Nord User Forum

I just checked, Yamaha's entire music instrument group pulls in ~$300m annually, Roland about ~$500m, i.e. not big at all. If you think of their very broad product lines, that's a lot of territory to cover with a limited R&D budget. Although Nord is much smaller, they really only have a handful of products, so it is likely they can go a bit deeper on each product.

cphollis wrote:I just checked, Yamaha's entire music instrument group pulls in ~$300m annually, Roland about ~$500m …

If you mean worldwide turnover, Yamaha must be much bigger. I have in mind that during recent years they reached between 2 and 2.5 billion $ (= slightly over 2,5 Milliarden EUR) per year. The Roland figure seems credible to me.

Cheers from Germany

Just to compare sizes:

Yamaha Corporation is much bigger at around 3.28 billion USD (372.6 billion Yen) in 2021 compared to 3.97 billion USD (414.2 billion Yen) in 2020. Musical instruments account for around 65% of their total revenues with a global share of 47% on digital pianos/instuments and a total of 20.021 employees worldwide. If size would be an indicator for quality and feature advantages they are not doing well compared to what a small company like Nord delivers, which is for sure not worse in their niche.

*sources:
https://www.yamaha.com/en/ir/publicatio ... single.pdf
https://www.yamaha.com/en/ir/publicatio ... single.pdf

cphollis wrote:I just checked, Yamaha's entire music instrument group pulls in ~$300m annually, Roland about ~$500m, i.e. not big at all. If you think of their very broad product lines, that's a lot of territory to cover with a limited R&D budget. Although Nord is much smaller, they really only have a handful of products, so it is likely they can go a bit deeper on each product.

Hi cphollis,

these numbers are operating income, not revenues - right?

Yes, net income for both I believe. While your pubs are great, if you google "How big is Yamaha's music business" you will get a useful answer.

Summarizing Nord's situation - given that we've seen that one person (the founder, now in his 70s) is gaveling all the decisions, and that the corporation has an extremely small board, it's not a surprise that product evolution is very slow and customer communication almost zero.

We live with this because Nord is special and high-end, but I do wonder how much longer they can sustain this business model. I say model instead of "plan," because I don't see much evidence that Clavia is interested in changing up anything...again, not a surprise given the current leadership structure.

The last few product releases haven't been earth-shaking - more like tweaks to grand old models like the Electro and Stage (in the Electro's case, pretty disappointing tweaks) - and the Nord Grand is just too limited in pricing and appeal to be called a new flagship.

We will see what tomorrow brings...

Gambold wrote:Summarizing Nord's situation - given that we've seen that one person (the founder, now in his 70s) is gaveling all the decisions, and that the corporation has an extremely small board, it's not a surprise that product evolution is very slow and customer communication almost zero.

We live with this because Nord is special and high-end, but I do wonder how much longer they can sustain this business model. I say model instead of "plan," because I don't see much evidence that Clavia is interested in changing up anything...again, not a surprise given the current leadership structure.

That's what worries me as well to some extent, on the other hand their setup has never been different from what it is today the market and although competition have changed a lot since Clavia was founded they are still showing growth, so Hans Nordelius seems to be proved right in what he decides

Gambold, your thoughts may be right, but only from the point of view of a big, publicly listed/traded company.
Those companies need to be transparent not because they care for the customers, but because that drives up their stock value. Plain and simple.
Then yes, it provides more value to the customers too, but that's just a consequence.

The point of view of a small, single-owner company like Clavia is totally different. Apart from the basic things (mostly financial) required by law, they simply don't have any obligation to disclose anything. They can stay in the business as long as they're profitable ...and very often, even if they're not profitable if the owner wants so and can afford it. They cannot be bought or sold by anybody unless the owner wants so. They're totally free to do whatever they want. It almost makes me laugh to talk about the "board" of a single-owner company of 40 employees. The "board" will probably be Hans Nordelius sitting in his chair and having a coffee with his wife and a couple of the product engineers.

I'm not saying this is good or bad, it's just the way many, many companies work outside the US, and this probably explains most of the things which seem unfathommable to you in Clavia's behaviour.

The fleeting hint of a question being cautiously sidestepped by the collective subconscious of the forum in this thread is: What will Nord be called 2 years from now? Yamaha-Nord? Gibson, Kawai, Steinway-Nord? Kord?

PS: (only read this if you are a future forumite who worked out how to use the search function). They can't say they weren't warned!

One thing not mentioned so far, if I see correctly, is that Yamaha has somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 employees.

Clavia has somewhere around 30-35.

Clavia/Nord doesn't NEED $300 million revenue, nor do they want it — they go on company picnics where every employee knows all the others' kids by name, their order books are full for years into the future, and that's exactly how they want to keep it.