Supply and Demand Issues for Euphonium Manufacturers
by
, 12-09-2006 at 06:00 PM (6567 Views)
An astute user of the forum on this site commented that it is often difficult to find adequate stock of professional euphoniums in music stores. I wrote some ideas about the difficulties for dealers of stocking such expensive instruments. Now I would like to ponder the difficulty from the manufacturers point of view.
Whether you are building cars or euphoniums, some laws of the market apply. Demand ebbs and flows. In the auto industry it causes problems and even leads some manufacturers to go out of business or sell to other companies, despite the fact that there are a great many buyers of cars to help buffer the market. With euphoniums, if the market dips or if there is a spike in interest for only one particular brand for a while, it can have a dramatic effect on builders.
I know from working closely with Besson and Sterling that it is hard to build up skilled workers, production facilities, supply chains, outlets, etc. and it is hard to sustain them in a "down" market. For a while, both those companies had a large demand in Great Britain, and that limited supply to other countries. As that continued for a while, the markets tended to naturally drift to other more available brands. Then when the GB market cooled a bit, there was not as large a waiting customer base in other countries as there might have been. Im sure there were other such dramas playing out with other companies.
One manufacturer showing great success in managing the stress of business is Kanstul. They are very conservative, yet they have made several bold moves (buying tooling and rights from other companies that folded, etc.) that helped them gain an edge in making instruments. They are creative in their manufacturing techniques, and this helps them stay profitable. However, even Kanstul dealers are not going to have multiple (or maybe even one) euphonium(s) on hand for testing. They tend to produce based on orders. It is sound financially, but can be frustrating for those wishing to try instruments.
In the best of times, I dont think many millionaires are being produced because of brass manufacturing. In tougher times, factories have to be careful indeed to stay in business. Its hard to blame them for not producing aggressively.