The Pros and Cons of the Manufacturers' Institutional Piano Loan Programs Wisdom gleaned from the pianotech listserv. Compiled and edited by Scott Thile, RPT
Newton Hunt, RPT writes: At the start of negotiations work out a three tiered list of pianos to consider: a. The minimum needed to fulfill the department's essential needs. b. The quantities and models needed to adequately meet the real needs of your department c. A wish list, more pianos than really needed, but might fulfill some dreams. Settle for plan b.
Work out a multiple year plan and develop a contract with the supplier that defines each party's obligations. Check with your purchasing division about the contract and also contact management about insurance coverage. (In our case the dealer could insure the pianos much cheaper than the school. Editor)
DO NOT dispose of restorable pianos. Store the restorable instruments on their sides for use later. These programs can be an opportunity to dispose of your worst stock in exchange for a new instrument or two, but be careful to save enough instruments to keep your department from being pianoless in the event the program fails.
Some other things to work out include: when to install, remove, and service the new pianos. They will need much more tuning than older pianos. Make sure there will be enough men on the moving crew to get the pianos installed in one day. An eight man crew can un-crate and set up around 20 pianos in one day. Work along with the moving crew to see that the right pianos get to their respective rooms, and are set in the proper location. You can be removing the action packing materials and inspecting the pianos for proper function and tuning as the crew move them into place. Note any case, finish, or other damage, and record the serial numbers along with building and room numbers. Provide a copy for the dealer and keep a copy for your own records.
In Music Assembly, or a similar group meeting, inform the students about the piano loan program and instruct them on how critical their role is in properly using and caring for these instruments. Reinforce your existing policies such as no eating, drinking, or smoking in practice rooms, and not to place anything other than music and a metronome on the pianos.
All charges related to moving, interest, touch up and cleaning before the sale should be stated in the contract. Also the sale dates, room assignments, number of unused university pianos to be floored by the dealer, commissions on new stock, and school instruments to be sold, all must be worked out before the contract is signed.
The school policy on the use of school mailing lists must be spelled out. It is not a good idea to give the list to the dealer. The school should do the mailing and be reimbursed by the dealer. The dealer should make appointments with customers so that everyone does not come at once. This can reduce confusion and stress on everyone involved. Appointments are also an effective sales tool.
The Dealer will need lots of floor space, telephone access, a private closing room, sales staff, technicians to clean, polish cases, regulate, voice, tune and otherwise make the pianos ready for the sale. The school tech should not be expected to do more than provide information for the dealer's techs, movers, and sales staff regarding piano conditions, etc.
Get your tuning arm limbered up because there will be a lot of tuning. Check the pianos twice as often as normal for tuning.
Hope this is helpful, Newton nhunt@rci.rutgers.edu
Steve Brady, RPT writes: I would second Newton Hunt's comments; I think he has pretty well covered the situation. I would add, from our experience, that there may be an aggravation factor. Last September, we were supposed to have 22 new Yamahas delivered 2 or 3 weeks before classes started. Instead, they began arriving about a month *after* classes started. Now, six months later, we still haven't received the last piano, which was promised to a faculty member who has been making do with a PSO in the meantime. My recommendation is that you don't put the loaner pianos in faculty studios, or even in classrooms if you can avoid it. I think our basic mistake here was to let them sell the pianos in June and not replace them till September. Better to have the pianos replaced at the time of the sale.
Steve Brady, RPT sbrady@u.washington.edu
Michael Wathen writes: There is a possibility that the institution could find themselves with too high a ratio of loaned instruments to owned instruments. It's always possible that the retailer or manufacturer will decide to end the agreement. You don't want to be caught in an over dependent situation. Our ratio is 25/250 or 10%. We are currently negotiating to purchase some larger grands and professional uprights which will change this ratio to 20/255. We would like the program to include the larger, more expensive instruments. The retailer complains that these instruments are harder to sell, so we purchase some of these higher priced pianos from time to time and then ask for an upgrade in the quality of loaners. We also try not to have loaner pianos in critical spaces like recital areas and piano performance studios. We are not always successful. We have had loaners in recital areas before, but always along with a second instrument.
At first our agreement was with Kawai America. When the contract came up for renewal the dealer convinced us to work with them. Kawai was asking for an annual rental charge for the loaned inventory. The dealer was willing to front the inventory himself in exchange for a gentleman's agreement that we would continue to purchase instruments at a reasonable rate. Our local dealer relationship is a key factor in the ongoing success of the program. Our dealer is extremely cooperative. (Dan Ivanviche , Kawai's loan program director, mentioned that Kawai works through the dealer on their programs. Editor)
Finally, a good technician that can provide stable tunings is a must. These instruments need to be tuned at least four times a year solely because they are new. There are also other problems that must be attended to as they arise, such as sticking keys and dampers. This situation is unavoidable. My suggestion is that if the school does not have a full time technician they put one on retainer, rather than a per tuning arrangement. You need to be able to call the tech when problems surface and be assured of a quick resolution.
Michael Wathen College-Conservatory of Music University of Cincinnati
Paul Dempsey writes: We have just begun our second year of a loan arrangement with Kawai America. Our program was arranged by a company in Tucson, AZ called "The Direct Connection". They brought the university, Kawai, and the local Kawai dealer together. They put together the contracts, and administered the sale at the end of the year. Our first sale was held the last week in June and was a big success. (There are several companies offering this service.. I believe the one handling our sale at MSU was "Market Link". They provided the dealer with a professional well equipped moving crew for the exchange of instruments, advertising information and support, and a well trained, but possibly over aggressive sales staff. This made for a very successful sale at MSU last year. Editor)
Marshall University received a total of 15 instruments which included: 4 cx-21's, 2-NS 20's, a GE-1 (5'2"grand), 2 GE-3's (5'8"), a GS-60 (6'9"), a GS-70 (7'5"), and 4 digitals.
I instigated this project because I wanted to upgrade many of the pianos in our practice rooms. I sent 9 OLD uprights(Hamiltons) and an old 5'1" grand(Monarch) to the yard sale our Buildings and Grounds Departments holds twice a year to make room for these new ones.
The local dealer, Kawai, and Direct Connection bent over backwards to make this deal a good experience for Marshall.
The pianos cost us nothing other than the freight charges to get them all here (about $1400). Incidentally, they were all brand new, still in crates, not pianos pulled off the showroom floor.
What Marshall had to do was provide a venue for the sale, telephone service to the sales area, mailing labels of all alumni from the School of Music and the Colleges of Education, Medicine, and Fine Arts.(about 12,000 names).
The local dealer picked up the tab for all of this. Probably the worst problem I had was getting the University legal connsell to sign off on the approval for it all. West Virginia does things in very peculiar ways sometimes.
For our first sale they brought in 75 pianos to go with the loan pianos to "augment" the selection. Total sales was about 35-40 units.
As far as pros and cons go.... there weren't too many of either. 1. Pro- we get some pretty good pianos to use for practically nothing for the next 5 years ( the length of our contract). 2. Con- I get to break-in and stabilize a dozen pianos and then sell them about the time they start to settle down. 3. Pro- The PR for the University seems to be very positive so far. 4. Con-Security for these pianos required some extra time and worry. (maybe I just worry too much?) 5. Con- We had some surprises during the sale, mostly having to do with the advertising they did. These things have been dealt with already and I drafted a Memorandum of Understanding for all parties to sign so that we will all be clearer on how things will go next summer.
Basically, Marshall is quite happy with our arrangement and there have been no problems of any significance.
Paul Dempsey Marshall University Huntington,WV wippen@aol.com
Tom Winter writes: We've had a loan arrangement with the local Yamaha dealer for a few years. I'm sure there are numerous advantages to this arrangement, but none spring to mind at the moment. We have on loan four grands and eight uprights, which represent about a tenth of our total inventory. During the discussion phase, the dealer agreed to store the instruments that were replaced, but somehow it never materialized. As a result, we have a bit of a storage problem and the number of pianos we are maintaining has increased (not that I'm complaining, but it does stretch our limited resources a little further).
The real problem is that all of these shiny pianos sitting around the department have lulled the administration into a false sense of security, and the piano replacement program has disappeared. I keep telling people this arrangement won't last forever and that the problem of old, worn out pianos is only getting worse, but they don't want to hear it.
Oh yes, one other little problem, every time they have a sale, they sell all of the uprights and leave us a bunch of (non-Yamaha) Piano-Shaped-Objects to fill the empty practice rooms while they order some more pianos from the factory. Three to six months later the new Yamahas arrive, usually just about the time we get the PSO's to stay in tune.
I don't expect this arrangement to last much longer, as the total income from the sales has been declining, and every year the dealer says it may be the last year. I might add that this is generally true when viewed on a national level, too, or so I'm told. This year our dealer started thinking about the sale a couple of months before the proposed sale date, and then was astonished to learn that the areas in question were scheduled for every weekend for the next twelve months. By the time they had that sorted out there were bad feelings on both sides, and this will probably help put an end to the arrangement (I stayed out of it, I tend to hide in my office when manure is hitting a fan).
Thomas Winter San Francisco State University twinter@mercury.sfsu.edu
Allan Gilreath writes: The subject of "loans" of pianos by manufacturers to universities has been an ongoing topic of discussion for some time. While talking with a factory sales rep recently I received some further news which I feel should be passed on to those assisting in the decision making process.
The instruments which manufacturers loan to the institutions must be sold at the end of the rotation period. (Usually nine months.) The reason for this is that the manufacturer is paying the interest on these instruments for this period of time. At the end of the period, the instruments must be liquidated to provide cash flow for the manufacturer and the dealer. This liquidation process is carried out by holding a "University Piano Sale." While this format has been successful for several years, the effectiveness of the drawing card seems to be diminishing. The interest of the public in this particular gimmick and their willingness to part with their money has been dropping dramatically in several major markets (as was reported to me.) Quite simply, from a business standpoint, the manufacturers can not afford to continue providing huge numbers of instruments if they receive no return on their investment. I'm sure we can all appreciate this from a cash flow perspective.
In the mean time, several institutions have been opting for purchase or lease plans rather than loan programs. The University of South Carolina, for example, has just recently purchased close to $1million worth of instruments after getting out of a loan program.
These were some eye opening pieces of information to me which do not require a lot of interpretation to see the direction in which things are heading. I hope that this information is of use to some of you out there.
Sincerely,
Allan Gilreath Gilreath Piano & Organ Co. Berry College Gilreath@aol.com
Ed Foote summerizes: It is great to have the resources that this forum provides. I heard a lot of different views on the loan programs that some piano makers are offering schools. I thought I would offer this distillation of what filled the cyber bag here at my computer. I guess my own bias is in here somewhere, this is how this issue looks to me;
A school that is in possession of only worn out instruments and very limited resources can do no better. A loan program is the only way they can have the use of good instruments. For them the benefits outweigh the liabilities.
There are a lot of different plans, but one of the common aspects is the holding of a sale at the school, often at graduation, and then replacing the pianos the following fall. There were a lot of cautions about nailing down the details. The presence of a sales force in your music school can be a little like elephants in your kitchen. I read numerous examples of high pressure sales, switching pianos for designated purposes, late replacement of sold units, deep discounts, price offsets, etc.
These are problems I would never have foreseen, being more attuned to how much water I have in my glue, than the latest marketing gimmicks.
To go from worn out spinets and consoles, to big new uprights is a tremendous improvement, and well worth the additional tuning. There will be a lot more tuning. This is one of the down-sides. You will only have the pianos for the break-in-pack-down period, and just as you start to enjoy some measure of stability they will be replaced again. For a school that has a decent piano inventory, and needs to replace only a few "dogs", there may not be enough incentive to outweigh with the liabilities of these programs.
Several ventures seem to be whole hog affairs, getting bids on trade-in for 226 pianos in one school!! Gee, any old Steinway grands in there?
There were admonitions expressed about letting go of rebuild able instruments. "Keep them! ", I was told by many, "just put them on their sides and keep them for the day the dealer stops the program, you don't want to suddenly have a music school with no pianos!"
Many thanks to all the CAUTS that responded to my question, it gives me great artillery to be able to walk into the deans office with the opinions of 10 or 15 techs at other schools. May we all keep this listserv harmonious and productive, it is a valuable resource.
Regards,
Ed Foote A440A@aol.com.
A big thanks to the above contributors for permission to include their posts to pianotech n the CAUT Newsletter.
