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Samick was founded
in 1958 by Hyo Ick Lee. Facing an immense
challenge in impoverished and war-torn South
Korea, Lee began to build and sell a few vertical
pianos a week from a small converted shop
front. It wasn¡¯t long before the company started
manufacturing upright pianos on a large scale.
In 1964 Samick became the first Korean company
to export pianos and by the early 1970s, the
company had become a large-scale manufacturer
with over 3,000 employees building pianos
and guitars. |
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In the years following,
Samick focused on global expansion.
In 1978
they opened a branch office in Los Angeles,
California USA, followed by establishment
of an office in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1980.
Sales of Samick products in the United States
grew exponentially and Samick soon announced
the development of their American subsidiary,
Samick Music Corporation (SMC) in 1982. |
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Samick has always
been dedicated to developing new products
and quality, starting in 1983 with a technical
cooperation with Klaus Fenner, a piano designer
and technician from Germany. Fenner is renowned
for designing the German Imperial Scale that
continues to characterise the pianos of leading
international manufacturers. |
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In the early 1990s
Samick boasted separate plants for upright,
grand and digital pianos in Korea, Indonesia
and China. Regrettably, Hyo Ick Lee did not
live to see or ensure Samick¡¯s success. He
passed away after a battle with cancer in
1990. Unfortunately, the company suffered
from lack of leadership and many management
errors occurred after this time. |
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Combined with
the Asian currency crash in 1996 that devastated
Korean domestic sales, Samick was pushed into
debt of nearly $US300 million. The company
was one of thousands of mid-sized Korean businesses
that filed for bankruptcy in 1998. |
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Sadly, Samick
remained under court control for a number
of years, with a lack of leadership or effective
strategy. It was in danger of losing market
share to aggressive new competitors from China. |
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Korean business mogul,
Jong-Sup Kim appeared just in time with a burst
of much needed capital and leadership. JS Kim is
one of the most successful and respected businessmen
in Asia, owning twelve companies in varying industries.
In June 2002 his investment consortium purchased
Samick for $US100 million, outbidding other leading
music companies. |
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Kim proved many skeptics
wrong, successfully transferring strategies from
other industries to the music business. One of his
first decisions in December 2002 involved looking
abroad and investing in C.Bechstein, a renowned
piano manufacturer in Germany with the aim of working
in partnership to build Samick¡¯s expertise and manufacturing
prowess. A technical consultancy was established
over two and a half years (2003-2005). As a result
of their involvement, Samick invested in the Computer
Numerical Control (CNC) system, the same program
used by C.Bechstein in Germany and now used in the
manufacture of the NSG series. |
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Not only did JS Kim
steer Samick out of bankruptcy, he made unprecedented
history in 2005 when he announced the company was
entirely debt-free, its share price had quintupled
and that he had turned the company into one of the
world¡¯s few profitable piano makers within the space
of just three years. |
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Samick Musical Instruments
Co., Ltd., today is the oldest and largest piano
manufacturer in Korea and ranked third in world
piano sales. Despite its short history, it has grown
from a small workshop manufacturing a little more
than a hundred pianos a year, into a network of
modern and highly sophisticated manufacturing facilities
producing more than 30,000 pianos annually and exporting
to the Asia-Pacific, European, American and other
markets around the world. |
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About SAMICK > Company
