Steinway piano store closing; new location to have more visibility, company says

Long Island’s only Steinway Piano Gallery is going to change addresses — and counties — in the coming months to give consumers a better look at the goods.

The store in Melville, in Suffolk County, will close in December and relocate to a smaller, more visible location in Manhasset, in Nassau County, in the first quarter of 2023. The move aligns with Steinway & Sons' efforts to become more modern and welcoming to younger consumers and those who aren’t trained pianists, said Anthony Gilroy, spokesman for Steinway & Sons. 

The iconic Queens-headquartered piano retailer and manufacturer decided not to renew the lease of its Melville store, which will close Dec. 6 after being at 505 Walt Whitman Rd. (Route 110) for 15 years, he said.

The 2,754-square-foot Manhasset store will be at 1488 Northern Blvd., a location that has more visibility and "the presence of many other high-end brands," he said.

“Where we are now is a main thoroughfare where you don’t get as many people … shopping.  And we’re not an expected location, so a lot of people just drive by,” Gilroy said.

The 9,200-square-foot Melville building recently was sold, and the new owner might decide to subdivide the space for up to four tenants, said Daniel Glazer, a vice president at Ripco Real Estate in Woodbury who is marketing the property.

Prices average $100,000

Founded in Manhattan by German piano maker Henry Engelhard Steinway in 1853, Steinway & Sons is a luxury brand known for expert craftsmanship.

The average price of a new Steinway grand piano is about $100,000, but the company sells cheaper pianos under two brand names, Boston and Essex, which average $40,000 and $15,000, respectively.

The relocation of the Long Island store aligns with Steinway’s efforts to be in more modern spaces with products that appeal to a wider range of customers, an intiative begun with the company's 2015 launch of its Spirio, a high-resolution player piano controlled by an iPad.  

Sales of pianos, including Steinway's, soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, when consumers were stuck at home.  They're still elevated, but Steinway also is taking advantage of a shift in business from changing consumer tastes and the success of Spirio, said Paul A. Majeski, publisher of Music Trades, a Demarest, New Jersey-based provider of market research on the musical instrument industry.

“They’re moving their store mix to better reflect what their customers want,” which is smaller showrooms, with more in-store education for performances and recitals, and more tech-driven instruments, he said.

Appealing to non-pianists

With the Spirio, which  grew to account for 32% of Steinway's piano sales in 2021, Steinway is attempting to attract more consumers who aren’t trained pianists, Gilroy said.

“The demographic [for Spirio] is people that could afford a Steinway but didn’t see the need for a Steinway because they are not a serious piano player," or not a piano player at all, Gilroy said.  "With Spirio, they can have beautiful ‘live’ acoustic piano music in their home, recorded by the top Steinway artists in the world, at any time. So, for our company, Spirio was really a way to expand the potential audience of Steinway buyers.”

The Spirio ranges in price from $113,700 to $200,000.

Most Steinway pianos are sold wholesale to 180 independent dealers worldwide. But since the company's 2013 sale to hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, who took the company private, Steinway has renovated or opened 26 of its own stores to drive more retail sales in high-growth metro areas, Steinway Musical Instruments Holdings Inc. said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in April as part of its plan to become public again, with an initial public offering expected next year.

Steinway owns 16 retail showrooms in the United States “in wealthy metro areas from New York to Beverly Hills, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami,” 11 in Europe and six in the Asia Pacific region, the filing said.

Steinway produces a full line of grand and upright acoustic pianos at manufacturing facilities in Astoria, Queens and Hamburg, Germany. 

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.