The buyer is smarter and smarter,” declares Thomas Solich of Solich Piano. “We all are. How I buy today is drastically different from even three years ago.”
Solich, who has a thriving operation in Boardman, Ohio and a newly opened one in Columbus, is one of several progressive dealers I spoke with for this article. Everyone included here has several traits in common, starting with the fact that they aren’t waiting for the customer to come to them, but are creatively and assertively going after sales. They are marketing differently, applying old ideas in new ways, and even doing the opposite of what others are doing. Most importantly, they are doing much more than merely persevering.
“We’re almost like the George Costanza of the piano business,” laughs Downtown Piano Works’ [Frederick, Md.] Don Shykind, referring to the Seinfeld sitcom character. “We do the opposite of what everybody else does, and it works!”
“We don’t have [traditional] sales!” says Theresa Shykind, almost in disbelief. “We have not had a ‘sale’ event/promotion in five years. Rather than spend money on a print ad about some fictitious ‘sale,’ we’d rather invest that into the community by giving away pianos to a school that needs one. That’s the key to building brand equity, too – they grow up seeing that piano in their community.”
Sure, the numbers in employment and housing are inching up, but the smarter people in the acoustic piano business know that that’s not going be enough. Today’s piano retailer needs focus on what he or she does best, and explore new ideas.
Internet Marketing. Solich says Kawai pianos are his business’ “bread and butter,” but are also doing well with Mason & Hamlin, especially when paired with their QRS i-devices. “We’re also doing well with Charles Walter Pianos – my customers are touring his factory [in Elkhart, Indiana] and picking out their own pianos.” Perzina and Young Chang are also found in Solich’s showrooms.
And all are moving out the door because he’s embraced new marketing approaches. Solich says he’s pumping thousands of dollars into Internet marketing, accounting for 95 percent of his total marketing budget. “We surround every event with Internet marketing,” he says. The money is spent primarily with Google, and by working with renowned AdWord manager David Rothwell, Solich Piano lists high for anyone in the region searching on anything “piano” related.
David Gatt at Colton Piano in San Jose agrees. He also has thrown his marketing dollars at the Internet, patronizing Google AdWords and Yelp. “It’s extremely cost effective and it works,” he says.
It’s a Smartphone World. Embracing the reality of how important the smartphone is to the shopping experience, Solich made sure his site was optimized for it. “The piano store with the website that is best optimized for the iPhone is going to be the first store that a person visits. And if the store personnel do their job, it’s the last one as they leave with a piano. People don’t even go home and shop on their computer any more.”
Embracing technology and the new normal is key to Solich’s success. To dealers who are fearful or don’t understand the common technology of the day, he has advice: “Hire someone who does understand it, because if you don’t use this technology, you’re missing a whole stream of buyers.”
Get Out of the Store. Solich advocates taking advantage of what manufacturers can do, including going on trips. This past June, he went to a special event for top Shigeru Kawai dealers that Kawai hosted in San Pedro, Calif. “It was exciting for me as a 29-year-old first generation piano dealer to be there with all these heavy-hitters,” he says. “I just shut up and listened! It was a day of absolute substance [because] we were all noticing the same trends.”
Solich still gets his pianos out of the store, too. While the “college piano sale” seems to have lost its luster with many dealers, Solich reports that his business is still doing well with in-store events and sales through colleges and even the Pittsburgh Opera. “But the key to success on these is there must be credibility,” he says. “A college offers that. What isn’t credibility is just a ‘regular old sale.’ We stay away from that.”
Return to The Mall. Lacefield Music in St. Louis is a nationally known Lowrey dealer that has increasingly embraced the piano market with success. Now four stores strong (“Four stores too many,” jokes Steve Lacefield), they forge ahead with their offerings of Kawai and Pearl River pianos, and Kawai and Casio digital pianos.
Coming full circle, Lacefield has gone back into the mall, opening a location in a popular shopping center in the suburbs this past January. He says that the mall managers were aggressive in bringing Lacefield Music in, offering good terms and prices, so they decided to try it.
“It’s smaller than our other stores, so we have fewer Lowrey organs, more Kawai digitals, and one player grand there,” he says. “We’re just trying to make it open for that impulse buy.”
Pianos as an impulse buy? Yes… including Steinways. “Anything can be an impulse buy,” says David Slan, president of Steinway Piano Gallery St. Louis, which now has a location in a mall in the D.C. area. “Maybe you don’t sell them the first time a customer walks into your mall location,” but buy they do.
In 2009, Slan and vice president and long time partner Gerry Malzone opened their first Washington D.C.-area operation. It was a return of sorts. “We started in a mall all the way back to 1981,” he says. It was in Central Illinois, and while they did some combo business, their emphasis was pianos and organs. They would evolve into having many stores, then one: Steinway Piano Gallery St. Louis.
Now they are back, though their mall store isn’t in an ordinary mall – it’s in Tysons Corner Center, Fairfax County, Virginia, the largest shopping mall in the Baltimore-Washington area, drawing some 55,000 shoppers every weekday. Five of the 10 wealthiest suburbs in the country are within driving distance of it.
“We had picked out a freestanding building similar to what we have in St. Louis,” explains Slan. “Such and such promises were made, and in the end, the deal didn’t work out.” A Tysons Corner leasing agent saw a good fit, and Slan was convinced enough to at least try it. “We did so much from that very first day we ended up staying.”
He reminds us that music stores didn’t leave the malls as much as the malls left them – higher rents and unfavorable lease agreements in the 1980s sent MI stores packing. “It’s a great place to sell what we sell,” Slan says, adding one disadvantage: “The [mall] hours can be hard, and we work hard to make sure our people don’t burn out.”
Adult Piano Classes. The Lacefields (Steve, mom Cathy, sons Steve and Larry) have built a successful operation with Lowrey, and are among of the brand’s top dealers. That happened by embracing the Lowrey marketing method, which is a turnkey adult teaching system that gets adults, particularly retirees, taking organ classes, and falling in love with those instruments… with purchases following.
With that idea in mind, Lacefield is having success creating their own program for adults looking to take piano lessons.
“That’s what the mall [location] is so good for – recruiting adults to take lessons,” Lacefield says. The way they see it, even more than other hobbies, even more than other piano stores, their biggest competition is used pianos. “Even badly made pianos can last a hundred years.” So what they noticed is that adults with kids of a certain age, in college or at least driving themselves to soccer practices, are looking closely at their “bucket list” and if they have an old piano around, “learning piano” is on that list.
“So we recruit them, teach them how to play in fun classes, and every week they are learning on incredible products like a Kawai piano, and it’s so much better than what they have at home. We eventually convert that situation into a sale, because really every lesson is an hour-long commercial for our Kawais!”
The Lacefield teaching program – which Steve says he’s still tweaking – is different from Lowrey in many ways. Interestingly, the Lowrey day classes are most successful, but adult piano classes are best at night.
Don’t Confuse the Customer, Part I. David Gatt of Colton Pianos in San Jose has had a career that could be described as a microcosm of the piano industry. At one point he had six stores, including a 14,000-square-foot operation with 230 pianos on display. Gatt has downsized all the way to one location with around 50 pianos on display. “You have to recreate and adapt in this business,” he states. “Today, we’re a lean, mean machine.” (Though things are going so well for Colton Pianos that he has plans for more locations in the works.)
The transition doesn’t mean Gatt is any less successful – in fact he’s doing well, and it’s all in the math.
Colton Pianos features three brands for three price points for his two segments. “For uprights, we feature Young Chang and Weber pianos in the first range, up to $5,000,” Gatt explains. “We have Hailun in the $5,000 to $10,000 range, and then Schimmel in the $11,000 and up range.” For grands, it’s a similar formula: Young Chang/Weber to the $11,000 level; Hailun from there to $20,000; and then Schimmel above that. (Digital pianos include Roland and Kurzweil.)
“Pianos are in two categories – ducks and swans,” says Gatt. “Hailun is a swan, and they have come a long way recently. They are way ahead of the pack in terms of quality, and for a lot less money. Their quality level has really jumped and that’s when they got my attention.” He adds that Hailun hiring master piano designer Frank Emerson proved that they meant business. Also they invested in high quality precision C&C machines which greatly increased the consistency of the pianos. “Then there’s the 15-year warranty… Hailun is the dragon with the biggest fire in the industry, and I think they are just getting started.”
The key is having is all of the ducks – er, swans – in a row. “What is working for me is focusing on a [single] product within a price range,” he says. “When you duplicate products in a price range, it causes confusion with the customer and even with the salespeople. I looked at what was best in the low end and got that, and then took the next step up with Hailun, and then finally there’s Schimmel in the upper end.”
Gatt talked about the “too much” situation in acoustic pianos in general, and the long-term problem of when two or three manufacturers are vying for the same price in the store: “Sales staff doesn’t focus.”
Don’t Confuse the Customer, Part II. Or make it really simple for the customer… in what reminded me of Henry Ford’s quote, “People can have the Model T in any color – so long as it’s black,” at Downtown Piano Works, you can have any brand piano you want, as long as it’s Yamaha. “We’re exclusively Yamaha, and sell nothing else – like the Apple Store, we deal with one good brand and we are the experts on them.”
And that is working out spectacularly for owners the Shykinds. “Sales couldn’t be any better,” Dan Shykind declares. Sales are up 37 percent and their business is now at the $2 million mark.
In-Store Concerts. While not a new idea, it’s hard to think of any piano retail operation which does as impressive a job with in-store concerts as Downtown Piano Works. They’ve staged 85 concerts in five years, and are already booked through 2014. Their intimate 65-person concert room brings in some of world’s best and emerging artists. “It’s such a great experience,” says Dan Shykind. “There’s great interaction as the artists talk about the pieces they are playing, while attendees can have a conversation with the artist and play on our beautiful Yamaha pianos.”
Relaxed No-Nonsense Sales Team. When you walk through the doors at Downtown Piano Works, you won’t find any suits and skirts – only laid-back professionals in jeans and T-shirts. “Some piano sales people have a used car salesman approach, and we don’t do that,” Don Shykind says.
“We don’t play games with pricing, either,” adds Theresa Shykind. “We don’t have an ‘A’ price and a ‘B’ price, and we treat everyone as if they are a lifelong friend.”
And lifelong friends return to buy pianos, apparently.
The Tried and True: What Still Works in Acoustic Piano Sales
Then there are some things that never change, even if they get a little harder …
In learning what is working for piano sales in a market yearning to grow, but still a bit stunted, it turns out that there were a few rock solid truths that never go out of style.
Quality People. “Truthfully, the business hasn’t changed that much in terms of what has to happen to be a good piano store,” says David Slan of Steinway Piano Gallery. “It’s always been hard work, and it’s always required really good piano sales people.” The supply for top-flight professionals for a brand like Steinway is in relatively short supply, he says. “Every market is different, but when we expanded here in D.C., we were lucky to get very good people who are at the top of their game.”
Slan pauses and adds: “I’d like to tell you I’m a genius and have all the answers, and while I do have a pretty good idea about how to run a piano store, my people deserve the credit. They work hard every day and it’s a real pleasure to work with them.”
Quality Sells. Greg Depner of Montana Piano likes to point out the full, official name of his store: “Montana Piano Premium Quality Instruments.” He backs that up by only selling two pianos: Steinways and Mason & Hamlins.
As to that “Made in America” label, he says not everybody is swayed by it, “but for some that ‘Made in America’ instrument is certainly a plus. But at the end of the day, these Steinway and Mason & Hamlins speak for themselves!”
Keep on Keepin’ On. If you make it to Depner’s store in Billings – and you should as it is one of the most unique operations in the business – you’ll be surprised to hear his unlikely tale of selling pricy pianos in a town of only 120,000 people.
“It’s unusual here because we really serve a region that has a disproportional amount of educated professionals. There are a lot of doctors, surgeons, scientist, attorneys … too many attorneys, really!” Depner laughs. Montana in general has been in an envious position in having been left largely unscathed by the Great Recession. Yet he’s seen a lot of other piano stores not make it through, and he seems to think a “race to the bottom” had something to do with it.
He says he doesn’t have any “sales secrets” to share because he’s not a piano salesman – he’s a piano technician, and that allows him to talk in-depth about the quality of a Mason & Hamlin, for example. His expertise as a piano technician has earned him the respect of buyers to the point that they are willing to drive several hours to get to his stores. Teachers send their students his way – one in the area has sent 12 who all left his shop with one of his pianos.
“I take a low key approach to selling, because I don’t like it when I’m shopping and someone tries to pressure me. I do tell people that when you buy a quality instrument, it’s actually less expensive in the long run. There are little maintenance costs, and they increase in value. I really love these pianos.”
