Small companies all over the globe are hurting from the drop in consumer demand. One of those companies is the Petrof piano factory in the Czech Republic. The BBC's Rob Cameron reports on how the piano maker is dealing with the economic downturn.
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MARCO WERMAN: Small companies all around the globe are hurting from a drop in demand for their products. That's certainly true for the Petrof Piano Factory in the Czech Republic. Petrof is known for producing top-quality pianos, and they're expensive. The BBC's Rob Cameron visited the Petrof factory about 50 miles east of Prague to see how the company is coping with the crisis.
[SOUND OF PIANO]
ROB CAMERON: Luxury goods are the first to feel the effects of any recession, and what could be more luxurious than a grand piano? They've been making pianos here since 1864, when Antonin Petrof set up his factory. This is his great-grandson, Jan Petrof, putting a baby grand through its paces.
[SOUND OF PIANO]
CAMERON: His daughter, Zuzana Petrof, the company's president, takes a little more persuading, but eventually sits down at a concert grand, price tag: 1,900,000 Czech crowns. That's almost 100,000 dollars.
[SOUND OF PIANO]
ZUZANA PETROF: We are first on the line every time. If something happens with the economy in the world, then we are first on the line.
CAMERON: In the year 2000, Petrof made 15,000 luxury pianos, uprights and grands, for export to seventy countries around the globe. Last year, it made 1,500. Zuzana Petrof says the last few months have been particularly hard.
PETROF: Our customers lost a lot of money on the stock market, financial market, and they were not willing to spend money for buying pianos and so on. So we had a big meeting with our management to discuss what we can do, and we decided first of all don't produce pianos for the stock and concentrate more for other business than pianos.
[SOUND OF FACTORY]
CAMERON: Here on Petrof's factory floor, they're producing pianos strictly to order, and not, as Zuzana says, for stock. But the workmen around me aren't even producing pianos; they're polishing wooden panels for fitted kitchen units. People might buy a piano once every fifty years, but there's always, it seems, a demand for new furniture. It's all part of Petrof's strategy to survive this crisis, as the company's head of production, Martin Yenchek explains.
MARTIN YENCHEK: Last year, we had 400 employees; this year, the number will fall to 200. Half of the production is pianos, half furniture. But that could change according to the market. Of course, not all the piano makers are happy about making furniture, but most of them are glad of the chance to learn something new. And obviously, all of them are happy to still have a job.
[SOUND OF PIANO TUNER]
CAMERON: It's not the first time Petrof has been forced to fine tune its production. In the Great Depression, the firm produced railway sleepers and was even forced to make munitions boxes during the Second World War. In 1948, the company was confiscated by the Communists, and was only returned to the Petrof family in 1989. Zuzana Petrof's mother, Dagmar, head of the company's domestic sales division, says Petrof is no stranger to adversity
DAGMAR PETROF: Petrof will survive this crisis, I'm sure of it. After all, you have to have music, don't you? There's an old saying in Czech: if someone's Czech, then they're a musician. We're optimists here at Petrof; if we weren't, we wouldn't be here. We've been through worse crises than this, and we're going to get through this one.
[SOUND OF PIANO]
CAMERON: The words to this old Czech song from the twenties translate roughly as “life is a game of chance. One minute you're up, the next you're down.†These are hard times at the Petrof Piano Factory, but there's clearly a note of optimism that when the recession is over, Petrof will still be standing.
WERMAN: That was the BBC's Rob Cameron reporting from the Czech Republic.
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