When I was looking for a new piano 2½ years ago, I looked at and played as many new pianos as I could find to get a feel for what was out there. Eventually, as I outlined in the first post in this blog, I ended up in Newcastle, played a certain piano, and that was that. Quest over.
For many people, the principle of
‘try before you buy’ is a critical part of the purchasing process. In the piano world, that means the availability of showrooms with multitudinous pianos and sales people wearing ties and purporting to know exactly what you want or need and which piano in their showroom precisely fits that need and quite coincidentally blows your budget out of the water.
But times are changing. The internet has spawned a large number of on-line stores which sell just about anything you want to buy from the smallest to the biggest. These ‘virtual’ stores only exist, as far as you’re concerned, on your computer screen. Their physical location is not necessarily that important. Their
raison d’etre is price and convenience. Online ordering is cheaper to process, so they can offer much lower prices and much greater ranges than traditional retail stores, and then deliver to your home.
Last year I bought a top of the range Patricola Oboe. I picked this one because I had seen very good reviews of it and the rosewood finish appealed to me much more than the traditional black. I bought it off a website in the USA, a significant reason being that it was much, much cheaper to so do than buying the instrument in Australia. Obviously, I didn’t have the opportunity to ‘try before you buy’.
How does this relate to the piano industry in general and the Stuart piano in particular?
Australia is, physically, a long way from anywhere else. Even parts of Australia are a long way from anywhere else. Stuart pianos, being what they are in terms of size, cost and manufacturing ethic, are not made in sufficient quantity to economically justify any form of ‘official’ dealership in any other place other than at the factory since this would add significantly to the cost without adding anything in terms of constructive value to the instrument. I have made the point in previous posts that when you buy a piano such as a Steinway, you are paying for considerable dealer and marketing costs – this is not a philosophy or practice which is desirable in my view for Stuart pianos.
The advent of the internet has allowed the development of sophisticated web sites which fulfill much of the initial marketing requirements for many products, Stuart pianos included. So, firstly you can check out the website (impressive) and download the sound samples (even more impressive). However, having digested all the information there, how then do you get information you really need to close the deal? Do you need any more? Do you need to actually play the piano?
I’m not so sure that you do.
In the previous post I noted that
“playing a piano such as this in a showroom, dealer or even at the factory is not necessarily going to show you in any significant way how your relationship with the piano is going to be consummated long term. The piano will adjust to its environment, and you will adjust to the piano.” So what and how you play now will not be what and how you play in the future. Another critical factor is how the piano is set up and maintained – bad voicing will result in bad voices, pianistically speaking.
And as most people know, probably from hard experience, trying to predict the future is not exactly what you would call an exact science, nor in fact a science of any description. No matter how informed a decision is you can never be absolutely certain that any decision you make now is going to work in the future. No matter how reliable a product is by previous experience or reputation, how can you be sure that you’re going to get that reliability in practice? Of course, the answer is that you don’t. Essentially, you trust, or have faith in, the brand.
What is becoming much clearer in the piano industry is that are far as the traditional ‘quality’ manufacturers are concerned, faith in the brand is rapidly being eroded due to competition from ‘cheaper’ makes and the consequent need to become more price competitive. This has, quite legitimately in my view, compromised their reputation for quality, and made it much more difficult for people to accept the brand name as a guarantee of the quality of days gone by.
So buying a piano sight unseen is tantamount to a ‘leap of faith’ or ‘crossing the divide into the great unknown’ or a multitude of other statements which approach the class of cliché. You can never be sure as to what you are getting – and it’s not as though you can simply send it back to where you got it from and get another. But a case can be made that if you know what you are getting and can rely on it, then the chances of success improve dramatically.
This is the internet marketing model. It doesn’t need a middleman, a physical store or anything that the pre-internet business regards as necessary.
The process is essentially as follows:
1) I’m in the market for a new, high quality piano
2) I know about your product and its superb quality, tone and touch
3) I like the look and the sound of it as evidenced by your web site and am happy with the price
4) I know that if I order one from you it will be of that superb quality when I get it, so …
5) Send me one, please … do you accept VISA?
There is no doubt about the quality of the Stuart piano. Mine still looks and plays better than when it just came out of the factory it has settled down beautifully. Unlike other manufacturers, this particular brand name is a guarantee of what you get. Their uncompromising attitude towards quality and pricing is an essential part of that.
This of course comes with one giant, humungous caveat. It will only work for that quality of instrument for which the faith matches the result – mass produced instruments will not have the consistent level of quality to be able to take that risk, hence the need for showrooms and dealers.
The other ingredient of course is the player. If you understand what the piano is about and want to be part of the experience of reinventing yourself as a musician, then there is no doubt, no leap of faith or whatever. The only risk is with you, not the piano.
If you’re up for that, you won’t be disappointed.
… and the old ways of doing things do not necessarily work any more. Continuing the thought process started off rather ramblingly in the previous post, it occurred to me that this provides further impetus to the thoughts I first espoused in a previous pos
Tracked: Dec 01, 19:15