We’re Going Out of Business

Perhaps we set our prices too low.

Perhaps we spent too much time with each customer.

Perhaps we had too much inventory on our floor, too much selection for customers.

Perhaps our sales staff was too nice and should’ve pressured customers into buying more expensive instruments.

In any case, it is now with heavy hearts that we must announce our Going out of Business sale.

Why?

Shrinking Acoustic Piano Market

When my mom Alice and her business partner Mark started Family Piano in 2006, the US was selling about 100,000 new acoustic pianos per year, across the country. It’s now down to about 25,000.

There are a bunch of reasons for this 75% decline in 20 years, and we think these trends are going to continue.

Rise of E-commerce Giants

Digital pianos are awesome for customers, but not awesome for keeping piano stores in business.

Amazon, Sweetwater and other major e-commerce players have been eating into sales in every market. Many customers choose to buy a keyboard online instead of visiting local stores.

Overall, retailing is continuing to shift across the country. We anticipate there will unfortunately be fewer traditional brick-and-mortar places to try out pianos in person.

We Love Pianos, But Piano Business….

We’ve tried everything we could over the years to adapt and thrive, but at a certain point, the market forces are too much for us to overcome.

We do still love pianos. They’re the foundation of western music. The range of notes, from bottom to top, exceed the rest of the instruments. It has the deepest repertoire of music out there. If a piano sounds good, you sound good (which you can’t say about most instruments). The sheer dominance across our shared cultural landscape is unprecedented.

There are a million reasons why the piano is a unique, awesome instrument that isn’t going anywhere any time soon. People are going to continue to love these instruments. People will continue to buy and sell these instruments.

However, looking at long-term trends, we’ve decided that now is the time for us to transition out of this market — while the economy is relatively good, while unemployment is relatively low, while we still have our entire awesome team, while we have the resources to do it RIGHT.

How We’re Taking Care of Customers

Our primary goal for our last stretch is to take care of our existing customers and employees, the best we can.

If you’re an existing customer yourself, here is some important information to know:

Tunings

While our doors are open, we will continue to tune pianos and take care of our customers.

We will be keeping our pricing the same – $150 for a standard tuning; $10 discount to anyone who bought a piano from us.

We are currently in discussion with other colleagues in the piano industry, as we work to find the best arrangement possible for our tech team and our customers. Once we’ve done our due diligence and have a partnership to announce, we will make sure to notify you.

Warranty

We will continue to process warranty requests as normal while the store is open.

If you have any issues, please contact our Service Manager Andrew Warden by calling him at 847-574-2626 or emailing him at [email protected].

My mom Alice Alviani, who started the company in 2006 and has been in the process of retiring, will be making time to cover any necessary warranty calls after the store closes, until Dec 31, 2024. After we close our doors, you can email her at [email protected] with any warranty requests.

Digital repair requests can be sent to Paul Durand at [email protected].

Rentals

We’re no longer renting out pianos on our monthly rent-to-own program.

If you’re renting a piano from us already, you probably already heard from us. In short, we’re offering a few options: 1) return the piano, 2) buy the piano, or 3) trade-in the piano.

Trade Ins

If you’ve been thinking of taking advantage of our Double Double Trade-Up policy, now is the time. We will be able to honor it through Labor Day (September 2nd, 2024) on all eligible ACOUSTIC pianos. As a refresher, here’s how it works: 

• If you spent $2,000 on your acoustic piano, you can get all $2,000 applied as trade value towards any acoustic piano that is twice the price ($4,000 or more). Yes, the piano you’ll be purchasing will be at the reduced Sale Price.

• We can also pro-rate it. So, continuing the example of trading in a $2000 piano, if you want a $3500 piano, we’ll apply $1750 as trade value.

• You’re responsible for paying all moving expenses associated with the trade. Standard local moving fee is $349 for uprights, $499 for grand pianos. More for stairs and longer distances.

• We do offer financing through Synchrony (which bought Allegro Acceptance) and Piano Credit Company, if that helps.

Want to Support Us?

One of our chief motivations for continuing Family Piano Co for so long has been our fantastic customers. We’ve really had the best customers in the world!

We certainly don’t expect you to go above and beyond in any form, but IF you wanted to help us, here are a few easy ways:

Tell your friends to come visit us and check out their piano options. If they don’t buy, we understand, but we would love if one of our last pianos would find a home with them. Whether it’s a Facebook post, a text message or an email, every bit helps!

Yard Signs are available at both of our stores and with our tuners as they drive around. If you’re able to swing by and pick one up to put in your yard, that would really help get the word out about our last sale. If you can’t pick one up, please email me at [email protected] with your address and we’ll see if we can’t run one out to your yard.

Family Piano Mementos – we have a limited number of Family Piano Co brand music bags, coffee mugs and water bottles available at our store for $10 each. We also opened up a Print-on-Demand shop on Redbubble a year ago that we’ve refreshed so that IF you wanted something that said Family Piano Co, you can and we make a couple bucks.

Other Office & Non-Piano Purchases – we need to sell off our tables, desks, chairs, slatwall, extra benches, accessories, and more. Please feel free to visit one of our stores (most of our stuff is at Waukegan) and/or reach out.

Hiring Our Staff – We’re doing our best to help line up work for all of our employees, for their next chapter. If you’re interested in talking to any of our employees, please reach out. 😊

Going Out of Business Sale

Our other goal as we wrap up business is of course finding a loving home for each of our pianos — now at once-in-a-lifetime-prices.

If you’re at all interested in buying a piano, I’d strongly encourage you to come in sooner rather than later, because the selection is only going to go down!

We’re open every day at both stores from 12:00 to 6:00. Book an appointment online or call us at 847-775-1988.

Still the Same Service & Guarantees

We want to mention: we do still believe in a no pressure, educational sales approach. We are still taking the time to answer questions, walk you through options and make sure you feel confident and comfortable buying a piano. Regardless of the circumstances, our values have not changed.

While we can’t offer our 3-5 year warranty on all refurbished pianos, we are still offering a 90 day warranty. Basically we guarantee your piano will be tuned and ready-to-play upon delivery. If there are any issues for any reason whatsoever, give us a call, and we’ll make it right.

Similarly, it is worth mentioning that all new pianos are also still fully prepped and tuned prior to delivery, and they’ll still come with a full manufacturer’s warranty. We’ll have information on who can carry out your warranty requests locally.

Selling Fast — Book Appointment Now

Our going out of business sale started on August 1st. In less than 2 weeks, we’ve already sold over 1/3 of all of our instruments. At this pace, we’re on track for selling out of EVERYTHING in roughly the next 4 weeks.

Unlike other going out of business sales that lower prices as time goes on, we’re offering our lowest prices from day 1. It’s important to us that every single customer gets our lowest prices. Our plan is just to keep reaching out to everyone until all of our pianos our gone.
We will NOT be ordering more instruments — what we have left is what’s available.

We do still have at least one of most major models from Kawai, but these pianos are selling VERY quickly!

Our digital pianos are flying out the door. We’re out of the KDP-series and almost out of the ES and CN-series digitals. Almost out of Rolands and Casios.

Uprights are a little bit better, but again, we’re down to 1-2 of most models/finishes, although we’re doing pretty good on boxed K-300 PE units. We’re down to about HALF of our normal selection of used uprights.

Niles to Close ASAP

As soon as we’re all out of pianos, we are closing the business.

Moreover, our location in Niles in the Golf Mill mall will close as soon as stock there gets low enough. At that point, we’ll consolidate all remaining inventory at Waukegan.

Only more reason to visit Niles sooner rather than later!

Thanks for 18 Years

We really want to thank each and every person that we got a chance to work with over the years.

We like to think we were a hub for music, and that we challenged the more traditional thoughts about piano being snobby, expensive, too hard to learn, etc.

It really was a privilege helping 1,000s of families find their perfect piano over the years. We got to watch parents find their young children a piano who then grew up to become stellar musicians. We’re proud to have been a part of that.

Spreading the love of music has always been our inspiration. We hope the community continues to share that message, and that all our customers continue to cherish and play their pianos. 

Thank you for a great 18 years, Chicagoland.