Why can’t more pianos be made in the United States? At first, you may think it’s because they are too expensive. Of course, Steinway, Mason & Hamlin and Charles Walter are top-tier pianos with premium prices. But couldn’t a mid-range piano be made in the United States which doesn’t have such a high price? You’d think that would be possible. Charles Walter may be the closest thing to that at this point, but with incredibly limited production. There are some simple answers as to why more pianos cannot be made in the United States at a lower cost.
To give you a parallel, I’m going to bring up Tesla. Tesla is in the news all the time because they’re trying to change the whole model of the automobile industry with electric cars and newer technologies. It’s been a huge challenge for the company and it’s kind of like a catch-22 because companies like General Motors and Toyota have a scale of production that enables them to offer each car at a much lower price instead of having to spend seventy or a hundred thousand dollars to get a Tesla. As great as they are, few people can afford that price point. Of course, Elon Musk has been working hard ramping up production so he can get a $35,000 car out there. He’s facing the challenge of the scale of production.
It’s exactly the same problem when it comes to starting a piano company in the United States and enabling a mid-range price point. That’s a huge stumbling block right there. The second part of this equation is, unless you created an export company; it’s tough in the United States where piano sales went from over 90,000 new pianos sold a little over ten years ago to a little over 30,000 in 2016. So, exporting could really help sales. Yet, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome with that these days. If you’re a new company, how do you get the brand recognition to do that? There are a lot of challenges and I applaud anyone who gives it a go because the piano industry could benefit from innovation. People like Elon Musk prove that if you do things in a new way, there’s a possibility that you can grow market share. So, perhaps there is a way for a new piano company to produce pianos in the United States utilizing innovative technologies and business strategies. Hope you have enjoyed this. You can contact us anytime at info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729.