Wednesday, July 1, 2009

USA Saxophone Imports 1st Quarter 2009

The numbers are in and it's not a very pretty picture. Of course, there are NO saxophones being manufactured in the USA, so every new horn sold here is an import. The number of horns imported gives a pretty good indication of the health of the market, and it looks pretty bad. The Music Trades magazine provides the following figures in the July issue. The figures are for the top three producing nations only. It is true that some saxophones are imported from France, Germany, Italy, and a couple of other nations, but those figures are miniscule compared to the Asian imports. Figures for the first quarter of 2008 are given in parenthesis for comparison. First quarter 2007 figures are given to the far right for further comparison


Taiwan 4,822 (8,795) -45% 15,956
China 9,122 (11,639) -22% 8,106
Japan 1,599 (1,920) -21% 5,052

The trend is obvious: the Taiwanese and Japanese horns have suffered a far greater decline in import numbers. Bad news for them, good news for the Chinese.
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. UnknownJuly 1, 2009 at 7:24 AM

    Do you have any numbers on Vietnam? I here they are ramping up production of new Saxophones.
    Do you know of the Quailty?

    Thanks,

    Carl

    ReplyDelete
  2. steve goodsonJuly 1, 2009 at 8:09 AM

    Yes, I know the owners of that factory very well. It is absolutely state of the art in every regard. The owners (who are not Viet Namese) have been in the saxophone business for many years in other countries. The quality is as good as anything you can get anywhere in the world. I don't have any import figures.

    ReplyDelete

You are welcome to comment on my posts. HOWEVER, be advised that all comments are moderated, and that I won't allow any comments that do not contain your real name and a verifiable email address. Please do not waste my time and yours with comments you know I will not allow.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)