Will Steinway Grand Pianos Be Made in China?

Mergers, acquisitions, and not the least automated industries have been the song of business for some time. The piano industry is no exception. However, Steinway & Sons, the leading piano manufacturer, a part of Steinway Musical Instruments, Inc. has mainly participated in modern business on paper. The making of the real Steinway grand piano is still much based on a more than a century spanning artisan tradition. In sharply declining sales, Steinway has recently sought for new financial partners, and received one in the Korean piano maker Samick, which now owns a significant portion of Steinway's shares. Pianists, raise your eyebrows, or blur your opinion on the products Samick is making. Money is money.

Samick's interests are obvious: A penetration to the first row of piano makers, with Bösendorfer, Yamaha and Bechstein (which Samick has also partly acquired) is a must in the reshaped, much smaller piano market. As earlier measures, Steinway has designed upright and grand piano series for Japanese and Chinese factories for some time. These products are distributed through Steinway's fancy showrooms, stores and authorized dealers worldwide, often sold as Steinway quality pianos.

Will Steinway and its new director, Jong S. Kim, introduce yet another inexpensive piano which carries the Steinway brand? Or will some of Steinway's original proprietary manufacturing secrets be shared with the outsource factories in Asia?

Steinway has long been a diehard defender of handcraft by maintaining this tradition in some of its factories. The reasoning has been based on the quality, which can only be achieved with human attention to detail. If the sharply lower grand piano sales figures will allow this philosophy to continue existing, or inevitably force Steinway to be the last to give in to the world of mass production, will be seen in the years ahead.