Author: TheoWanne
Date: 2012-01-07 00:43
Dear DrewSorensenMusic, I hear you:)
I would love to charge significantly less for our product. A dream of mine is to provide the quality of product we manufacture at student pricing, and I think everyday about how to accomplish that.....every single day:) So, in a way, I fully agree with you.
I got started in this business by refacing and modifying current production and vintage mouthpieces. I would have customers sit with me while I modified their mouthpiece. Not until their faces lit up, they got totally excited, and felt like they found the sound they had always been looking for, did I feel complete.
Seeing people excited about their music is what inspires me. I went into production to share to a larger audience the designs I came up with that excited people the most.
My goal was to produce the best version of each design that I could come up with on my best day....consistently!!!!!! Hand work, working with inconsistent blanks, and working with just 'wrong' blanks to start with was just not consistent or reliable. So I decided, that no matter what it took, to make the best and most inspiring product in history.
That costs money....a lot of money. I had to make every blank from scratch. I had to create a completely new way of manufacturing that had never been done before, and do all the research and development to 'better' designs.
Our first mouthpieces sold for $775 and between R&D, programming, and tooling, we we actually took a huge loss on them. They cost us way more to manufacture than we sold them for. My intention was never to build the most expensive mouthpiece, it was to deliver an unequaled experience of play to the musician.
Our clarinet mouthpieces uses incredibly high quality rubber, innovative machining techniques never done before, had tons of labor intensive R&D, and needs very expensive machinery to even make in the first place. We are not taking someone else's molded bank and adding finishing touches. We are completely machining from scratch in ways no one has ever done before for incredible consistency and so we are not limited by anyone else's design. Also we CAD designed and manufactured our premium ligature, which comes with the mouthpiece too. Other manufacturers do not offer that.
Again, my intention is just to make the best product in the world, consistently and accurately. That is all. Honestly, considering what we go through to make our mouthpieces, all the patents, new manufacturing techniques, etc. our product is quite the bargain.....considering what goes into them:)
Almost daily I get emails, letters, etc. from people saying how they used to practice 2 hours a day and now practice 4 because they feel so much more in love with their instrument; Hew the finally feel they have found their voice, etc. This is why I do what I do.
That said, I want to give EVERYONE that experience. That is my goal. I realize our prices inhibit that. It saddens me greatly actually. And because of that I have been working hard at finding ways to make consistent, high quality, unlimited design, mouthpieces at a very affordable price. That would make me VERY happy. And I plan on succeeding some day....I am certainly putting enough thought and love into the idea to succeed.
It is just that making a product that assists the musician in finding the maximum amount of magic in their playing as possible, is my number one goal. My second is price. I hope and pray to be a success at both one day soon:)
Sincerely, Theo Wanne
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The Clarinet BBoard
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