FEATURE-Made-in-China violins drown out the competition
Sun Aug 21, 2005
By Jerker Hellstrom
SHANGHAI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Five grizzled carpenters hunch over worn workdesks, ignoring the high-pitched wail of Chinese opera on the radio as they painstakingly polish the finish on the country's latest export hit -- violins.
>From bustling Shanghai to thriving Guangzhou, thousands of factories fashion up to 1 million instruments a year mostly bound for the U.S. and European markets, ranging from pedestrian students' violins to rarefied ones used in concerts that bear names like Andreas Eastman, Johannes Kohr and Andrew Schroetter.
One producer estimates that 70-80 percent of violins sold to U.S. music students are made in China. And the country's output is growing 30 percent a year, according to official data.
"China is developing, and to make a sophisticated product like a good violin is still hard for us," said Zhou Youjian, chief executive of the Shanghai Lark Golden Bell Music Instruments Co. Ltd.
"But it's easy to make something that looks like a violin, especially with labour so cheap," he said, pottering about a whitewashed, sawdust-sprinkled workshop on Shanghai's outskirts.
Zhou and his 150 employees -- who together comprise the nation's fifth-largest violin-making concern -- embody a quiet revolution that is transforming the classical music world.
The "Made in China" label is only just beginning to shed its long-standing association with inferior products.
Nonetheless, the country that made a name for itself churning out everything from cheap shoes and T-shirts to cut-rate TVs and microwave ovens has in the past three years become the world's largest practitioner of the mystical art of violin-making.
No surprise then that cut-price Chinese product is squeezing out the likes of Japan's Suzuki Violin Co. Ltd. and Yamaha Corp.
Suzuki once controlled more than half the European and U.S. market for student violins, a figure that has shrunk to less than 10 percent.
"In the last four to five years, we haven't sold any violins at all on the European market. They only buy Chinese violins now," said Yoshitaka Nishio, an assistant manager for Suzuki in Nagoya.
Zhou's own factory exports nine out of 10 of the 30,000 instruments his suburban factory turns out every year. Half of those are shipped to the Unites States, the world's biggest buyer of Chinese violins, where distributors pay as little as $23 apiece -- Suzuki's are nearly five times as expensive.
"Too many Chinese violins with very low prices have come into the market ... We lost our leading position in Europe five or 10 years ago. Now we're losing market share in the U.S.," said Nishio.
GLUEING THEM TOGETHER
While China has captured the U.S. music student violin market, it's in the higher-end category that Chinese craftsman have a little catching up to do.
"It's not as easy as just copying. You have to understand the fundamentals in the making of a violin," Zhou said, sipping green tea from a plastic mug.
It's not just violins either. China crafts instruments of every description, from the piano to the accordion.
Two out of three pianos produced by Germany's C. Bechstein Pianoforte AG are made in China and Japanese instrument maker Yamaha bases 10 percent of its piano manufacturing there.
Yet low prices are not enough in the long run, Zhou said.
Manufacturing is bound to shift eventually to countries with lower labour costs such as Vietnam, Burma or Laos, as costs rise in the world's seventh-largest economy alongside rapid growth.
"When the Chinese made violins before, it was like trying to assemble a car without any knowledge. That's how they glued together their violins," violin wholesaler Stig Brink told Reuters by phone from his office in central Sweden's Katrineholm.
"Three years ago people would not buy Chinese violins. But the instruments they make today are excellent."
Brink said cheaper Chinese violins now made up three quarters of his sales.
DOMESTIC THREATS
Zhou, who does not play the violin himself, began his career managing a state-owned flute and trumpet factory.
The Shanghai-born executive, sporting a beige "Melbourne" cap and a mobile phone in a cord around his neck, said thousands of violin manufacturers such as Shanghai Lark were now taking over markets in the United States and Europe.
So much so that China is running out of the maple and dragon spruce wood needed to make violins, prompting the government to launch timber restrictions.
Chinese violin-makers are thus increasingly forced to come up with new ideas.
For starters, Zhou is buying sawing equipment from Australia and throwing out dusty machines dating back to a decade ago, when his factory was state-owned.
"I'll also start making electric violins," he said. "Nobody does it here yet."
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