“Counter to being in a recession, over the last two years we’ve invested over 14 million dollars into updating and enhancing our systems,” says Zildjian CEO, Craigie Zildjian. “One of the reasons we keep investing in the business is that we plan on coming out of this recession as an even stronger company.”
A trip to remote Meductic, in New Brunswick, Canada affords an opportunity to visit local landmarks (The world’s longest covered bridge. It’s actually in neighboring Somerville, but still) and get close to nature – sighted on MMR’s recent jaunt: two large deer (alive), one huge moose (quite dead, in the back of a truck), and lots of scenic… um… scenery.
“We’ve been hearing about the market for used or reconditioned cymbals for some time now,” says Peter Stairs, Sabian’s vice president of sales. “We’ve been looking at how to enter that market formally; up until now, we’d never really figured out exactly how we were going to do it.”
What Sabian has come up with is a new brand: the SR2. Sabian is going to “recondition” playable cymbals that are sent back to the factory, stamp them with the SR2 logo, and release them back onto the market. There is a growing market for used musical instruments, due in part to the flagging economy, and Stairs feels that the time is right for this new endeavor.
