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Articles
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Buying Behavior
Builds Market Diversity
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How Dealers Select Products
How the Market Works
Evaluating Your Market
The Consequences of Monopoly
A View of Brook Mays in Dallas
Options for Piano Consumers
Each year the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) holds two trade shows. The larger of the two is held in January in Los Angeles. Music retailers attend the shows in order to see new products, attend seminars, visit with friends and conduct business.
The January show (Winter NAMM) is huge. It is an incredible display of the world's offering of musical instruments. Manufacturers from all over the world display their products. (Photos of recent shows are on this page.)
Thousands of products are displayed at the show; many of which you will never see in your local music store, especially if you live in a small market area. As a consumer, there are market factors that limit the number of musical instruments that you will see in your town. Let's review some of those factors.
How Does the Market Work?
In a perfect world, every manufacturer would have a retail store in every city in America. But of course, we know that is not the case. For most product categories, there are more manufacturers than there are retailers.
The NAMM show is where music retailers shop for products. They select instruments they think you are more likely to buy. Since investment capital is limited, each retailer is going to select products that appeal to the largest number of their customers. They will see and play many wonderful instruments at the trade show, but if they believe the product will not be of interest to most of their customers, then it is unlikely that they will order it.
The lesson here is that innovative consumers are limited in their product options because of the buying decisions of local music store owners.
How to Evaluate Your Market
Open the Yellow Pages and look at the display ads under PIANOS and then MUSIC STORES. Divide the ads into four categories, based solely on size, and rank them 'A' for large, to 'D' for no ad at all.
The 'A' and 'B' dealers will have the most popular products. In almost every city in America, the largest and most financially secure music retailer is either a Yamaha/Kawai dealer, or a Steinway dealer. These are the top lines of pianos offered today. Neither of these brands represent the "best" pianos in the world, they only represent the ones that you are more likely to buy. Now you can safely assume that these companies did not secure their top market share by making poor products. Kawai, Yamaha and Steinway make very good products. However, there are several brands of pianos which are equal to those brands, and several pianos that are considered to be better.
For instance, the top five concert grand pianos in the world, depending on who you ask, are Steinway, Bosendorfer, Fazioli, Bechstein and Shigeru Kawai. Now look at your yellow page ads and see if you have a dealer for each of those brands.
The next level of quality pianos in the world would include the names Bluthner, Sauter, Seiler, Schimmel, Yamaha and Kawai.
Let us suppose then that you want to compare Yamaha or Kawai to other competitive products. Where can you go to find a Sauter or a Seiler?
The Bitter-Sweet Market Factor
When your music dealers' purchasing agents shop at the NAMM show, they are actually shopping for you. Well, to be more accurate, they are shopping for most consumers. The retailers' decisions mark the presence of two market forces. The first is their action that permits you to see the brand of their choice. The second is their inaction which effectively limits your ability to compare competitive products.
The Monopoly Factor
Most piano dealers carry more than one line of pianos. They carry a top end piano line, a moderately priced line, and an economy line. Most also offer used pianos, many of which are used for the bottom price point offering.
Your largest piano dealer will most certainly carry more than one line, but most often they will not carry two lines that compete for the same customer. For this reason, it is unlikely that you will see a Steinway dealer who is also a Yamaha dealer, or a Kawai dealer that is a Yamaha dealer. If competition is not present in a market area, the dealer is usually happy about that. And if a dealer can make it more difficult for competitive products to gain market share, then those activities which make it more difficult for the competition are often in the dealer's best interest.
That strategy is rarely in your best interest because it limits, or tends to limit, your purchase options.
A View of Brook Mays
Brook Mays is one of the largest musical instrument retailers in the United States. You may not know that because they only have nine stores in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. They also own stores in Austin, San Angelo, Abilene, and operate H & H Music (nine stores) in Houston. (They have stores in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Missouri and other states too.
Now Here Is The Irony
If you go to Brook Mays in Dallas, they will try to sell you a Yamaha piano. But if you go to H & H Music in Houston, they will try to sell against Yamaha, because they are not the Yamaha dealer in Houston.
H & H Music in Houston sells Kawai pianos. In Dallas, Kawai pianos are sold by Mr. E's Music in Arlington and Fort Worth, and by Keyboards Unlimited in Plano.
Who Owns the Kawai Dealerships in Dallas?
Mr. E's Music is owned by Mr. Bill Everitt, father of Bill Everitt (the CEO of Brook Mays). Mr. Everitt is also the husband of Jean Everitt, owner of the Kawai store in Plano.
So where can you find a Sauter, Seiler, Bluthner, Fazioli, Bechstein, Bluthner, Estonia, or a long list of other quality pianos?
Some of these lines are held by smaller dealers. But more to the point, some are not available at all.
Certainly Brook Mays did not do anything wrong by growing their business. But the consequence of their success is the lack of availability of comparable competitive products. And when this monopolizing condition exists in the extreme, as it does more and more today, the consequences are also extreme. If you shop exclusively at Brook Mays, you are contributing to a major market factor that diminishes the availability of hundreds and hundreds of musical instruments. When you shop at smaller businesses, you are contributing to the diversity of our small industry.
Applications to Other Products
What I have written also applies to virtually every kind of musical instrument product manufactured today. Whether we are talking about accordions or violas, clarinets or guitars, your ability to gain access to a wide selection of products, depends on market factors that are beyond your control.
What Can You Do About It?
That depends on what kind of consumer you are. Most people make similar buying decisions, which only goes to explain why one dealer can monopolize a market area. Like it or not, faced with the same buying options, most consumers will make similar decisions.
Each manufacturer will tell you that their product offering is better than the competition. I will tell you that pianos are pretty generic -- they are all about the same if they are in the same price range. Exceptions apply, but I am not addressing exceptions right now. In general, consumers like to buy what everyone else is buying. It eliminates risk and uncertainty, while reinforcing decisions that are made with far less than perfect information.
Piano consumers fall into three categories. (Maybe more, but let's work with these three for now.) The largest segment of buyers is the parents who are buying a piano for their home, most often in preparation for a child to take lessons. These consumers buy moderately priced pianos, and usually choose well known brands. This segment includes the buyer who is shopping for a piece of furniture, who may or may not have any intention at all of ever playing it.
The second largest buyer is the institutional segment. This includes churches, schools, and other large organizations. With the exception of the hotel industry, institutional buyers have access to professional pianists who can provide credible assistance in the selection of a piano. They buy expensive pianos, and their purchase decisions can influence the buying behavior of members in their organization.
The third segment of piano buyer is the professional pianist. Since I fall into this category, I will tell you that my preferences are not brand specific. I like the Steinway Model B, but do not care for the M or L. I would never own a Baldwin, and could never afford a Bechstein. The Yamaha Model C3 is quite nice in the bass, but the S series was disappointing. I prefer the tone and feel of a Kawai upright, but the grands are less impressive.
Within each price range, I could care less what name is on the front of the piano. Every manufacturer has its shining stars and its dogs.
These are the ramblings of a professional. If you talk to a professional, you will always hear ramblings that make absolutely no sense to anyone except the rambler. Which is to say that buying a piano is personal, subjective and arbitrary. The good news is that most moderately priced pianos will satisfy most consumers. It is hard to make a bad selection if you buy what every one else is buying. But then again, there are pianos that are exceptionally unique, of quality that is unsurpassed. Since it is most likely that you will only buy one piano in your lifetime, I encourage you to explore as many options as you can discover.
Most, if not all, piano guides advise the consumer to use a piano technician or music teacher as a buying advisor. Very few customers do this. In my experience, this is to your advantage, but only moderately so. When you ask a piano teacher for help in the selection of a piano, you may be thrusting him or her into a role that exceeds their professional credential. The same is true for piano technicians. That is not to say that their opinions are not valuable. If you ask either for help, you will certainly improve your base of knowledge -- but you will not perfect it.
The internet can provide a considerable amount of information. I have probably read more about pianos on the internet than you, so let me say that about half of what I read is true, and the other half is sales hype.
Many people recommend Larry Fine's Piano Book. There is a lot of good information in his book, but you need to know that the manufacturers do not always agree with Mr. Fine's accuracy or his opinions. Evidently our industry is not large enough to warrant more than one consumer book, so until someone else writes one, each dealer is likely to use Mr. Fine's book to their own advantage.
There are many wonderful pianos in the marketplace. The larger dealers have some of them, but they do not have all of them. In some cases, they do not have any of them. Your task is to find the one that is right for you. If you do not have the time to visit every dealer in your area, try to at least call them and give them the opportunity to tell you what they have. Every dealer has something unique to offer. [ TOP ]