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Business maestro: Klaus Heymann

(CNN) — From piano concertos to violin masterpieces, Klaus Heymann knows his classical music — and the classical music business.

His career path includes stints as a tennis coach and stereo equipment distributor, and he married a world class violinist before making his unlikely entrepreneurial debut in the music industry.

Today he has every reason to celebrate. His music label, Naxos, which quietly undercut the classical music market 20 years ago, is now selling more than 7 million records a year.

Andrew Stevens met the business maestro at the Naxos headquarters in Hong Kong to find out how he did it. Below is a transcript from the interview.

Heymann: I think the biggest advantage I had was that I did not come from within the industry. I looked at everything with fresh eyes. I never worked for another record company, I don’t read music, I cannot play an instrument, I have no preconceived ideas. I was lucky to marry a world class violinist in 1974 and I think she has been my main, not mentor, but my main adviser.

Stevens: What drew you to music?

Heymann: Well, that’s all my parents ever played at home so the very first record in our family was Hebrides Overture by Mendelssohn. I went to my first concert when I was nine years old at the end of the war in a place where we had been evacuated to. It just became an ingrained thing, I mean music [to me] was classical music.

Stevens: You started a business which was basically selling much cheaper CDs to a global market, how were you able to make them so much cheaper and able to make a profit?

Heymann: Well at the time the target was to be at one third of the price of the full price CD. We pegged the price at the ideal price point that would have been the lowest denomination bank note, and we had to start at the time in Eastern Europe, what we now call Central Europe, Czechoslovakia, Hungary where the orchestras were affordable and willing to work for us.

It was foreign currency income, the musicians were happy with the income. And of course because of the low price we sold lots and lots of CDs. We sold typically ten times what a full price recording of the same recording would have sold.

Stevens: How were you able to establish Naxos really as a leading global brand without your major rivals, the big labels coming in and trying to close you down?

Heymann: That’s something I had been worrying about for the first 5 years. I was always looking over my shoulder and thought, Well, they must catch on to what I am doing and then release also low price CDs with very valuable back catalogues.

But nobody took me seriously; That crazy German in Hong Kong with the sponsored label, he won’t survive much longer you know and that really was very good, you know, uh, they really didn’t pay enough attention to what we were doing.

Stevens: What’s the most difficult thing about your job these days?

Heymann: It’s really keeping up to date with what’s happening on the Internet. The new business models that are being tried out. That’s where it’s happening, and nobody knows what our industry will look like five years from now.

Stevens: Exciting or daunting?

Heymann: We’ve never had the reach we have now through the Internet. We have many more subscribers to our web site than people subscribe to the big music magazines. No, it’s very exciting. E-mail to a friend

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Business maestro: Klaus Heymann

(CNN) — From piano concertos to violin masterpieces, Klaus Heymann knows his classical music — and the classical music business.

His career path includes stints as a tennis coach and stereo equipment distributor, and he married a world class violinist before making his unlikely entrepreneurial debut in the music industry.

Today he has every reason to celebrate. His music label, Naxos, which quietly undercut the classical music market 20 years ago, is now selling more than 7 million records a year.

Andrew Stevens met the business maestro at the Naxos headquarters in Hong Kong to find out how he did it. Below is a transcript from the interview.

Heymann: I think the biggest advantage I had was that I did not come from within the industry. I looked at everything with fresh eyes. I never worked for another record company, I don’t read music, I cannot play an instrument, I have no preconceived ideas. I was lucky to marry a world class violinist in 1974 and I think she has been my main, not mentor, but my main adviser.

Stevens: What drew you to music?

Heymann: Well, that’s all my parents ever played at home so the very first record in our family was Hebrides Overture by Mendelssohn. I went to my first concert when I was nine years old at the end of the war in a place where we had been evacuated to. It just became an ingrained thing, I mean music [to me] was classical music.

Stevens: You started a business which was basically selling much cheaper CDs to a global market, how were you able to make them so much cheaper and able to make a profit?

Heymann: Well at the time the target was to be at one third of the price of the full price CD. We pegged the price at the ideal price point that would have been the lowest denomination bank note, and we had to start at the time in Eastern Europe, what we now call Central Europe, Czechoslovakia, Hungary where the orchestras were affordable and willing to work for us.

It was foreign currency income, the musicians were happy with the income. And of course because of the low price we sold lots and lots of CDs. We sold typically ten times what a full price recording of the same recording would have sold.

Stevens: How were you able to establish Naxos really as a leading global brand without your major rivals, the big labels coming in and trying to close you down?

Heymann: That’s something I had been worrying about for the first 5 years. I was always looking over my shoulder and thought, Well, they must catch on to what I am doing and then release also low price CDs with very valuable back catalogues.

But nobody took me seriously; That crazy German in Hong Kong with the sponsored label, he won’t survive much longer you know and that really was very good, you know, uh, they really didn’t pay enough attention to what we were doing.

Stevens: What’s the most difficult thing about your job these days?

Heymann: It’s really keeping up to date with what’s happening on the Internet. The new business models that are being tried out. That’s where it’s happening, and nobody knows what our industry will look like five years from now.

Stevens: Exciting or daunting?

Heymann: We’ve never had the reach we have now through the Internet. We have many more subscribers to our web site than people subscribe to the big music magazines. No, it’s very exciting. E-mail to a friend

found here.

Bekele wins record sixth cross-country title

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia won a record sixth title at the world cross-country championships Sunday despite briefly losing a shoe, while Tirunesh Dibaba won the women’s race.

Bekele finished the 7.5-mile race in 34 minutes, 36 seconds, while Leonard Patrick Komon of Kenya was second in 34:41, followed by last year’s champion, Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea, in 34:43.

The 25-year-old Bekele surpassed the mark of five titles he shared with Kenyans John Ngugi and Paul Tergat.

Bekele was leading in muddy conditions when his left shoe came off about seven minutes into the race.

He fell about 25 yards behind the leaders, allowing Tadese to pull ahead, but was able to put his shoe back on and get back into the race.

I was expecting not to win after losing my shoe, Bekele said. But it’s not so tough to get back in the race. If it had been in the last two laps it would have been harder, because I would have been more tired.

Bekele’s compatriot Dibaba won her third world cross-country title.

She finished the five-mile women’s course in 25:10, while fellow Ethiopian Mestawet Tufa was second in 25:15, followed by Linet Chepkwemoi Masai of Kenya in 25:18.

I felt a stitch in the middle of the race and that’s when I fell back, Dibaba said. But it was after I recovered from that that I was able to move to the front.
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Plane hits residential area in England

LONDON, England (CNN) — UK police have confirmed to CNN that a private aircraft has crashed into a residential area in the town of Farnborough in Kent, south-east of London.

The crash happened at 1437 local time (0937ET), police told CNN. Emergency services are said to be on the scene at Broadwater Gardens, the UK’s Press Association has reported.

Pictures from local media show large plumes of smoke billowing from homes in the area, with houses extensively damaged.

Television pictures show that the scene of the crash is close to woods and open land.

There are no reports yet of casualties on the aircraft or on the ground. The nearby Princess Royal Hospital has been put on major incident standby.

London Fire Brigade has told CNN that at the moment it has six fire engines and an urban search and rescue team at the scene.

It has no word on casualties.

Witnesses, speaking to local media, have spoken of a very loud engine sound and then an explosion just before the crash.

Resident John Crane, one of those on the scene, told Sky News: When I got there there was just as massive red fireball and two or three explosions.

It was so fierce you couldn’t get near it.

His wife Jackie told the station that she saw the plane coming in erratically over the area, with its tail lower than its nose.

Sky News also reported that a man known only as John, who was flying at the same time, said he heard a distress call from a Cessna to the control tower at nearby Biggin Hill airfield that indicated the pilot was having severe engine vibrations. E-mail to a friend

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‘Open Skies’ heralds new era in air travel

LONDON, England (CNN) — The first plane has landed under the Open Skies agreement between the United States and Europe, heralding what many hope will be a new era in air travel.

The Continental Airways flight from Newark to Heathrow touched down under rainy London skies at dawn on Sunday morning.

Jeff Smisek, president of Continental, was onboard the flight. He told CNN that Heathrow landing rights had cost the airline $200 million — but that it had been money well invested.

The business traveler wants to come to Heathrow, Smisek told CNN’s Richard Quest, who was also on the flight. We have been locked out of Heathrow for decades and it is the most important business market in the world. We are delighted to be here.

Quest said other airlines were already landing at Heathrow, including a US Airways flight from Philadelphia and Northwest Airlines from Minneapolis.

The new deal means that passengers on both sides of the Atlantic will now have more options when it comes to nonstop flights.

Under the old agreement, governments on both sides of the Atlantic had to negotiate access for airlines to airports on a city-by-city basis. It also meant that a European carrier could not fly to the United States direct from another European nation.

Under the new deal, however, Air France can fly direct to Los Angeles from Heathrow, rather than rerouting via Paris, while British Airways can fly direct to New York from Paris.

National boundaries will no longer determined where planes can fly, Quest said before today’s flight.

Daniel Calleja, Director of the Air Transport Directorate of the European Commission said before the flight that you are going to have more possibilities in terms of choice, in terms of reduction in the price of tickets.

But some experts caution that more airlines crossing the Atlantic does not necessarily mean cheaper tickets, thanks to the high cost of oil as well as the expense of securing landing slots. Pricing on transatlantic economy flights is also seen as comparatively cheap compared to say flights within Europe.

Kevin Done, aerospace correspondent at the Financial Times, added: The idea that prices are going to be drastically reduced is well over done.

Deloitte UK aviation industry expert Graham Pickett told the UK’s Press Association: The Open Skies agreement could lead to greater competition between airlines for flights from Heathrow.

However, airlines keen to rival the incumbent players may find it difficult to secure slots … and alliances between carriers are seen as the best way to open up routes from Heathrow to the USA.

Further negotiations on Open Skies are due to be held by 2010, when it is expected the Europeans will want the right to fly within the United States itself, as well as be allowed to buy US airlines.

Elsewhere at Heathrow, the UK’s transport minister has said that the government is willing to help sort out the chaos caused by the new state-of-the-art $8.6 billion Terminal 5 that has left flights cancelled and delayed and passengers without their luggage, agencies report.

Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, said in a statement that Everything possible must be done to deliver a better service for passengers who are unfortunately still facing disruption and delays to their journeys, in comments reported by The Associated Press.

The agency added that extra staff had been brought in Sunday by British Airways, the sole occupant of T5, to help deal with an estimated 15,000 bags that had yet to be reunited with their owners. It also reported Sunday the cancellation of 37 domestic and European flights, bringing the total since the terminal opened Thursday to 245.
found here.