[Harp-L] Re: Another Hohner price increase




On Jan 20, 2010, at 7:26 PM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:


Message: 6
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:31:29 -0500
From: joe leone <3n037@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Another Hohner price increase
To: Michael Easton <diachrome@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Harp L Harp L <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <02AB482B-BE48-423B-9076-C5CB63BE4078@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed


On Jan 20, 2010, at 5:13 PM, Joe Leone wrote:
I've decided to stop carrying Hohner products for obvious reasons
but will still fix them while I have the parts in stock.

Why would you drop them. In my lifetime, I have never seen anything go down. Always up. It's a natural phenominon.

It's an issue of Hohner products not moving off the shelf even though my prices were dirt cheap.
I ended up giving away part of the inventory to charity and stripping down some of the other stuff
for parts. The remainder was bought off by some harp customizers.



Hohner is slowly driving the independent repair guys out of
business due to the cost of replacement parts.

I don't thin they are doing it on purpose.

Maybe not on purpose but when the new CEO came on board I lost my business discount for parts.
It made it possible to keep my repair prices low and make a little off the part I was selling.
Now unless I purchase a minimum of $100 in parts at a time there is no price reduction.
I just sold a lever for a CBH for $22!! That's Hohner's price. I make nothing on the sale because the part is too damn
expensive to begin with. Same with the other parts.
Call it inflation or whatever. I'm not hurting as bad as my fellow techs since I have a large stockpile of certain parts but
it's made it impossible to keep certain parts on hand. Business now gets tied up having to order parts then wait for them.
Players are getting sticker shock with repairs and I don't blame them for complaining.



The reason my rep. gave for the price increase is the increase in the Euro value and something to do with the Chinese economy.

This is a red flag. It tells me that at least 'some' of their stuff is being made in China.

Also Hohner is has decided to market their products in blister card packs now to have them out on a rack rather then behind glass in a case. They want product visibility. Word from the rep is vendors aren't happy with that move.

Having them in the open makes them succeptable to heat cold and sunlight.

I hope they at least package the hinged case along with the harp.


Michael Easton www.harmonicarepair.com






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