...Steinway and Sons Presenters Team 02 MKTG 445-02 Ashley Sides Derek Moss Andrew Wyatt Lindsey Brooks Jason Bryant Lindsey Brooks Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 History 4 Industry Trends 5 Industry Competition 6 Target Market 7 Marketing Strategies 8 SWOT Analysis 10 Conclusion 11 Executive Summary Problem: As a result of the declination of sales in the piano industry, Steinway and Sons needs to find a way to uphold its historical brand reputation while gaining market share world wide and using innovative technology; particularly in the Asian Market Background: In late 1994, Steinway and Sons was yet again a company on the market to be sold. For their own personal reasoning, the Birmingham brothers decided to sell the piano manufacturer. On April 18, 1995 Kyle Kirkland and Dana Messina, already controlling multiple firms, decided to make the purchase. The investment bankers purchased the New York piano manufacturer for an incredible $100 million. Discussion: The piano industry has been in rapid decline over the past 2 decades and in particular, Steinway and Sons has taken a hard financial hit. Global sales of the industry have dropped 40% over the past 24 years and with the introduction of major industry competitors, Steinway and Sons have continued to struggle. In addition to the negative impact of these industry trends, Steinway and Sons introduced...
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...Steinway and Sons Presenters Team 02 MKTG 445-02 Ashley Sides Derek Moss Andrew Wyatt Lindsey Brooks Jason Bryant Lindsey Brooks Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 History 4 Industry Trends 5 Industry Competition 6 Target Market 7 Marketing Strategies 8 SWOT Analysis 10 Conclusion 11 Executive Summary Problem: As a result of the declination of sales in the piano industry, Steinway and Sons needs to find a way to uphold its historical brand reputation while gaining market share world wide and using innovative technology; particularly in the Asian Market Background: In late 1994, Steinway and Sons was yet again a company on the market to be sold. For their own personal reasoning, the Birmingham brothers decided to sell the piano manufacturer. On April 18, 1995 Kyle Kirkland and Dana Messina, already controlling multiple firms, decided to make the purchase. The investment bankers purchased the New York piano manufacturer for an incredible $100 million. Discussion: The piano industry has been in rapid decline over the past 2 decades and in particular, Steinway and Sons has taken a hard financial hit. Global sales of the industry have dropped 40% over the past 24 years and with the introduction of major industry competitors, Steinway and Sons have continued to struggle. In addition to the negative impact of these industry trends, Steinway and...
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...manufacturer of High Quality Piano’s? Ans 1: Steinway has a reputation for creating high quality products. The company’s products score very high on 5 dimensions of quality, Performance, Reliability, Durability, Aesthetics and Perceived quality. The factors behind the high quality products of Steinway are 1) Steinway maintained a good relationship with artists, and had a list of approved artists who were eligible for Steinway Concert service under which the company provided pianos at all concerts. Their relations with acclaimed artists helped improve the image of Steinway. Also, Steinway used the talents of these artists as testing grounds for its pianos, which helped maintain the quality. Stenway also sought after gathering testimonials of famous pianists and wealthy patrons who use their products. 2) Steinway employs highly skilled labor, many of them in the business since 2 or 3 generations. The company also offers various training and internship programs to improve the skill level of the employees. Thus, quality handcraftsmanship and innovative techniques were part of the tradition. 3) Steinway works with the best raw materials for its pianos. The company hired wood technologists who would locate fine quality wood from around the world. The emphasis on quality was so high that all weathered wood was discarded, even if it was more than half of the total. 4) Continuous Improvement/Innovation: Steinway has constantly innovated and improved...
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...The construction and assembly of a Steinway Piano involves several different subsystems that in the end when all put together makes up a larger system. A company, such as a production company like Steinway is known to build a good quality product. They have a good reputation on the product that they build, because they have taken the time figure out how to make quality work and use quality material. There is a process in place in order to manufacture and assemble the piano. First of all they just don’t use any wood, they use Eastern rock maple wood to be precise. They start with raw boards to create a rim with specific measurement. Next, a total of 18 separate slat, 14 layers of maple and 4 layers of woods are glued and stacked together to form a book. Then comes the process of bending rim into the shape of a piano. This process could not be done, without a crew, but not just any crew. A crew of six skilled specialized employees that have just 20 minutes to complete the book and they use block and tackle and wooden levers and mallets into a rim bending press. This process is the same process that Steinway & Sons have used for more than a century and is all done by hand and all at one time. With all this hard work, their job does not end there. The company also need other departments, such as a marketing department in order to market their product. The financial department takes care of all the accounting issues. They ensure that the company has the funds to...
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...Evaluation of Acquisition of Steinway Musical Instruments by John A. Paulson The Acquisition Back to the year 2011, the world’s most famous manufacturer of musical instrument, Steinway Musical Instruments Corporation, had begun to considerate the offer to acquisition. Two member of the board of directors, Dana Messina and John Stoner set up the special committee to discuss the acquisition deals. But Steinway turned down the Stoner-Messina offer in 2012,12 and declared that the company was not for sell. Now it’s time to take a fresh look at this issue. Kohlberg & Co. announced that they are going to offer a price of $448 million to take an overall acquisition, and Steinway accepted the $35-per-share Kohlberg proposal. However, at the last days in the 45-day “go-shop” period, a second, unidentified suitor offered a higher price: $38-per-share and $477 in total. This mysterious competitor is John Paulson, a hedge fund billionaire. In the end, Steinway announced that it would be acquired for approximately $512 million, $40-per-share, and the investment firm Paulson & Co. has completed its approximately $499 million purchase of Steinway in Sep, 2013. Kohlberg & Co. refused to increase its offer so Steinway will be required to pay Kohlberg a $13.35 million termination fee. This deal makes Steinway a private company, again. John A. Paulson Born in Queen, now John A. Paulson is one of the top American hedge fund mangers, or maybe the best. Warren E. Buffett...
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...Steinway & Sons has been in business for over 140 years selling grand pianos. Steinway is almost synonymous with the word piano. The emphasis has been on their skilled laborers, high end quality, hand crafted grand pianos, and impeccable sound. The Steinway grand piano is constructed as a subsystem of a lager system. Management and operations specifically focus on the raw materials, hand craftsmanship, and technology which ties in with their niche brand. The Steinway grand piano has been marketed to elite demographics including famous artists and musicians from around the world. This case study describes how only 10 pianos a day or 2,500 a year are produced in their New York Factory. Steinway & Sons management have proven themselves in a niche market with limited supply, and high demand for grand pianos costing between $45,000 and $110,000. The cost of the Steinway is tied closely to their financial department. The finance team is responsible for the purchasing of the high end materials, making sure they keep up with paying their business partners who sell Steinway the materials. The finance department also has to keep a check on their cash flow in order to pay the laborers and ensure there is no delay in releasing orders to be shipped. Management is responsible for the highly skilled laborers training, which can take about a year to train a Steinway case maker, and to ensure the high end quality standards are followed through from start to finish with their production...
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...New Buyer’s Strategy for Steinway& Sons: “Cash is King” This essay assesses the wisdom of the $100 million acquisition of Steinway by the Selmer Company given the shrinking sales of recent years and the highly-leveraged failure of the Birmingham ownership. One can justify the purchase from four perspectives: the improvement in the financial resources of the new owners, the reconsideration of the marketing strategy, targeting and positioning, the forecasted improvement in Steinway piano sales and the short and long-term corporate financial effects. Steinway & Sons should be able to prosper under the new owners in both the short term and long term based on the inherent strength of the brand as the world’s finest piano, the available financial resources and smart marketing. After four generations of family ownership the company suffered from inadequate corporate oversight under CBS and an overly leveraged balance sheet with Birmingham. CBS focused on cost control at the expense of product quality with the expected results. Birmingham knew nothing about the piano business and were so leveraged that much needed investment was impossible to sustain. Their marketing strategies were an improvement over CBS, but the high cost of capital and poor capital structure were drags on the company. They had little working capital. Average inventory of $75 million showed the huge problems in the company’s operation cycle. Inventory turnover averaged 273 days with around $100million...
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...Abstract This is a question and answer discussion on Steinway Pianos. Discussed will be how the Steinway Piano company set up their system, smaller subsystems and how they use the systems perspective of input, transformation and output. Behavioral and operations management will also be discussed along with the universal and contingency perspective. Steinway Pianos This discussion on Steinway Pianos will be highlighting their processes and how their subsystems and system work together to produce their high quality piano cases. Learn how inputs from their environment, the transformation process and outputs into the environment affect their organization’s system perspective. Discuss the similarities between the behavioral and operations management and Steinway’s processes. Also how the universal and contingency perspective is reflected in the Steinway process. The construction and assembly of a Steinway’s piano is comprised of several different subsystems that all work together to make up a larger system. As with many companies such as a production company like Steinway, there must be a process in place in order to construct and assemble the piano. Along with that the company will need other departments such as marketing to market their product. The financial department ensures all the accounting is done properly and that money is available to purchase more materials and labor so that they can produce more pianos. The management department manages...
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...Date: July 31, 2013 Business Brief In a world of endless technological change and improvement for over a century, ninety percent if the worlds expert pianists have made the Steinway concert grand piano their instrument of choice (Steinway, 2013). Steinway’s reputation among customers is unmatched in the piano industry. The quality of Steinway pianos is the result of the craftsmanship of the piano by skilled workers (Steinway, 2013). Steinway piano’s reputation appears to be depended upon their commitment of not changing the piano at all. The task for businesses today is to please their customers through the incomparable performance of their processes. When a process fails to please a customer, the failure is considered a defect. According to the text a defect is defined as “any instance when a process fails to satisfy its customer” (Krajewski, Ritzman & Malhorta, 2013). Numerous companies spend a great deal of time, effort and expense on systems, training, and organizational changes to increase the quality and performance of their processes (Krajewski, Ritzman & Malhorta, 2013). The concept of Total Quality Management recognizes the importance of customer approval. Total quality management (TQM) is a philosophy that stresses three principles for achieving high levels of process performance and quality (Krajewski, Ritzman & Malhorta, 2013). These principles are related to (Krajewski, Ritzman & Malhorta, 2013): 1) Customer approval 2) Employee...
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...Bachelor2 Literary Analysis of Riders to the Sea The chosen work for this literary analysis is Riders to the Sea, by J.M. Synge (1903). This piece is written as a classical drama. This form of writing is written with direction for setting creation and stage direction for characters included as its form is to be set into action. What is so delightful about this type of writing is that when reading, your imagination is taken to the scene enfolding before you. The characters need not speak every word to portray their emotion to you. Their subtle movements and changes in set symbolically convey visual meaning. After reading the play, it is just as interesting to see it performed. You will want to see if the director of the play has picked up on the subtleties that the playwright has included that have already captured your own mind or emphasized symbolism that you did not absorb. There are several portions of this play that stood out to me as saying more than what most would glean important. The first is a soliloquy made by the two daughters concerning the death of Michael. They are clearly worried how the impact of the news of Michael’s death will impact their mother. They are worried most about her and not of their own loss of their brother. This leads to dramatic irony, as now the audience knows more than the protagonist about what is the sisters believe has happened. The dramatic irony is further proven when the daughters inspect the stitching and fabric of...
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...Personal Application of Criminology Paper CJA/314 Version 2 Criminology 02-27-2011 Personal Application of Criminology Paper When a person is in a situation like this, they may have a million things going through their heads, sometimes not and they’ll just proceed with calling the Police. With this situation one can handle it in a few ways, first call the police, then proceed with calling the boy’s parents, and tell my son what happened. If one can find out why this situation came about, meaning why your son’s friend came into your house by using a break in tool such as a lock pick, finding out that information would be helpful to have. The first thing a person should do is follow out with the most professional steps for the well-being of the boy, but keep your best interest at heart as well by keeping yourself safe. It’s important the parents know that their child has been involved in a crime instead of them finding out in the worst way with him calling after they have booked him in his cell. However, another reason one should call the parent because of course they may have never known that they’re child was doing things like this, and they may be able to talk some great deal of sense to him that may make him see the light of what he was doing, and if he does, the parents can talk to the police possibly and prevent him from going to jail and let them handle it. If not and the boy has to stand in front of a judge for what he did and he gets convicted of it then, the boy...
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...Besvar opgaverne i A-D A) 1. He had travelled a lot as young man, but that was a long time ago. He had travelled a lot as a young man, but that was a long time ago. Regel: Der skal være et ”a” foran young man, for at understrege at det er et navneord. 2. Last year he spend three months on a ranch in Texas working as a cattle herder. Last year he spent three months on a ranch in Texas working as a cattle herder. Regel: Spend med “d” er når det er infinitiv. Spent med ”t” er når det er datid, hvilket denne sætning er. 3. The audience is reminded of that smoking is not allowed during the show. The audience is reminded that smoking is not allowed during the show. 4. If I continued reading at this speed, there were every possibility of my finishing the book in time for the test. If I continued reading at this speed, there was every possibility of my finishing the book in time for the test. Regel: Kongruensfejl: Der skal være overensstemmelse mellem verbet og subjektets tal og person. Ental i subjektet skal følges af ental i verbet. Flertal skal følges af flertal. 5. I was wondering if you could suggest a restaurant there is close to Times Square? I was wondering if you could suggest a restaurant which is close to Times Square? 6. On the bus a completely stranger sat down next to me and started talking about his daughter. In the bus a completely stranger sat down next to me and started talking about his daughter. 7. However much you do, will there...
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...Brandon Standard 5/5/14 period A Mrs. Mazz Tension in the father son relationship is represented throughout the play. The tension that is so prominent in the play is between Willy and Biff. The tension is because Willy wants Biff to become and salesman like himself but Biff wants to take a different path and work with his hands and enjoy life. Another reason that there is tension between Willy and Biff is because Biff walked in on Willy cheating on his mother. There is one scene towards the end of the play where Willy and Biff have an argument after Biff leaves him in a restaurant. This scene shows how much tension they have in their relationship. In this scene Biff tells his father that he is nothing and always will be nothing. Biff also tells Willy that he will never turn out to be a salesman like him. * Tension in the father son relationship can be faced in modern society through sports. Fathers always imagine there son becoming a star athlete and try to mold them into being this. Most of the time the son is not going to be a star athlete and this is something that is difficult for a father to deal with. All off their hopes and dreams are in their son so if they don’t turn out to be exactly how you want them to than it is disheartening. Tension in the father son relationship can really hurt a family and break them apart. A father has a special bond with his son because they are both men of the house, it is different than having a daughter or the relationship...
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...Some Rules for Writing on Literary Topics... referring to the author - first reference use the author's full name. Subsequent references use the author's last name only, or call them the writer, the author, et cetera. Mark Twain would become Twain. referring to the title - in your thesis use a complete reference to the title of the work. Subsequent references, use the title if it is short. If it is long, make it shorter by picking out the key words. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would become Huckleberry Finn. • • On the citations, for a short essay on one literary work you don't have to use the author's last name inside the citations. One last thing. When you write a thesis on a literary work, it is a good idea to add the following to the thesis: 1. 1. the author's name 2. 2. the title of the work 3. 3. the genre (story, poem, play novel) This will have the effect of making the thesis a little longer than you may be accustomed to. For right now, don't worry. Just try to get it all in there. We may talk about splitting the thesis into two sentences later on. The samples on "A&P" followed this pattern. 9 Steps to Writing on a Literacy Topic (LINK) Assignment One page with thesis and evidence on any story from week 2 or week 3 of the syllabus - If you are up for the challenge I am adding a musical performance to the list of options....
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...Movie Family Care Plan Buffy Johnson NUR464 11/25/2012 Karen Jones MS, RN-BC, CNS Movie Family Care Plan This Client is Max Goldman. His age is not addressed in movie, he is a male, widowed, and white. The movie does not address his current health orientation. The family Genogram are deceased wife, living only son. The developmental stage this character is: Late Adulthood: 55 or 65 to Death Ego Development Outcome: Integrity vs. Despair Basic Strengths: Wisdom.( Erik Erikson's Developmental Stages, 1902-1994.) The family is distant at this time in life. The son is getting married and the father is trying to help plan his son’s first wedding. The father is independent and able to care for himself. His value’s are not addressed in the movie. His communication style is loud. The power structure is not addressed. The family function, the son is aable to talk to the father but will not tell him “No”. His best friend is the neighbor. His social placement is limited by only have one close friend. The reproductive function is not addressed. This characters coping function is to yell and go fishing. The economic class of the character is middle class. The medical insurance is not addressed. No physical provisions needed. The personal family physical characteristics are: the character resides at home by himself. He is able to care for himself. Privacy is not limited. No safety hazards addressed. The character lives in a older neighborhood and community...
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