Hyo Ick Lee established the Samick Piano Company in South Korea in 1958. At the start conditions in the country were difficult but, he built his pianos using imported parts. As circumstances improved during the 1960s Hyo Ick Lee was soon exporting his pianos around the world.Very quickly, Samick became one of the largest piano manufacturers in the world. Naturally, they were soon making their own parts and able to oversee every aspect of production and closely monitor the finished product.
European pianos have always been revered as the ideal blend of build-quality and tone, so, during the 1980s, Samick appointed Klaus Fenner, a German piano designer to rework the designs of the Samick pianos.
In 1992, because the labour costs in Korea were becoming ever more expensive, they opened a factory in Indonesia. The mid 1990s proved to be very troublesome. The huge and speedy expansion of the company at a time of economic hardship proved unsustainable and the company was forced into bankruptcy in 1996.
However, they were able to dispose of the non-profitable business ventures and most of the debt, so that they began once again to report a profit. In 2002, a consortium of Korean businessmen acquired Samick and cleared all of its debt and by 2006 all production had been moved to the factory in Indonesia.
© Steve Burden
