Kurzweil bought

[mildbill]

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200402/05/200402050014134179900090509051.html

 

any ideas on what will happen here?

[Jeebus]

My Korean's not so great. Got an English link?

[Jeebus]

Nevermind. My stupidity precedes me.

[MortenJ]

at the Kurzweil homepage it said that Young chang acquired part of kurzweil.

 

I do not think much will happen to kurzweil.

[Mike Martin]

Samick now owns a controlling portion of Young Chang.

[burningbusch]

SAMICK bought 6.5 million shares, 47 percent of Yong Chang's capital, for 13 billion won ($1.1 million).

 

$1.1 million??? I be talking to my banker about buying up some of these piano companies.

 

Busch.

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by Mike Martin:

Samick now owns a controlling portion of Young Chang.

All resources will be pulled from synth development and put into building bad bass guitars...

[Superbobus]

And my experience with Kurzweil already isn't that good (YMMV). Now I'm seeing Samick and Young Chang mentioned...

[marino]

Just to set the recors straight, Kurzweil has been owned by Young Chang for a number of years. Now Samick, the "other" korean instrument maker, has bought their 'rival' company.

I'm worried. I never liked Young Chang pianos, but Samick pianos are much worse. Not to speak of their mixers, guitars... blaarrgghh.

Not exactly the ideal boss to support the tradition of excellence established by Kurzweil in electronic music.

[DallasPA]

Hmmmmm,

 

All I can say is Yong Dong, does it again. I just can't help but think about all the cats that purchased K2500's for 8K. Boy, did the koreans screw them. Now it looks like more is in the making.

 

Is kurzweil that bad off, that it would sell almost 50% of the company for 1 million dollars. Can't help but think the hand writings on the wall. Ten years from now Kurzweil will be the new Casio!!!!!

[Superbobus]

Originally posted by marino:

Just to set the recors straight, Kurzweil has been owned by Young Chang for a number of years. Now Samick, the "other" korean instrument maker, has bought their 'rival' company.

I'm worried. I never liked Young Chang pianos, but Samick pianos are much worse. Not to speak of their mixers, guitars... blaarrgghh.

Not exactly the ideal boss to support the tradition of excellence established by Kurzweil in electronic music.

That's what I mean! And you have to try a Samick digital piano once, with the sound off and enjoy...

[Markyboard]

I just can't help but think about all the cats that purchased K2500's for 8K. Boy, did the koreans screw them. Now it looks like more is in the making.

Sorry... but IMO this is a redicurous( ) statement. How many of us can't look back 10 years ago (let alone 1-2) at what we payed for yesterdays technology and think someone screwed us?

 

Those who paid 8k did it to themselves and would probably do it again under similar circumstances with no regrets. Of course for 8K... I would get them to throw in a free midi cable or 2

[DallasPA]

Well Marky,

 

Its quite obvious you didn't own a 2500 during the period I am referring to, and have no knowledge concerning why I made these comments, so I will explain. While the K2500 was still the top gun for Kurz, Yond Dong took over. Bad customer support, cuts at R&D, added with slooowww updates, and just a bad overall vibe caused the price to crash in less than a year!!!!! From 8k to under 2K. A good friend of mine owns Professional Sound & Music (use to be Musicians Repair Service) in San Diego. He couldn't move a Kurzweil at that time, for months no one would buy. I dont care what you say, it ridiculous to me for my friend to pay 8K for a keyboard, and me to go to the same dealer 6 months later and pick one up for less the $2k. And the 2600 had not been released at this time!!!!!!!

 

Respectfully, I think we are talking about two totally different things. I'm not a 3 year old, nor the other readers that frequent this forum. Most of us are studio owners or pro musicians, and some have been in the business 20+ years. I humbly got my start as a staff writer at Warner Bros. in 1981, and have consistly paid in the 5K-10K range for my boards during the 80's and 90's. We all expect the bottom to fall out of our purchases, but as you stated let it be due to the item being yesterdays technology; not because a company purchased kurzweil and totally screwed their high end customer base and kurzweils' good name from the outset.

 

Dallas

[coyote]

You're right about one thing: It's ridiculous to pay $8K for a keyboard. That is regardless of what happens to the price thereafter.

 

Kurz was clearly in the habit of ridiculous markups. Perhaps if they'd priced their stuff more realistically to begin with, they'd still be their own entity.

[DallasPA]

Well, in the 80's and early 90's you didnt have much of a choice if you needed a professional sampler with keyboard scaling. Emu, Kurz, Akai, or Roland were the only affordabke options. And the Emu and Kurzweil stuff was always above 5K if it had a keyboard attached to it.

 

Dallas

[burningbusch]

I was actually joking about the $1.1 million. I thought it was either a misprint or a miscalc off the won. That would translate to .17/share, possible I suppose but it would mean Young Chang was essentially dead as a company anyway. They would have to be up to their eyeballs in debt. The factories, inventory and other assests would be worth WAY, WAY more than a couple of million. I would think they would have filed for bancruptcy protection if the above is accurate. Hell the Young Chang and Kurzweil names are worth $1.1 million easy.

 

I owned a K2500X (loaded) during the heyday. Didn't spend $8K but spent more for it than any other synth before or after. Didn't get into VAST much so I never really connected with it. When the Tritons ($2K, 61 note, touch screen workstation) came out I knew the days of $8K workstations were over. Sold mine before the market fell out of them.

 

Busch.

[Lee Tyler]

The following is a quote from a message on another forum:

 

There was a mis-calculation with currency rate in the news. 13 billion Won is approximately U$11.1 million, not 1.1 million.

 

Another correction is that Samick purchased 5.5 million shares, not 6.5million. Those new shares are purchased at lower price than original or current value.

 

Before issuing new shares for Samick's acquisition, YC had total 5.5 million shares which was valued U$12 million in the market.

[Michelle ggurl]

All I know is I bought a PC2 because I liked the sounds and controller features better than available in comparable competitor's models (Roland, Yamaha, Korg). It'd be a shame if the sound banks and build quality degraded to Casio level. Some people have had problems with some Kurzweils, but I bought mine used and since it's been well used and carted to and fro quite a bit ... it even fell once. Never a problem.

 

It will be interesting to see what this does to future products and the possibility of upgrades. I don't have much invested so I'm sure I don't feel the same as someone who bought a workstation for several thousand $$ ... I'm sure I'd be more concerned about the update/upgrade path of such a workstation with this news. And if I were a new buyer? I'd be mighty conflicted right now.

[Jeff Klopmeyer]

Originally posted by DallasPA:

Its quite obvious you didn't own a 2500 during the period I am referring to, and have no knowledge concerning why I made these comments, so I will explain.

I think Markyboard's comments were perfectly accurate.

 

People also paid tens of thousands of dollars for what would now be considered a crappy computer. Pals of mine paid $5,000 for a CD player in 1984.

 

The point is that you can't automatically relate the massive pricing shift in Kurz boards specifically to the YC takeover. The pricing had become unrealistic with the acceptance of the market, regardless. Whether or not you liked YC's business/support policies (and none of us did, I believe), you can't state that that $8K to $2K drop was solely a result of that. It was much more due to the quality/capability improvements of companies like Roland, Yamaha and so on. The $2K pricing was necessary to compete or die, regardless of who the parent company was.

 

I doubt you'll see much of a difference between one Korean piano maker to another in terms of Kurzweil 's perception outside the company. If you were thinking that a 2661 will now be available for $499.99, you're wrong.

 

Kurzweil is a good brand with strong equity in the name alone. As long as they keep their expectations realistic and continue on the path they've been on, they'll be fine, and it will hardly be apparent who owns them.

 

- Jeff

[coyote]

Not sure I agree with this.

 

Companies rarely sell things below cost. Even when things are being "blown out" to make room for new stuff, they generally sell at or slightly above cost.

 

It's unimaginable that it cost Kurz $4K to produce a 2500. Therefore, a board which goes from $8K to $2K indicates the BAD business practice of overinflating the value of an item. I see it in my ExpMate: Until they discontinued it and started blowing them out at $170, it was available for $450. So let's analyze the situation:

 

Does a company discontinue a successful item without having some replacement in the wings? Not likely. So we can assume, based on the lack of an ExpMate replacement, that this wonderful device failed in the market.

 

Why did it fail? It combined a multitude of useful features and immense programmability with a great set of controllers including a ribbon. It can control an entire rig for you.... while a bit complex at first, given its capabilities & usefulness it probably didn't fail due to that complexity. And it seems well-built and reliable.

 

That leaves one element: It was overpriced for what it did. While I love this thing, there's no way I'd have paid $450 for it. Since it was "blown out" at $170, we can presume that is roughly the cost... A price of, say, $300 or so might have moved many more units and thereby created a market success.

 

Based on that analysis, I hope for their sake they don't continue on the path they've been on - at least from the sales/marketing/pricing perspective (they do seem on the right course technologically).

 

Originally posted by Jeff Da Weasel:

As long as they keep their expectations realistic and continue on the path they've been on, they'll be fine, and it will hardly be apparent who owns them.

- Jeff

[DallasPA]

Well,

 

I guess we could haggle all day about what was the cause of the price shift. Some are saying that you can't prove that YC was the cause, but I would certainly state that you can't state that YC takeover didnt have anything to do with it either.

 

I can't quite remember when the trinity's begin appearing, but the 88 Key versions of those wern't that cheap either. If I'm not mistaken they were running $4k to $5K new at that time. So IMHO the appearance of the korg dynasty still doesnt quite account for a 6K price shift guys. Personally I didnt think the trinity was an improvement at all over the 2500, a lot of bad samples drowned in effects is what I heard. Not usable for me in a studio setting, although many people use them just for that purpose, lol. And as stated I am in agreement that priceing will eventually go down, I paid close to 10K for an EIII and look what they go for now. The difference is we are not talking about a 6K price shitf happening over a few years, I'm talking in less than six months.

 

Ohh and by the way I never mentioned the 2661 or implied that it would ever sell for $499. I stated that 10 years from Kurzweil will be the next casio. That was to imply that the company will suffer even more and probably be producing casio equivalents 10 years from now. This has nothing to do with their current product line.

 

And I am the proud owner of a PC2X, just wish it had a little more support.

 

Whether others are in agreement or not, I have never seen another product that I can recollect take a 6K price shift within 6 months, not computers, CD players, 3D0's or toasters!!!!!!

 

Dallas

[schmoron13]

Originally posted by DallasPA:

Well,

 

I guess we could haggle all day about what was the cause of the price shift. Some are saying that you can't prove that YC was the cause, but I would certainly state that you can't state that YC takeover didnt have anything to do with it either.

 

I can't quite remember when the trinity's begin appearing, but the 88 Key versions of those wern't that cheap either. If I'm not mistaken they were running $4k to $5K new at that time. So IMHO the appearance of the korg dynasty still doesnt quite account for a 6K price shift guys. Personally I didnt think the trinity was an improvement at all over the 2500, a lot of bad samples drowned in effects is what I heard. Not usable for me in a studio setting, although many people use them just for that purpose, lol. And as stated I am in agreement that priceing will eventually go down, I paid close to 10K for an EIII and look what they go for now. The difference is we are not talking about a 6K price shitf happening over a few years, I'm talking in less than six months.

 

Whether others are in agreement or not, I have never seen another product that I can recollect take a 6K price shift within 6 months, not computers, CD players, 3D0's or toasters!!!!!!

 

And I am the proud owner of a PC2X, just wish it had a little more support.

 

Dallas

cars and houses....

[DallasPA]

lol,

 

Well I was actually talking about items that you can actually carry home.

 

rofl

Dallas

[M Peasley]

I've been a Kurz user from K2000 times, and it seems to me that the company has almost always had big problems of some sort, but it seems to survive anyway.

 

Maybe they've overextended themselves with too many newish products - but who knows?

 

Businesses like Kurzweil are complex beasts. The business equation never boils down to something as simple as "you build it for X, you sell it for X plus Y". Every one of the gearmakers has loser products, and the sellers have to make up for them. Plus R&D, plus international currency issues, labor issues, regulatory environments, marketing, advertising, lawsuits, taxes, competition, equity market fluctuations, borrowing rates for cash, management philosophy and vision (or lack therof), etc etc etc.

 

From the armchair, you really can't know squat about what some company should've done, could've done, oughta do, etc.

 

Now, if we could get some of the people who visit this board who are in the loop on industry gossip, that would be interesting, even if the gossip is wrong.

 

Mike Martin - are you in the grapevine anymore on Kurzweil?

 

M Peasley

[SoundMeister]

Originally posted by coyote:

Does a company discontinue a successful item without having some replacement in the wings? Not likely. So we can assume, based on the lack of an ExpMate replacement, that this wonderful device failed in the market.

 

Why did it fail? It combined a multitude of useful features and immense programmability with a great set of controllers including a ribbon. It can control an entire rig for you.... while a bit complex at first, given its capabilities & usefulness it probably didn't fail due to that complexity. And it seems well-built and reliable.

 

That leaves one element: It was overpriced for what it did.

The psychology of gear purchases is interesting. Many people tend to buy a more expensive items because they believe those will do more than less expensive items. So I'd probably disagree with your conclusion here. I'm sure it's true for some, but it's not likely to be the whole story.

 

Here are some other possible reasons:

 

1) A small segment of high end users bought the ExpMate. Most end users are not programmers and would not know how good use out of it. They might not know where to start.

 

2) The idea of real time control is overrated. How many sliders are needed for a piano sample? I suspect many Kurzweil users who own a rack K2x00 don't realize that the Kurz's factory presets feature a fair amount of programming that makes it possible to morph a patch into a totally different sound. They would know ....if they only had a knob box or ExpMate.

 

3) There was no commercial soundware that made use of the ExpMate.

 

To tell you the truth, I'm in a quandary about these issues because I can put in a tremendous amount of time and effort to provide end users with new sonic nuances and elements of real time control that many will simply never hear or take advantage of.

 

~Peter Schouten

Pyramid Sound Productions

Specializing in Kurzweil K2x00

[AmplifierExperts]

Originally posted by schmoron13:

 

Dallas[/qb]

cars and houses.... [/QB]

 

It's quite the other way around actually... I bought my property for less than $2000, some forty years ago... now it's being taxed at a market value of over half a million dollars.

 

If they could tax our Kurzweils, I'd bet they too would rise in price every year.

[burningbusch]

Originally posted by Lee Tyler:

The following is a quote from a message on another forum:

 

There was a mis-calculation with currency rate in the news. 13 billion Won is approximately U$11.1 million, not 1.1 million.

 

Another correction is that Samick purchased 5.5 million shares, not 6.5million. Those new shares are purchased at lower price than original or current value.

 

Before issuing new shares for Samick's acquisition, YC had total 5.5 million shares which was valued U$12 million in the market.

Thanks, that makes it slightly more believable. Still, $12 million, that's NOTHING for a world-wide manufacturer of musical instruments. They had to have been in deep trouble. I don't think the acquisition makes much difference.

 

I tried to find the valuation of some companies in the industry for comparison, but didn't come up with much.

 

$248 mil - Steinway

$1.26 bil - AVID (Digidesign parent)

$529 mil - Pinnacle (Steinberg parent)

$858 mil - Guitar Center

=================================

 

And some others:

$8.5 bil - Apple

$170 bil - IBM

$287 bil - Microsoft

 

Busch.

[Mike Martin]

Originally posted by M Peasley:

Businesses like Kurzweil are complex beasts. The business equation never boils down to something as simple as "you build it for X, you sell it for X plus Y". Every one of the gearmakers has loser products, and the sellers have to make up for them. Plus R&D, plus international currency issues, labor issues, regulatory environments, marketing, advertising, lawsuits, taxes, competition, equity market fluctuations, borrowing rates for cash, management philosophy and vision (or lack therof), etc etc etc.

 

From the armchair, you really can't know squat about what some company should've done, could've done, oughta do, etc.

 

Now, if we could get some of the people who visit this board who are in the loop on industry gossip, that would be interesting, even if the gossip is wrong.

 

Mike Martin - are you in the grapevine anymore on Kurzweil?

 

M Peasley

I think you describe the problem perferctly in your first paragraph. Its a very complex situation.

 

As for gossip, I heard about the Samick situation over a week ago. I actually told a few Kurzweil employees about it who were surprized to say the least.

 

One thing regarding the price changes. I worked there at the time. A month after I bought a K2600X for myself using my employee discount, the price dropped. I paid more for my K2600X as an employee of the company than end users were paying for them two months later.

[burningbusch]

Originally posted by coyote:

It's unimaginable that it cost Kurz $4K to produce a 2500. Therefore, a board which goes from $8K to $2K indicates the BAD business practice of overinflating the value of an item.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with selling a product for whatever price the market will bear. People think companies determine pricing by how much it costs them to manufacture then add some amount for profit. That's not how it works. Pricing is based on a calculated guess as to at what selling price profits are maximized.

 

Busch.

[Jeff Klopmeyer]

Originally posted by burningbusch:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with selling a product for whatever price the market will bear.

I completely agree.

 

This is what defines capitalism. What Busch says is true, though there are lots of variables. The main ones in this (and most) industries are:

 

- Accepted price/performance ratio that defines the value (including intangibles like audio quality).

 

- Manufacturer's cost of design, manufacture and marketing plus reasonable profit margin. This is a formulaic thing.

 

- Uniqueness.

 

The third thing is particularly important. If it could be argued (and to a high degree I think it can) that the K2000 had a unique feature set and sound generating capability that no other board at the time offered, they should have sold it for every bit as much as the market was willing to pay for it. What it cost them to create it in R&D and manufacturing) is irrelevant.

 

The other factors that determine more specific pricing involves buyer's psychology. Even though your profit formula may say that a product needs to retail at $783, you'll have better sales at either $749 or $799. And, in fact, if you have something that fills a unique need in the market, why not sell it at $999? Most people don't differentiate that much between $700 - $1000.

 

Okay, enough marketing 101.

 

- Jeff