RIN:69 Strings-letter:Mysteries of the Market

Dear Ms. VanClay:

Thank you very much for dealing with a volatile issue, "Mysteries of the Market" (STRINGS, Number 58 [November, 1996]: 11-22). So far as I know, this marks the first time these matters have received editorial-level attention.

2. Yours is an endlessly fascinating subject, precise because the market really contains NO mysteries at all. We are lured into puzzled discussions of these supposed mysteries and never resolve a single issue -- nor will we. Why? For a simple reason: the fiddle market is stuffed full, so to speak, of misinformation -- misinformation deliberately planted by dealers, by musicians, by tutors or teachers. So now, at another level, we again ask Why? And, again, the answer is not complex. A public which is kept uninformed, a public affected by large-scale collusion between tutor-salesperson, on the one hand, and the sellers of violins on the other -- such a public is the nearly-perfect target for scams. And, since many participants in the fiddle industry have a good eye for "opportunity," these very scams have grown and spread rapidly. Almost wholly, they dominate an enormous segment of today's violin market. In their distinctively corrupt way, they have enjoyed wild success. And how!

3. Let me go back to a more direct comment on your article. Just about anybody -- and I do mean anybody -- can turn a good profit by merchandising violins. Neither professional competence nor respect for an ethical code is required. What counts is the art of commercial bribery, a hidden agreement with a teacher that he or she will OK the purchase of an instrument -- will assure a student that a given instrument is indeed a good buy, a real "investment." So, while your article mentioned various dealers, every one of them skirted the issue of "commissions" (that is, bribes paid to teachers) -- quite probably because so many dealers themselves participate in this arrangement.

4. In other words, as welcome as it was, your article relied on a method that seems a lot like asking the fox how it's doing as guardian of the chicken coop.

5. When asked why they have been so evasive regarding issues such as kickbacks and bribery, the American String Teachers Association and the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers cough up understandable responses. They give excuses and rationalizations because kickbacks and the like are crucial to their livelihoods. Let me quote from a letter I received from a former president of both. the American Federation and the International Society of Violin and Bow Makers (the Entente). In response to queries I had presented, he wrote:

6. "Your second question regarding payments of commissions, finder's fees or any other remuneration in money or kind, is much easier to settle. If you are in business and want to sell instruments, you will find it very difficult to be successful without doing it. It has become an established and accustomed practice that has become a necessity for survival for many. And regardless of the protestations of many, this practice will survive and be part of our life, the same as prostitution in all its many forms has been part of our lives since time immemorial. So take it from there as a strictly philosophical observation and not necessarily my idea of what is better or more ethical."

7. Please note how my correspondent's language transforms kickbacks and commercial bribes into seemingly inoffensive finder's fees, varied forms of remuneration, and commissions.

8. But this is hardly the end of it. Even if we are comfortable with the way he equates the selling of stringed instruments with prostitution, surely we might want to ask just who is prostituting and who is pimping. Are we taking ethical-professional issues at all seriously when, like my correspondent, we settle for a flippant analogy which should be unsettling indeed? Are we truly comfortable with the notion that, in essential and fundamental ways, a violin shop/showroom is indistinguishable from a whorehouse? That a violin dealer is essentially like a hooker?

9. The letter I’ve just cited, plus the KANDA scandal in Japan, led me to publish the first of a series of REUTER'S FOCUS REPORTS which, in installments, followed out a lengthy inquiry. It appeared under the broad title: "Has the Violin Business Become a Criminal Racket and a Snare". Together, all of these pieces appeared some years ago. Yet the problems they addressed press upon us today with undiminished force.

10. May I therefore suggest that the following individual topics would pick up on the initiative you have already ventured, and find a most appropriate and timely forum for discussion in the pages of STRINGS magazine? Namely:

1. Business ethics: The practice of merchandising violins through payments of "commissions," etc.
2. Workshop codes: The irreversible shop malpractice of regraduating the tops, backs, and ribs of so many stringed instruments.
3. General: The various forms of deceptions practiced cooperatively by teachers and dealers who, through these practices, play on the ignorance of the buying public in order to sustain and advance a system of "ripping off," respectively, their students/students' families and trusting customers.

11. By treating these issues openly -- the very process on which your November issue has already embarked -- you would be performing a highly valuable public service for many followers. And indeed, your forthright analyses of such urgent matters would draw many new readers to STRINGS.

Yours truly,

Fritz Reuter
Violin Maker and Dealer