
How Zildjian, a 390-year-old family business, avoids layoffs (2013) - Tomte
https://www.cnbc.com/id/100538450
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vortico
The article doesn't spend 1 second explaining the answer promised in the title
but keeps reinforcing how _good_ and flowery it is that Zildjian doesn't lay
off anyone.

I'm in the audio hardware industry, and the answer is clear. Yes, being a no-
growth company is a big reason, and yes, they're incredibly selective of their
new employees. And they're a stable company, which helps. Go to NAMM, ship
products to retailers, design next year's product, repeat. Incredibly stable.

But they have ups and downs just like every other company, which _at best_
follows the trend of the industry's economy. There are two options a company
will do to cope with this situation.

1) Lay off X% of their workforce, shielding their existing employees from the
financial "downs".

2) Lay off 0%, increase the workload of everyone to account for the financial
losses, and see who quits.

This is incredibly common in the "tech arts" industries like pro audio
hardware because their employees can easily find better paying (2x) jobs
elsewhere but choose the audio industry because they're following their
personal dreams. They're much more willing to make large sacrifices at their
job, so they are less adverse to leaving if their boss says they need to
hammer out 120 cymbals a day instead of 80. And of course some people quit and
often decide their dream isn't worth it anymore. It's a bit easier for the
company because there's less paperwork when someone quits, and they're
guaranteed to keep their most passionate employees (by the algorithm's
design).

To hire more employees during the financial "ups", they just continue their
campaigns that working them is the _best job ever_ despite the low pay,
because well, to some wanna-be-cymbal-builders, that's the truth. Imagine
loving your Zildjian cymbals since you were 7 years old, finally with the
opportunity to work for them when you're 20! (fine print: 46 hard hours at
$28k/yr)

Nothing's really bad about this. It's just high supply and low demand of
workers, so I'm not saying one method is better than the other. I'm just
trying to offer my view on the topic of the article, since the actual article
fails to address their own question at all. (The only near-answer I in the
article is that the employees aren't fully replaced by automation but instead
moved to other jobs, but come on, how is Zildjian different from the other
tens of millions of jobs in America that can't be replaced by automation? This
is hardly the real reason in Zildjian's case.)

~~~
daliusd
3) Lay off 0%, everyone agrees on decreesed salary temporary. Or that's not an
option?

~~~
__s
Where my father works (furniture warehouse) they did this somewhat, albeit in
a more fair fashion (no salary decrease). Employees were asked to volunteer
taking off a couple days a week rather than laying off staff

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
My father also works in a furniture warehouse and it was the same, especially
during the recession. Factory was basically shut down on fridays and everyone
worked 4 hour weeks

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jdbernard
There's a dead comment:

 _Basically, don 't expand... Or, add one employee every 5 1/2 years!_

I want to address it though, because it's not entirely wrong. Zildjan stands
as a counter-point to the prominent VC model. They did not rapidly expand, and
yet, as the article states, they have managed to capture a huge portion of the
market.

It's not really an apples-to-apples comparison, but I suspect there are many
virtues that we sacrifice in the name of growth and speed.

~~~
fotbr
I'm outside the VC arena, so take this with a grain of salt.

It appears to me that part of the reason the Silicon-Valley-Tech-VC model
involves explosive growth is because a large number of the businesses are
chasing what really amount to fads, and the only chance they have of being
successful is to take the entire market before the uers move on to the next
big thing, so that after the initial "wow" wears off, anyone that remains
stays on their platform/program/app/service/etc.

Obviously, that's not entirely a bad thing. It's made a lot of money for a lot
of people, and there are people who genuinely thrive on the churn and burn
involved.

It's not a model that I personally like, preferring instead a slow and steady
growth based around a lasting quality product. It might not lead to billion-
dollar businesses, but I think it leads to better businesses.

~~~
w1nt3rmu4e
Are you suggesting Snapchat isn't making a meaningful, long-term contribution
to society?

I agree, but there are some things that really only do make sense at scale. A
friend is in SEA and used Uber Eats a lot. They took over then quickly pulled
out, investing in Grab to hedge.

Anecdotally, Uber was _much_ better than Grab is. Grab is more of local, pared
down version of Uber and the service suffers for it. I've heard that Uber is a
horrible company, but they really got food delivery right.

It's _very_ hard to replicate that without massive scale. On one side of it it
takes a lot of expertise and resources and on the other side it's not very
profitable. I guess it didn't work for Uber in the end but their global,
winner take all model worked from a consumer standpoint.

Anyway, not all of it is a throwaway fad. Some of things coming out of that
monster make a meaningful contribution.

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nerdponx
They do happen to have the advantage of being somewhat of a niche product with
inelastic demand and (to my knowledge) no good automated substitute. I'm sure
that if somebody figured out a way to make cymbals as good as these on an
automated line, they'd do so.

That aside, this was an interesting quote:

 _The Greek immigrant has been retrained seven times in 40 years_

~~~
garagemc2
The biggest threat to Zildjian is a shift to electric drums and thus electric
cymbals.

~~~
nerdponx
That's a long way off. Electric drums or nothing new, and until you can
accurately replicate the sound of live drums with electric drums, good luc
that's a long way off. Electric drums or nothing new, and until you can
accurately replicate the sound of live drums in a concert venue with electric
drums, there's no risk.

~~~
jdbernard
Not just the sound, but the expressiveness. Electric kits do not create noise
directly from the performance of the drummer. There is a layer of
interpretation and mapping to sound. So they can only reproduce sounds pre-
programmed into them according to variation that their senors are designed to
respond to. Acoustic kits are making noise because of the physical properties
of the kit itself. So you will always be able to find sounds on an acoustic
kit you cannot reproduce on an electric kit. And the range of expression
present on an acoustic kit will always be infinitely greater than an electric
kit.

Full disclosure: I own an electric kit.

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js2
There was some disagreement in the family leading to one of the members
starting his own cymbal company:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabian)

~~~
davexunit
Sabian cymbals are just as good as Zildjian, too, and less expensive.

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woodandsteel
Here's the phenomenal Senri Kawaguchi soloing at the Zildjian factory

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvDsi-
gohDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvDsi-gohDo)

And while you're at it, catch this wild performance with Kanade Sato (jump
ahead to 1:00 where it starts)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sf3DgS3LEA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sf3DgS3LEA)

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dave_sid
Have cymbals actually existed for 390 years? Maybe that’s what the Rolling
Stones used when they stared out.

~~~
dave_sid
When the market crashes, they’ll no doubt ride it out and play it by ear.

I’ll get my coat.

~~~
wmij
You forgot the 'ba dum tss'...

~~~
dave_sid
I actually got voted down for that! Some laugh in here.

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crazy_monkey
Basically, don't expand... Or, add one employee every 5 1/2 years!

~~~
underwater
You can add them a little faster, unless the employees are immortal.

