Steinway Musical Instruments is about to be taken private in a $438 million deal with an affiliate of Kohlberg & Company, a private equity investment firm.
Last year we toured the Steinway & Sons factory in Astoria. The company is a subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments with two factories: one in New York, the other in Hamburg.
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Steinway prides itself on having retained manufacturing jobs in the U.S. since all its Grand pianos are made here.
It does however manufacture and market its two lower end Boston and Essex pianos in Asia.
Sales for the company were hit in the New York area and across the world during the recession, with 'hobbyist' buyers cutting back on spending.
At the time, Steinway cut a third of its New York staff, reducing the Astoria factory head count to 215, from about 300.
But the New York market recovered quickly. In fact, in 2011 the company sold 2,013 Grand pianos, not including upright pianos. In the last decade the company averaged about 3,300 grand pianos a year.
We start off at a storage room where wood goes through a 'seasoning' or 'aging' process.
The wood sits in the storage space for months as Steinway begins the long process of lowering the moisture content in the wood.
The wood is then placed in one of four kilns to reduce moisture content. The amount of time the wood spends in these kilns varies depending on the type of wood and purpose of that wood in the piano.
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