In January 2024, in a cylinder products storage park in Baoshan, Yang Kai polished a panel removed from a piano in the handicraft workshop of his warehouse.
In the morning, he sent the old master, who had been working for many years, to the train station. The Spring Festival is just around the corner, and the accounts of the past year are settled. The rest of the piano work, Yang Kai is ready to do it himself. As for when the masters will come back after the year, whether they will come back or not, both sides have no bottom in their hearts.
Yang Kai's second-hand piano business is also a coincidence. More than ten years ago, he came to Shanghai from his hometown in Henan to work and entered the Shanghai Piano Factory.
From the beginning of the apprenticeship, the wood is cut, the paint is polished, assembled, winded, tuned ......Yang Kai has done all the processes involved in making a piano. In 2008, he left the piano factory and started his own business, and he came up with the idea of importing old pianos from Japan and refurbishing them to sell. Most of his guests are piano teachers, but there are also professional performers who pursue cost-effectiveness, and even celebrities.
Although the second-hand piano market is mixed, Yang Kai thought: "If you want to do this business for a long time, word of mouth is very important." Our major customers include piano shops, teaching and training institutions across the country, as well as individual teachers. Whether things are good or not, professional people know when they hear it, smashing their own signboards, making quick money, and the road will get narrower and narrower. ”
Unless there are special circumstances, Yang Kai generally likes to accept pianos produced in Japan in the 80s of the 20th century, when some mainstream piano brands wanted to challenge the old European manufacturers, from the materials to the process are very exquisite.
Whether the piano is good or not, the key is in the soundboard at the back. In the past, all the wood used was good, and it had to be soaked at the bottom of the sea, and then fished up and dried for decades to have such a sound, but now such wood can not be found. Yang Kai said.
Yang Kai still remembers the first time he received the piano from Japan.
We worked hard to consult moving companies in Japan, and finally found one that was willing to take over our business. They have the ability to do logistics and also have access to a group of sellers of second-hand goods. It took about a few months to collect a container and send it to Shanghai Port. ”
During the time when the cargo ship was floating on the sea, Yang Kai couldn't eat or sleep well every day. The rule of the Japanese is to collect money first, and then do things, and more than 200,000 yuan is the savings of many years of part-time work, which are all pressed on this batch of goods.
When Yang Kai stood at the door of his warehouse and completed the first piano unpacking, his heart instantly returned to his stomach.
Japanese moving companies are not professional pianos, every time they encounter a piano, they can only try to describe all aspects of the piano to us in **, and when we open the container to check, the goods are very consistent with the situation described by the Japanese. At that time, it was not like now, I collected a piano, sent it, and it was clear at a glance. Yang Kai said.
That batch of pianos was ordered in a blink of an eye, and Yang Kai knew that this business was done. With the enthusiasm of Chinese piano children, Yang Kai's business began to take off. From 2010 to 2018, he spent 9 years of good times, and in a month, seventy or eighty pianos were sold with his eyes closed, and he began to have confidence.
In addition to meeting the rigid needs of the piano learning group, there are various grades of grand pianos, pianos, and decorative study pianos, Yang Kai has seen more and more pianos, and he has a more and more sober understanding of what a good piano looks like.
Yang Kai's warehouse now has no shortage of famous pianos like Steinway.
Yang Kai's warehouse now has no shortage of famous pianos like Steinway.
Buy our second-hand piano, the main value is a price-performance ratio. The design life of the piano is often 100 years, and if it is stored normally, it will not be broken. Many parents are not sure how far their children can go on the road to learning the piano, so buy a piano with decent timbre and accurate tuning, so as not to delay their children's learning and not to worry too much about their wallets. ”
After 2018, the piano learning fever has stabilized, and now Yang Kai's company sells about 20-30 pianos a month, excluding rent, labor and various expenses, the business will be flat.
In fact, it is not surprising that the piano is not a consumable item. Before the piano craze, so many people bought the piano, these pianos will not disappear, they will also circulate among generations of piano children and parents through various channels such as Xianyu. Of course, the education policy will also curb the impulse of some parents with utilitarian purposes to let their children learn the piano. ”
The children's choice of which instrument to learn has become more diverse and more in line with their own wishes. Yang Kai's wife is a professional guzheng teacher, and the number of students who come to learn the piano in her training institution has not declined significantly, but can expect to increase in the future.
On the one hand, there are more and more children who like national style and Chinese music, and on the other hand, because of the country's policy of liberalizing the second and third children, there will still be more children learning the piano in the future, we judge it ourselves. Yang Kai's wife said.
Yang Kai's idea is that now is the stage when the business "bottoms out", the new piano will not be entered first, the inventory will be digested at least half, and the two warehouses rented will be vacated to save costs.
At the same time, he actively explores the market in other places, and most of his customers in the past are concentrated in Shanghai, and now, through the cooperation with piano teachers and institutions, we have turned the piano warehouse into a large live broadcast room, so that more foreign businesses and parents of piano children know him.
Piano teacher Wang Jilin will come to Yang Kai's warehouse every once in a while to play the piano and do a live broadcast. In addition to recruiting students, you can also help Yang Kai bring goods.
After the live broadcast, there are many people who come to WeChat to inquire, and there are also transactions. When the year begins, I hope that the business will slowly pick up, and I will be able to bring back the masters who have been with me for many years. Yang Kai said.
*: Shanghai Baoshan official WeChat.