China has more companies producing pianos than there are piano stores in the United States! The largest piano manufacturer in China is Pearl River. They have several factories and they just put a new factory online over a year ago that has 1.2 million square feet. Can you believe that? They produce hundreds of thousands of pianos (around 130,000 pianos last year). In contrast, last year, there were only about 1,200 pianos built in North America.
Think about this: China buys 15 times as many pianos as Americans do. Well, this isn’t too surprising when you consider that China buys more General Motors cars than Americans do also. But there is more to is. With pianos, their culture values pianos more than contemporary American culture does.
This is reflected not only by the number of pianos produced and sold there but in the enormity of the piano teaching business as well. In the U.S. there are around 6 million piano students. China has over 40 million piano students! You have to go back a hundred years in the United States for any kind of parallel. Back then, there were many hundreds of American companies producing pianos. The population was only around a hundred million compared to the 325 million people living here now. Yet, 10 times as many people bought pianos than they do today.
So that’s the long and short of it, the largest piano company in the world is the Chinese company Pearl River. This is Robert@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729.