What is the market share for violins and other stringed instruments?

[Rue]

I'm just curious, does anyone know (roughly) what the market share for violins and other stringed instruments is? 

 

While I play and am interested in the business end of the things...outside of my immediate circle of friends and acquaintances I rarely run into anyone with musical interests outside of guitar and band in general - so I'm assuming it's a relatively small market globally?

[Brad Dorsey]

... I'm assuming it's a relatively small market globally?

 

Relative to what?  Most people in the world do not play stringed instruments, so the market for them is much smaller than the market for consumables and essentials like food, clothing and shelter.  But I could name a lot of things that have markets much smaller than that for stringed instruments -- 57-pound blocks of salt, for example.

[Ben Hebbert]

sufficiently small that only a madman would get into the trade, I should think!

 

I've never been (being in England makes it a bit daft) but how many violin makers/dealers/etc go to NAMM? - that probably gives you a good answer.

[Rue]

Relative to other consumables. I am making these up...but let us say there 6 billion people in the world and 80 % have cell phones...40 % have computers...30% have cars...etc.

[Michael Richwine]

As best I can find out, overall world market for violins is on the order of a million a year, almost all student instruments. "Better" instruments are a small fraction of that.

 

At least it's better than men's spats, or buggy whips.

[Brad Dorsey]

... [the] overall world market for violins is on the order of a million a year...

 

With the world's population at around 7 billion, this means about one violin is sold for every 7000 people which means about 0.014 percent of the people in the world buy, rent or otherwise consume a violin every year.

[Michael Richwine]

Well, they do tend to last a while............

 

Gotta bear in mind as well that the majority of those sales go into Europe and North America, very few, relatively into South America, Africa, and South Asia.

[Rue]

Interesting.  I didn't think it was a big market, but then you read/hear about all the various factories producing what seems like an endless stream of instruments, then you have the rehabs (refurbs?) and the antiques, and then the population skilled luthiers that are hand-crafting their own instruments...with long waiting lists...so I thought perhaps I was underestimating market size...