Piano Technicians and Populations Where can I find industry data to answer the question of how much of a population base it takes to support a piano technician? I was talking with a locksmith friend the other evening, and he recounted that as he was setting up his business a number of years ago, research led him to understand that in his industry, a population of about 15,000 per technician was necessary to make business viable. His experience in a center with a population of 12,000 that grew to just over just 15,000 convinced him that the data was useful. I'm sure that whatever figure emerges, there are variables, such as the scope of the tasks a technician is prepared to undertake, but I would be interested in knowing what data is out there. Floyd Gadd Manitoba Chapter Listen to 350+ music, sports, & news radio stations – including songs for the holidays – FREE while you browse. Start Listening Now! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20081210/f32eb899/attachment.html>
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