Piano Video Lesson: What are College Piano Sales?

Welcome to livingpianos.com, Robert Estrin with a subject today as, what are college piano sales? You've probably seen them at your local college or university, and then the next year they haven't in again and you wonder, how do they have so many darn pianos? Well, I'm going to tell you what these sales are all about so you can determine if it's something interesting for you to investigate for yourself.

Well, college sales are basically an arrangement that is between a college, university, or art center, sometimes a convention center, places of that nature. And what they do is it's an arrangement between the institution, a piano store, a piano manufacturer, and a finance company. So these are pretty big deal events that typically tens of thousands of dollars of promotion go into them, and they usually happen once a year at certain schools or other places, venues, performance venues, things of that nature.

So here's how it works. They come up with an arrangement by where the school actually gets free pianos for a year. Then this is, they're financed, and the store puts them in there, and they might put half a dozen, maybe even a few more than that, just a limited number of pianos so they have brand new pianos in some of their studios. And in exchange for that, after the year, the school then opens up their mailing list and allows them to have a big piano sale there.

So then the store trucks in all their pianos, and among those are, yes, the college pianos that went in there to begin with, and they do a big event. And it's can be a place where if you know exactly what you're looking for can be great. Now, who has these events? Well, bigger dealers generally, and there's really three companies that dominate a college sale market, Yamaha, Steinway, and Kawai.

And they travel from institution to institution with a special crew of highly trained specialists, sales people who are very experienced, and they try to make appointments and create a buying frenzy. Now, if you want to go to a place to try out instruments, this is not the place to do it. I mean, you can get a little bit of time, but they are trying to really close as many deals as possible.

They spent a lot of money on promotion, a lot of money moving the pianos in so, that isn't a great place to figure out what you want in a piano. But if you already know what you want, let's say you want a Yamaha U1, or something of that nature, and you know exactly what model you want, and you go to the sale, well, they're going to have everything marked down so you don't have to go through the rigamarole that so many new piano stores have of negotiation to get a good price, you're going to get a discounted price because it is a volume sale situation, and they're trying to close as many deals quickly as they possibly can.

So if you know exactly what you're looking for and you want either a Steinway, a Kawai, or a Yamaha, and this sale specializes in one of those brands, it could be a great place for you to go hassle free, get what you want, get in, get out, and they'll be happy and you'll be happy. But on the other hand, if you're not sure what you want and you want somebody to guide you through the process of, do you want a grand or an upright, what model, what price range, what finish? Can you try this piano without a lot of noise going on? That's not the place where you're going to be able to get that done.

Now, are these sales disingenuous? Well, if it really was a school selling their pianos, you probably wouldn't want to buy them anyway. Have you ever seen what piano school conservatory pianos are like? They are thrashed. They get used for so many hours a day, they're worn out, the cases are rough, yet the pianos that they have for sale, the few new ones are babied in the studios. They're not just practice room pianos. So if you happen to be lucky enough to get one of those few pianos that are the new pianos, they'll be fine. But you'll be just as well off with some of the pianos that are trucked in for the sale.

However, they're the same pianos that are in the store, and most of them are going to go back to the store when the sale is over, and you can get them there later on, probably even for the same price if you are savvy in negotiating. So, that's the long and short of college sales, university sales, all these type of sales you see again and again. If you ever wondered what they were about now, I pulled it out from behind the screen. Anymore questions, you can address them to me, robert@livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks for subscribing, ringing the bell, the thumbs up, it helps the algorithm so more people get to see these videos. Thanks again for joining me. See you next time.

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