Buffet-Crampon

Buffet Crampon SAS is a French manufacturer of wind instruments based in Mantes-la-Ville, Yvelines department. The company is the world market leader in the production of clarinets of the Boehm system. Its subsidiary, Buffet Crampon Deutschland GmbH, founded in 2010 and based in Markneukirchen, Vogtland, Sachsen, is the world market leader in the manufacture of brass instruments. To manufacture and sell its products, the BC Group employed around 1000 people worldwide at the beginning of 2021, 470 of them as employees of BC Germany alone. The management of the group has been in the hands of Jérôme Perrod since 2014.

Products and brands

The following brands / labels, with the exception of the Buffet Crampon brand, are formerly independent companies whose essential assets, including the name and trademark rights, are owned by other companies and ultimately were acquired partly by Buffet Crampon SAS partly by BC Deutschland GmbH, and which were then dissolved as companies.

The Buffet Crampon SAS has six brands under which it manufactures the following instruments.

* Buffet Crampon: Clarinets with a French fingering system (Boehm), namely (almost) the entire clarinet family in tunings from high E to contralto, also oboes, English horns, bassoons (with French fingering and drilling) and saxophones
* Rigoutat: Oboes, English horns, oboes d'amore and baritone oboes
* Parmenon: transverse flutes
* Verne Q. Powell: Flutes and piccolos
* Antoine Courtois: trombones, fugelhorns and saxhorns
* Besson: trumpets, trombones, cornets, alto horns, tenor horns, baritone horns, euphoniums and tubas in E and B
BC Deutschland also has six brands under which the following instruments are manufactured.

* B&S: Trumpets, trombones, cornets, flugelhorns, tenor horns, baritone horns and tubas
* Hans Hoyer: Simple horns, double horns, triple horns, descant horns and Wagner tubas
* Melton Meinl Weston: flugelhorns, baritone and tenor horns, bass trumpets, tubas and cimbassos
* J.Scherzer: B and C trumpets and high trumpets
* W. Schreiber: Clarinets in B and C (one model) with German fingering (Oehler), bassoons and contrabassoons
* Julius Keilwerth: Saxophones (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass)

Production and sales

The BC group of companies has six production sites in which they manufacture the following instruments.About us
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* in Mantes-la-Ville: professional clarinets, oboes, French bassoons
* in Markneukirchen: all brass instruments of the Buffet Crampon Group are manufactured in the two factories there, with the exception of the Besson student instruments and the "high end" instruments of the Melton Meinl Weston brand, as well as student clarinets of the Buffet Crampon brand and all instruments of the brands W.Schreiber and J. Keilwerth.
* in Geretsried: near Munich: the instruments of the brand Melton Meinl Weston (R&D center for all brass instruments of the group)
* in Peking: brass instruments for beginners
* in Shanghai: woodwind instruments for beginners
* in Maynard: Massachusetts: VQPowell flutes

BC has sales companies in the United States, Canada, Japan and the Netherlands. It also has six showrooms: in Paris, Geretsried near Munich, Amsterdam, Jacksonville, Tokyo and Beijing.

History

Denis Buffet-Auger, of the Buffet family of French musical instrument makers, began making quality clarinets in Paris, France in 1825. The company expanded under Jean-Louis Buffet and his wife Zoé Crampon and became known as BUFFET Crampon & Cie a Paris (BC). (Another family member, Auguste Buffet ''jeune'', who worked with famous clarinetist Hyacinthe Klosé to develop the Boehm system for clarinet, had his own business separate from BC.)

In 1850, BC established its headquarters at Mantes-la-Ville. The company continued to expand its range and quality in instrument production, beginning saxophone production in 1866, and winning numerous awards.

In 1877 BC acquired the Evette & Schaeffer Company and began to use that name as their instrument brand. In 1887 BC obtained a patent for a mechanism to control an extra key on an extended saxophone bell, extending the lower range from B to B. In 1908 BC began exporting instruments to the US. In 1910 BC introduced the ''Apogee'' premium model saxophone, which had innovative keywork features that were later adapted by other manufacturers. In 1918 BC began marketing their premium line instruments under their own name, while marketing lower grade instruments variously under the Evette & Schaeffer and Evette brands. During the 1930s BC began outsourcing Evette & Schaeffer instruments to other manufacturers.

In 1950, BC developed its famous ''R13'' clarinet, an extremely popular professional-level clarinet. The company also began production of the ''Dynaction'' model saxophones that year, which would evolve into the ''Super Dynaction'' (1957) and the highly regarded ''S series'' (1973) models. Buffet also became the leading distributor of student-grade instruments in Europe, marketing French and Italian made saxophones under their Evette & Schaeffer brand. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the company's position in the student saxophone market collapsed in the face of competition from Yamaha, who offered higher quality and more up-to-date instruments, and lower cost East German, Czech, and Asian manufacturers. Their collapse in the student market accompanied a deteriorating position in the market for professional saxophones. Buffet left the saxophone market in the mid-1980s. In 2008 Buffet re-entered the saxophone market with their ''400'' model, sourced from China.

In 1981, BC joined Boosey & Hawkes, which sold the French company to The Music Group in 2003. Two years later BC was bought by a French group
and was given the company name BUFFET Group Wind Instruments SAS, but continues to sell its products under the Buffet Crampon brand.

In 2006 Buffet Group acquired two brass instrument manufacturers, Antoine Courtois Paris and Besson. In 2008 Buffet Group acquired the Leblanc clarinet factory in La Couture-Boussey, Département of Eure, Haute-Normandie in France.

Evette and Evette & Schaeffer clarinets

Until the 1980s, only professional level clarinets carried the BC name. Lower priced clarinets for the beginner and intermediate market were branded "Evette" and "Evette & Schaeffer", respectively. For a time, the Evette clarinets actually were built by other manufacturers under BC's sponsorship, and these instruments are marked "Evette sponsored by Buffet". By the early 1970s, Buffet was making the Evettes in their own factory in Paris, and around 1979, manufacture was moved to a Buffet-owned factory in Germany. Evette & Schaeffer clarinets were made in Paris. Use of the Evette and Evette & Schaeffer brands ended around 1985, when the company began using the Buffet name on all its clarinets.

2010 to the beginning of 2021

In 2010 the newly founded Buffet Crampon Deutschland GmbH, Markneukirchen, acquired the production facility in Markneukirchen and the brands W. Schreiber and Julius Keilwerth from the insolvency of Schreiber & Keilwerth GmbH, after the insolvency administrator had reduced the workforce in Markneukirchen from 252 in the previous months Employees had reduced to 134. The company manufactured clarinets of German systems and bassoons under the brand name W. Schreiber and saxophones under the brand name J. Keilwerth. In 2012, BC Germany also takes over B&S GmbH, which also produces in Markneukirchen, the leading European manufacturer of brass instruments with 250 employees and the brands B&S, Hans Hoyer, Melton, Meinl, Weston and J. Scherzer and integrates them into the company, whose workforce will grow to more than 400 employees (470 at the beginning of 2021). With these two most important acquisitions in the company's history, the Buffet Group can almost double its sales and has since taken a leading position not only in the field of woodwind instruments, but also brass instruments.

In 2012, Capital France SAS becomes shareholder in Buffet Group SAS. Capital is a subsidiary of Trail, a European private-equity company with registered office in Paris.

In 2014, Jérôme Perrod was appointed as the new CEO of the