NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) is the big musical instrument industry trade show. Technically it’s held twice a year, but the big show is every January in Anaheim, California.

Anybody and everybody connected with the musical products industry shows and attends NAMM. This includes pianos of all price points, drums, brass and wind instruments, guitar picks, amps, guitars, disco fog machines, makers of fine hand crafted conducting batons and everything, I mean everything in between. It’s a huge show and the Anaheim Convention Center is one of the only convention centers in the country that can hold it.

NAMM is not a consumer show.  Manufacturers display their products and sell them to retailers, who will later sell them to consumers. Therefore it is a wholesale show, not open to the public. Thank god, because it is busy and crazy enough as it is. That being said, there are always professional musicians of all caliber visiting, including an annual visit by Stevie Wonder. Fans line up for autographs by people I don’t recognize and the hallways are decorated with colored mohawks, chains and fishnet, as well as business suits. Guess which group I’m in?

It’s a busy week, usually arriving on Monday and spending Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday setting up the display and getting ready. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are show days with Sunday usually when we get a chance to visit the other booths and catch up with friends, enemies and competitors.

More about NAMM part 1

Bosendorfer, in the past, has used NAMM to show some beautiful examples of our cabinet design skills and veneer work. However with business being slow and space smaller, it made more sense to show instruments that have more immediate sales potential. This year we displayed a model 290 Imperial with the CEUS reproducing system, a model 200 Johann Strauss, a model 214 in Jactoba (ya-TOE-ba) and a new example of the CS series. All these pianos, with the exception of the 290, were sold to dealers during the show. The 290 CEUS is going to North Carolina to (hopefully) be used in a recording project that will be discussed later.

Our new display room in the Marriott was small, with thick carpet and pipe and drape on the walls, resulting in a very acoustically “dry” room. At first it seemed to be  negative, since good piano sound usually means echo and reverberation to some degree. However as the show went on, we grew to really like the change. The extreme lack of reverb focused ones attention on the clarity of the sound and the typical Bosendorfer sustain. People coming in played completely differently and the “bangers” were very intimidated and didn’t stay very long. However, because everything was so close, it did make having a conversation a little challenging when someone was playing over mezzo piano. The reality is that you can really hear and understand the differences in piano brands in this kind of very dry, small environment. Everything, including the pianist, sounds bigger in a big, acoustically wet room. But that does not mean it is good.

Bosendorfer expanded and upgraded the CS line last year, but Lufthansa destroyed the one example we had brought to show dealers at Le Merigot. That combined with business conditions made the CS introduction last year  a bit of a non event so we treated this year as a new introduction. The line expanded to include (re-include) the models 170 and 180. The upgrade means that the ONLY difference between the CS and the standard line was the finish and some case details. Everything technical, including stringing, is exactly the same. This actually makes manufacturing easier, since we don’t need to decide if a particular instrument is CS or standard line until the very end of production when the finish is applied. The downside of the out-of-the-gun matte finish on the CS is that it is impossible to get a perfect repair. This is fine for schools and institutions, the primary target market of the line, where pianos get the tar beat out of them anyway. But it can be an issue in homes. Forewarned is forearmed.

There is more than just the room change that makes this year different.  There was a major reorganization announced in Vienna in late November. Basically the decision was made that Bosendorfer was too small to be able to afford its own worldwide sales and marketing team. So Bosendorfer will now concentrate on being a manufacturer and sales and marketing activities will be passed on to the representative Yamaha companies around the world. Here that means Yamaha Corporation of America (YCA) for the 50 states and Yamaha Canada for, well, Canada.

I don’t necessarily disagree with this decision. Business has been down and something in our overall structure had to change. Yamaha has stated over and over that they plan no changes in the way we make pianos or where we make them, so stepping into the distribution scene makes sense. The challenge is that Bosendorfer is a very different product from the standard Yamaha piano, sold by completely different dealers (with some exceptions) and by very different sales reps. Pianos are not just pianos at this level and credibility is a very important brand attribute. There  is a lot of work to do and the first step was to bring the public image of the 2 companies slightly closer together which meant a room next to Yamaha at the Marriott.

Another interesting twist is that technically my job with Bosendorfer ends on March 31 of this year. Bosendorfer, if you remember, will no longer have its own sales and marketing team, of which myself, Ray Chandler and Susan Muhler are all part. There have been some good discussions about Ray and myself continuing with Yamaha in some capacity but the clear casualty is my friend and colleague, Susan. Maybe more on that later, but her impact on Bosendorfer will be missed. I’m not crying too much for her, though. More people visited the booth to see her than to see the pianos and I’m fairly sure she will land on her feet.

Yamaha has had a high end “craft built” line for a number of years and has been a very serious builder of concert pianos for decades. The concert grand, the CFIII (CF3) has undergone a number of iterations and experiments, resulting in the model CFIIIS that has been the flagship for the last 8 years or so.

This year Yamaha is unveiling, both at NAMM and at the Frankfurt show,  the newest version called the CFX (X, not 10) and 2 smaller models with the same construction techniques, the CF4 and CF6. While there was a lot for Yamaha to talk about at NAMM this year, they did focus a lot of attention on these new pianos, hosting a press conference at which Mitsuru Umemura, the President of Yamaha Corporation global spoke and pianist Frederic Chiu performed. The performance (short but effective) was repeated at the Yamaha Dealers breakfast on Friday.

NAMM, oddly enough, is not the place to evaluate pianos and the huge, diverse Yamaha display makes it essentially impossible. Besides, talking about piano sound is a sure fire way to drive pretty girls from the room and make enemies. That being said, I will make a couple of observations.

Yamaha makes a really really good concert piano. They are very serious builders and use some hand techniques that they don’t even use at Bosendorfer (hand chiseling the rib tails).  They are looking for what I call a “high rim tension” sound, with power and overtones. But they also look for a lyrical sweetness and sustain and are very comfortable trading some raw power and noise for these characteristics. This combination makes the end result very pleasing and flexible as long as your standard of comparison is not the typical rip-your-face-off, noise-is-good standard that many competition participants seem to prefer these days.

Knowing that NAMM was not the place to evaluate pianos,  I was, as expected,  unimpressed with the sound at the press conference. It was  very nice but no special characteristics could be heard in that environment. The next day the piano was moved to a different room and set on a 4 foot high stage for the Dealers Breakfast. Frederic played the same repertoire (Chopin and his own Prokofiev transcription) but the effect, at least on me, was quite different. I was also sitting in the first row which helped. Here the characteristics and color really came out more and I was very impressed. This is not some Steinway wanna-be, thank god. This is a concert piano with a real personality and range of colors.

The smaller sizes seem to share the tonal characteristics. One interesting construction feature is that the 2 smaller pianos have “open window” pinblocks where the top surface of the pinblock is exposed, rather than hidden below the plate. The concert grand does not have this feature. The concert grand on the other hand exhibits holes drilled in the bass bridge which is a characteristic of high end european concert pianos but has not, at least in my memory, appeared on Yamaha pianos before.

No single detail makes a piano but there is really something important here. How it is accepted remains to be seen but I take my hat off to Yamaha for pursuing an alternative concert piano with such determination.

Yamaha has offered 2 smaller sizes of crafted pianos, called the S4 and S6 (6′3″ and 6′11″ respectively). One of the complaints about the marketing of these pianos is that they look exactly like the regular line Yamaha pianos. It is thought that potential customers were turned off on spending $20,000 to $30,000 more on a piano that looks exactly like a neighbors much cheaper instrument. Kawai addressed this by giving their upper end a different name, a sort of Toyota/Lexus approach. Yamaha addressed these issues with some very interesting case details, including a unique pointed arm and unusual pedal lyre.

Click on any of these photos to see it larger.

The other interesting fact is that one would logically assume that the CF4 and CF6 would replace the S4 and S6  but no, Yamaha Japan feels compelled to offer all 4 models. Yamaha Corporation of America has elected to import only the 2 new CF models leaving the S series to the rest of the world. Good decision, I think. The S series are very nice but having 2 separate lines is much too confusing to the market.

So now you have a major Japanese piano maker with a proven high end approach owning and taking marketing and sales responsibility for a 180 year old Austrian maker of what is generally referred to as one of the worlds finest craft built pianos; what happens next?

My prediction is that good things will come out of this for both companies but the road will not be pot hole free.

1. Yamaha understands the high end piano world.

Yamaha has beaten their collective heads against the entrenched  base, prejudices and the occasionally less than honorable marketing techniques of the current industry monopolist and they are deeply aware of the sensitivity that surrounds the Bosendorfer brand identity. They have repeatedly stated that they plan no changes in Bosendorfer manufacturing and but will have to take some steps to ensure the continued viability of Bosendorfer as a semi-independent entity.

Yamaha also understands, at least intellectually, the culture of Bosendorfer distribution. There currently is clear and easy, usually 1 person, communication between the dealer and Bosendorfer for all issues, including inventory, service, credit and marketing. In addition, the brand attributes of Bosendorfer are subtle and complex and take a great deal of credibility to convey with any effectiveness. This credibility does not come from simply reading a sales guide, but from background, experience and dedication.  Yamaha knows that this culture is not something to be taken lightly or duplicated easily and has gone out of their way to ensure that as much of this culture as possible is maintained. They have stated clearly that being a Yamaha dealer has no bearing on whether or not one becomes a Bosendorfer dealer and the reverse applies as well.  This has calmed most of the Bosendorfer dealer network and helped them adapt a cautiously positive attitude.

2. The Yamaha sound and the Bosendorfer sound are very different

Yamaha is taking the “high rim tension” approach which results in a very different sound than the Bosendorfer low rim tension ideal. This means that these two concert pianos sounds do not compete with one another but are actually quite complementary. Within one corporate presence, one has access to two different approaches to piano tone, both of which are carefully considered, developed and supported.

3. The world is changing

Presence in concert halls with classical music performers means less and less each year. The  marketing of the dominant company in the concert world  is increasingly falling on ears that have either heard it all before or don’t care. Building fine pianos is one thing, having brilliant marketing is another and in this industry, the 2 do not combine in one company. The challenge will be to grow the market, or take market share, in new creative ways and there is are clear opportunities for this.

4. There are culture issues, both national and corporate

Bosendorfer is a small shop and Yamaha is a huge corporation. Bosendorfer dealers and customers are used to being part of a small family and Yamaha dealers are not. There is no way around this conflict as Yamaha integrates Bosendorfer into its logistic and administrative framework. The small shop feeling that Bosendorfer dealers currently enjoy does not have to disappear completely, but there is no question that some of it will. That may not be all bad, but it won’t all be good.

Yamaha is used to large numbers, corporate style reporting and a well proven formula for selling and distributing its many products. There is a part of Bosendorfer, for better or worse, that is still stuck in the 1800’s. This results in a feeling of inbred superiority that prevents the company from seeing a clear reflection in the mirror and from accepting that what worked for Ludwig Bosendorfer may not all apply in the 21st century.  Some of this age old culture must of course stay and the continuing high quality of the pianos reflects this perseverance.  But there is a disturbing calmness with which Bosendorfer accepts some suboptimal customer focused behavior that sometimes takes the form of “well, yes, maybe we don’t do a good job with parts and supplies, but after all, nothing sounds like a Bosendorfer!”.

5. Bosendorfer has been here before.

Bosendorfer was a subsidiary of Kimball International for 30 years. Kimball was a much less logical fit than Yamaha and yet Bosendorfer prospered during those years. In fact I firmly believe that a great part of Bosendorfers strong brand recognition in North America today is a direct result of the marketing money Kimball spent 20 years ago! Kimball was a much better steward of the Bosendorfer brand than they were of their own Kimball piano brand, since that brand has disappeared. Bosendorfer survived and actually thrived during this period. The company has been through changes of ownership before and the culture and quality has been maintained.

6. Yamaha needs what Bosendorfer offers and vice versa.

Bosendorfer knows the true high end piano world and is in a very good place to help Yamaha expand the market for Yamaha’s craft built CF series. It will require some careful listening and thought, but the knowledge is there. Yamaha can bring a worldwide discipline to Bosendorfer, hopefully without crushing the small shop feeling that seems to include thinking that  Ludwig Bosendorfer is just out to a long lunch.

Yamaha does not need Bosendorfer to teach them anything about piano building and Bosendorfer does not need Yamaha to introduce efficiencies into its manufacturing. These are knee jerk reactions from people who really don’t understand either company. The potential is more subtle and more powerful than that.

Oh, and one more thing. Everything in these posts is my personal opinion, not a statement of any kind by either company.

Le Merigot Hotel in Santa Monica

Namm has come and gone. We did something completely different this year by not showing at NAMM in our customary large booth with nice lighting, Viennese coffee and champagne.

Instead we hosted our dealers at the very nice Le Merigot in Santa Monica with the intention of giving them a relaxing break and a chance to talk with them (and take orders) in a more relaxed setting. The result was great..much less work, much less cost and much nicer all around experience.

The problem is that my relatively new Canon G9 camera disappeared. Whether or not I just lost it or it was taken out of my room is unclear and,ultimately, not important. But it does mean that a lot of good photos are gone, gone, gone.

We showed a revised CS and the new satin lacquer finish. Very well received.

It’s been a busy January. The big annual Musical Instrument Industry trade show NAMM descended on us again, as usual at the Anaheim Convention center outside Los Angeles. I don’t have hard numbers but traffic seemed definitely down…hey, it’s been a tough year and 2008 doesn’t necessarily look any better.

The Bosendorfer booth was well attended and I will say that business was not as bad as I had expected (personal opinion, not a corporate statement). We showed a Louis XVI in pommele, a high polish rosewood 225, a 225 CEUS and a couple of other cool cabinets. The mood seemed very sombre on the 3rd floor piano area. Sauter had some nice instruments including a concert grand. Fazioli was in an enclosed area that I did not attempt to enter. Bluthner, on the main floor, had some great eye candy, and some beautiful pianos.

I bought a rather expensive hi def video camera and took a lot of piano footage. Now to get streaming video working.