Hello and welcome. Thanks for visiting our website. Here’s a little bit of information about how the company got started.
Mark Goodwin (founder and owner), has played the piano since he was 7 years old when he started taking classical lessons from a local piano teacher once a week. Despite his desparate pleas to give up playing, his Mother insisted that he keep practising for 1 hour per day (half an hour before school, half an hour after school).
Mark chose to study Music for one of his GCSE options (getting a “B” grade in the final exam) and then went on to take the Music “A” level (getting a “C” grade). After ‘A’ levels, Mark went to Leeds University to Study Music Performance Studies under Professor Clive Brown and Doctors Steve Muir and Bryan White. Mark majored in the piano (although his 9000 word dissertation was entitled “The Violin E String – From Gut to Steel in 50 years”) and enjoyed playing the 9ft Steinway Grand Piano in the Mansion Music Room.
3 years later Mark graduated with a 2-1 degree with an overall mark of 68 (just 2 marks away from getting a first class) and then returned to Oldham to consider his career options. He got a job as a classroom assistant in a local school which he enjoyed very much but he never quite got the hang of discipline so felt it best to move on.
It was at this time that Mark’s uncle got in touch to say that he had a few Bechstein grand pianos in his house that he needed to get rid of. Mark offered to try and find a buyer for him and 2 weeks later he’d sold the piano to a private buyer from Japan who flew all the way to England to see the piano.
Mark then sold a few more of his uncle’s Bechsteins during which time he made some strong trade contacts and before too long he realised he was in a position to be a Bechstein wholesaler. That was only a couple of years and Mark’s shop now offers unrestored & restored upright and grand pianos – some modern, some antique.
