What’s in a name? Funny you should ask. From names we derive culture, history and even fads. Think about famous names such as Lincoln, Rockefeller, Ford, even Bill Gates. These all come packaged with history, with credibility. Their names have outgrown them to an iconic state. Package names with products and you all of a sudden transfer that credibility to the product. When IBM or Sony buys up a new product and brands it, all of a sudden it has credibility.
Enter the piano market. The name Steigerman was a Yamaha invented name in the 1970′s: “Stei” from Steinway and “german”… trying to sound German. At the last China music trade show, it struck me how many names were trying to cash in on credibility. The piano that started my gears turning was one named Beethoven. Of course all of the composers have been done… i’ve seen Schubert, Mozart, Strauss. And so “obviously” one would assume that pianos with composer’s names should be musical right? WRONG. I can’t STAND Mozart pianos. Jes sayin’. They’re terrible. I can say that because they’re no longer in business. hahaa. But now we see names like Romance, Grammy… really? do they think their piano is award winning? And romance?
But now we’ve entered the more subtle means of marketing… where big fish swallow up small fish and trade the name. For example, Yamaha purchased the godfather Bosendorfer! Baldwin bought Chickering. Samick owns Knabe. We could spend a day talking about acquisitions and who owns what names. To me it all comes down to ownership. The ownership of the company will also speak to the future direction of the piano manufacturing. There are some really big shake ups that are in the wind… ones that will affect the industry as we know it today. But that’s the ebb and flow of business. My rule of thumb, stick to companies that put their own name on the front.