How a 390-Year-Old Family Business Avoids Layoffs #MakerBusiness
Take a look inside the production facility of Zildjian, America’s oldest family business, and see how its renowned musical instruments are made. The Zildjian Company makes cymbals, saying:
The notion of sending your quality, outsourcing your quality halfway around the world, is unthinkable. You’re not going to find two of them that are the same. They’re like snowflakes. Each sound is unique.
Cymbals were hardly heard at all in popular music until Zildjian made some of them thinner and found a rainbow of sound. They did this during hard times, the start of the Great Depression. Avedis Zildjian III began hiring as businesses all around him were firing. He lured good workers with a simple promise.
It comes down to trust doesn’t it? You take care of us, and we’ll take care of you. That pledge has remained unbroken since the beginning.
Quality became more than a slogan. The 125 Americans in this little factory cornered more than half the cymbal market in the world. Who better to tell us how to create and keep good jobs than a company in business for 390 years?
Our dad always said, ‘follow the music’.