Sad news

[bisontuba]

A sad day...

https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/01/07/ ... f6JROdUKUA

[York-aholic]

Ugh.

[Schlitzz]

The bean counters lost the mandrels to some of the more storied instruments made there. Twaddling dofusses….

[Grumpikins]

I feel terrible for those workers.

Good time for h.n.white to buy the rights for the king brand and reopen thier factory with those workers...... wishful thinking..

I dont like how conn selmer owns the rights to conn, holton, king, and what else. To me it seems like they white washed everything and stripped out the soul that made the brands unique. It's a sign of the times. I guess I'm too old fashioned.

[Three Valves]

EASTLAKE, Ohio (WOIO) - A manufacturing plant in Eastlake will reportedly shut down by summer, leaving over a hundred workers without jobs.

UAW International Representative Mike Kalman confirmed Conn Selmer told its 150 employees on Wednesday morning it will shut down its Eastlake manufacturing plant by June 30.

Conn Selmer describes itself as “the largest U.S. manufacturer of band and orchestral instruments, with 12 renowned brands.”

The Eastlake plant is located at 34199 Curtis Blvd.

Conn Selmer also has production facilities in Elkhart, Ind. and Monroe, N.C.

You’re welcome.

[dp]

[tofu]

The UMI era and subsequent Steinway ownership era was and continues to be just one mis-step after another. This is another one. I really never saw a coherent strategy of how they would maximize value, improve quality, increase value to the customer and importantly grow the market for their products. They absolutely creamed the brand value of names such as King & Conn and confused customers. QC went down the tubes - both as a result of poor management attempts at cost cutting/efficiency and the Union. The UAW is not without blame here. Both sides had/have a hostile relationship with each other - an adversarial relationship is inherent in business between management and labor, but good business is finding the common ground that grows the business, preserves jobs, improves profitability and wages. None of this is inherently impossible - but both sides here seem to be operating in a death grip spiral with no regard to actually saving the business.

The timing of moving to China couldn’t be worse. It’s like management can’t read the room. The US government is pushing hard to not only retain US manufacturing, but to bring to bring it back from offshore. By openingly admitting that they are moving production to China it devalues what manufacturing they still do here - who amongst consumers will be able to tell what is US built and China built now - as a result the consumer will just assume it’s all made in China - so why pay a premium price for a King 2341 vs it’s look alike and also China produced Eastlake etc counterpart since both will be assumed to be built in China? It’s also vexing that Conn doesn’t understand that the cost of China produced instruments has risen a lot (labor/regulations/China government involvement) - coupled with long distance shipping costs soaring. Just when Conn/King had a chance to have a price advantage or at a minimum parity - they decide to dump US production and head to China.

I saw very little manufacturing efficiencies combing the different brands production with the UMI/Steinway strategy. Musical instruments are still very much labor intensive products. What they should have done is left the subsidiaries Conn King Selmer etc as separate brands with separate production facilities in the US and separate marketing operations. Let the subs compete freely against themselves and other instrument makers for customers. The holding company serving to provide volume order efficiencies in buying brass stock etc and buying blocks of advertising time etc and then redistribution to subs based on subs performance and just as importantly supporting/growing the student school market. Where has the company been when school districts started dumping music programs to find money for tight budgets. They could have provided guidance on how to preserve it, funded studies showing how music helps kids in other subjects - how it improves cognitive development and how it makes them better people. A brand campaign centered around the ARTS matter and getting professional musicians to front it (not a lot of cost either) - would have meaningful wash-over on the company without even showing an instrument - just the brand name. Inject real capital into production facilities for efficient higher QC facilities. At the same time hammer out a real long term agreement with the Union for a path to profit sharing, worker training, work rules, worker safety and worker retainment - like bonus achievements for 10/15/20/25/30/35/40 years with the company. As well as a way to remove poor performing employees in an expedient fashion.

And they need to invest in product development. When they have had a sudden hit like the King 2341 -listen to the market and continue to refine/improve the instrument. They instead chose to ignore the market comments and instead pushed on with “supposed" product improvements which were just cheaper manufacturing cost (detachable valves on the 2341 for example) which resulted in much lower QC and problems for consumers - resulting in very bad word of mouth - and just pushed consumers to buy the look a likes being produced in China. If one is going to get poor QC from the US built version - taking a chance on one made in China and costing less becomes a much more logical idea.

So closing Eastlake seems like just the beginning of the end for the brands. This saga feels like the whole bad story of Schwinn the bicycle company - it’s just that the Conn/King version of the story is a slower moving version of the ship sinking beneath the waves. Now the Schwinn name has been sold/resold so many times it has become a meaningless joke. The folks who remember the glorious days of Schwinn bicycle shops and Sting-Rays and Schwinn Varsity 10 speeds are a smaller and smaller segment of the public and not the primary buyers of bicycles nowadays.

Schwinn before the family sold the company actually were way ahead of the curve when they came out with an electric bicycle in the early 1990’s. My dad bought one when he was 80. Schwinn had no support for the product. The dealer had never put one together before my dad ordered it. The electrics were developed by a well known electrical genius. At the time I was a competitive bike racer. When my dad got the bike it was terrible - severely underpowered. I had not expected much but this seemed unbelievably bad. The dealer was zero help. Schwinn was no help other than telling me the independent design engineers. I got the phone number of the Southern California firm that did the electrical design. The famed electrical guy took the call himself (super nice guy) and told me how to rewire the whole thing. He said if I really wanted the thing to fly he’d send me (for free) the wiring set up that Schwinn should have used but didn’t to save a couple bucks. And indeed it did fly. It was stunning performance - I still have the bike. While it uses a lead acid battery - it’s no more heavy than the custom design lithium battery ones bike makers use now - the lead acid is cheap and readily available- the modern ones are expensive and a few years down the road going to be hard to find.

So Schwinn had a chance to own the electric bike market (now huge) that exploded after covid. They had the manufacturing size, the bike designs, the huge distribution network of Schwinn Bicycle shops and had first mover position (way ahead by years). Instead, they didn’t support the product and ignored it. Instead they fought with the Unions, did not reinvest in the manufacturing side and pushed production to China - back when China was the backwater of QC and Schwinn bikes went from being well made domestically to being poorly made foreign built in China. And the move to China was in response to the inroads of the high quality lower price Japanese bikes of the the early 1990’s. Of course in a few years Japan blew up with the yen/dollar and they exited the US market. Schwinn management failed to read the room.

I think Conn/King is/has been headed down the road of Schwinn of just being an old quality brand name now slapped on low quality foreign built stuff and the name just getting resold to the next purveyor of low quality. Old names like Bell & Howell etc are still circulating out there and slapped on stuff not even related to what the companies were known for in the US. It makes me laugh a bit as I wonder if the foreign buyers of the old once well known brand names understand how few people are around that remember the brand now and the quality it was once known for.

[gocsick]

The history of US manufacturing from the beginning had been all about reducing the amount of labor to make something. Most people don't realize that the US is still a manufacturing powerhouse we just do it with far fewer people. That's what the assembly line was all about... increasing output per worker.

By the most common cross-country metric for “manufacturing output” (manufacturing value added), the U.S. is #2 in the world, behind China. A 2025 House committee memo citing NIST’s Annual Report on the U.S. Manufacturing Economy summarizes 2022 levels as China at $5.1T vs. U.S. at $2.6T in manufacturing value added.

When people hear about US manufacturing resurgence... they envision jobs coming along with that.. and the reality is the opposite. All of the effort of being put towards developing fully automated "lights out factories" that run 24-7 with no people. I take students to Carpenter Steel which has the largest steel continuous caster in the world and they always ask "Where are the people".... What was 100 people physically doing things in the 1960s is now one guy with a bunch of computers and a joystick.

It might sound cynical but unless someone figures out how to have robots make instruments the only US made brass left with be boutique really high end stuff.. with Chinese valvesets.

[iiipopes]

The Cyborg speaks. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. You will be eliminated if you protest.

[bloke]

If you recall some of my posts over the past few years, I saw it coming. The stuff coming out of there hasn't been very good.

[tclements]

crap. Just what we need, ANOTHER Chinese horn builder....

[graybach]

@tofu
That Schwinn story sounds a lot like what I’ve read about Sears having the opportunity to change their very popular catalog into a digital business and do what Amazon eventually became. It was colossally mismanaged.
At one time, they were the largest retailer in the world, but a lot of asinine decisions by tone-deaf bureaucrats sitting in an office somewhere in the Sears Tower, not having a clue how their company ran because they never left their offices to see, doomed them.
(One decision among many, which they, of course, obscenely mismanaged to start with, since their catalog was their most popular entity, being to scrap said very-popular catalog and focus on in-store sales in competition with the rising Walmart.)

[Mary Ann]

It reminds me of what I saw in the pro tennis world, in that the top rising players were coached *not* to try to get everything as good as everybody else but to focus on their already-highest level skills and make them more high level, because that was what was going to win matches, not trying to be like everybody else. Sears trying to be Walmart is an example of what happens when you don't do that.

[jtm]

The story also said,

Conn Selmer sent 19 News a statement after our story aired, saying they haven’t made a final decision yet.
…
The announcement was made on the first day of contract negotiations between the UAW and Conn Selmer, Kalman stated.

So maybe some of it is posturing by Conn Selmer.

[jtm]

I thought maybe I had an (emotional) dog in this fight, but both my trombones say “Elkhart”.

[ParLawGod]

I found another article with more specifics on the China manufacturing plan:

Today, Conn Selmer announced a tentative decision to close its Eastlake, Ohio manufacturing plant on or about June 30, 2026. This proposed action is subject to negotiation with the union representing Conn Selmer’s hourly employees at its Eastlake plant. If this tentative decision is finalized, the company plans to transfer professional French horn production to its Elkhart, Indiana brass factory and transition tuba, sousaphone, and student/intermediate French horn production offshore.

Source: https://fox8.com/news/eastlake-manufact ... -150-jobs/

[arpthark]

Are 88Hs still made?

If so, are they made at the Elkhart Bach factory?

[dp]

The story also said,

Conn Selmer sent 19 News a statement after our story aired, saying they haven’t made a final decision yet.
…
The announcement was made on the first day of contract negotiations between the UAW and Conn Selmer, Kalman stated.

So maybe some of it is posturing by Conn Selmer.

Its posturing by the union(s) they made the announcement of "the planned move"

[bloke]

Are 88Hs still made?

If so, are they made at the Elkhart Bach factory?

I personally only believe that I know that (these days) all of the playing slide tubes for trombones are drawn in Elkhart.
I do not know (ie. have not heard from any reasonably reliable sources) whether the non-Bach bell sections are made in Elkhart, but (yes?) it seems to make sense that this could be a possibility.

Of course, it could also be a possibility that all of the bells are spun in Elkhart, but that Eastlake has been producing a good bit of the hardware..

bloke "The farther down this response was typed, the more guessing and supposition occurred.")

[prodigal]

This brings up an ongoing dread that I have been trying to digest. As the factories make everything with robots and AI replaces people in the workforce, what are we going to do with everyone?

People need to work.

Also, how do I prepare my children and students for a world where they might not be needed?

This stuff keeps me up at night, at least till I run through a couple of Tuba Concerto second movements to calm my soul down.