Re: [Harp-L] Hohner in the Local Marketplace

[David Payne <dmatthew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eric wrote: "But, in my very
limited experience, Hohner is almost always the only harmonica of
professional quality available in local music stores."


True. That's one reason the retail is so outrageous. These big retailers get a huge cut of the sale. Your mom and pop shop, from what I've seen, get about 50 percent AND they are getting them through a distributor, who, in turn also gets a cut, so what's left for Hohner? I dunno exactly, but the pie has to be getting pretty small at the top. That's why you don't see a lot of other companies in the stores and that's why Hohner is always leading the market in price increases.

What can be done? Well, in a free market economy, the consumer controls this whole process. For most of the second half of the 20th Century, Hohner had a monopoly. That's not true today, we have options, we can buy other harmonicas, or if we don't want to do that, we can learn to fix the ones we have and buy fewer of them. 

The irony is, this is counter to what got Hohner on top in the first place. Back in the late 1800s, early 1900s, Hohner established all these offices in its overseas markets. That enabled Hohner to deal with the overseas markets directly, without having to go through middlemen, who took a cut and then exported the product. But today, a lot of the competition has taken that a step further and done their own distribution, taking Hohner's own original streamlined marketing initiative a step further with some success.

Dave
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www.elkriverharmonicas.com