Piano shop's move to M50 is key to growth

The retail boom of the last decade has produced some strange success stories, but it must still come as a surprise to learn that one piano sales outlet has seen business grow by an average 40 per cent annually for the past four years.

Pianos Plus was set up in May 1990 by Henry Gillanders and John Holland, both of whom had previously worked for McCullough Pigott when that company was a dominant presence on Dublin's Suffolk Street.

After trading for 18 months on Fosters Avenue in Mount Merrion, the partners acquired premises in December 1991 on Rathgar Road and have remained there ever since. It also has a second outlet on Wellington Quay in the city centre.

Of late, the downside of booming sales has been shortage of space. Piano Plus's Rathgar shop runs to approximately 1,700 sq ft and this is simply not large enough to accommodate the amount of stock now being carried by the company.

According to Gillanders, a particular problem is that customers never take away their purchases immediately - pianos being too bulky to fit into the back of even the most spacious four-wheel drive - and can sometimes leave instruments in-store for months at a time.

Meanwhile, ordered replacement stock will have arrived and the outcome is extreme over-crowding.

For this reason, Pianos Plus has invested approximately €1.8 million in buying a new showroom and retail outlet of almost 10,000 sq ft in the Centre Point Business Park just off the M50.

For Gillanders and Holland, this specific location is of key importance, since it means that their large display windows holding fine pianos will be seen by every driver on the motorway.

And just as importantly, when this major route is eventually completed, it will pass through south Dublin, where the greater part of Piano Plus customers live. Although the building contains large expanses of glass, all windows have been thoroughly sound-proofed so customers should not be troubled by the din of traffic.

Still not completed, the premises are far removed from the usual centres of shopping activity but Gillanders does not believe this is any drawback. He says that in the United States, equivalent companies are now all sited along the periphery of major roads, not least because piano purchasers tend to be drivers and do not mind travelling to a different location for their specialist interest.

Ample parking in the immediate vicinity is another obvious advantage for this business because the shortage of this has become a steadily greater problem in the city.

In its new site, Pianos Plus will be open throughout the weekend, since this is when most purchases of instruments are made.

Entire families tend to come to the showrooms to look at pianos, and bearing this in mind, the two floors devoted to sales will include seating areas where those not personally interested in pianos can find distraction.

The building runs to four levels, with the uppermost devoted to offices and what Gillanders and Holland hope to develop as a small recital room. Immediately below will be given over to upright instruments while down again is the space allocated to grand pianos. The company usually sells eight of the former to every two of the latter, a figure explained by price. Whereas the average upright costs in the region of €6,000, the price of a grand piano is around €15,000.

Neither of these figures is exactly modest, but still Pianos Plus has seen steady growth in its sales since the mid-1990s and even with the threat of recession, would hope for a 10 to 15 per cent increase this year. In the past nine months, the company has sold around 335 pianos.

The most popular makes, due to reliability and price, are Japanese names such as Kwai and Yamaha; for the past four years, Pianos Plus has been presented with an award for being Kawi's top-performing retailer in Europe.

Other companies stocked include the German Seiler and, of course, Steinway & Sons, despite these being three or four times more expensive than other pianos.

Gillanders says that although when the company was set up both he and Holland expected to deal regularly in second-hand sales, this has not proven to be the case. They might now only be offered one used instrument a year.

A secondary aspect of Piano Plus's business, accounting for around five per cent of annual turnover, is instrument hire.

A number of grands and uprights are stocked for this purpose, used by a diverse range of organisations ranging from the Dublin International Piano Competition to promoters such as Aiken and MCD.

In the new premises, the ground floor will hold all rental stock, easily accessed through large doors at the rear allowing trucks to reverse close to the building. Similarly, a large lift has been installed inside so that pianos can be taken up to every floor.

Despite the scale of the outlet, staff numbers are small: just four full-time including Gillanders and Holland, plus two part-time tuners and two drivers.

But if sales continue to grow at their present rate, surely it cannot be too long before Pianos Plus will have to consider further expansion?