A Brief History of the Conn Company (1874-present)*
by Margaret Downie Banks, Ph.D.
Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
Vermillion, South Dakota
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
All Rights Reserved.
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*Excerpted and updated from Elkhart's Brass Roots: An Exhibition
to
Commemorate the 150th Anniversary of C. G. Conn's Birth and the 120th
Anniversary of the Conn Company by Margaret Downie Banks (Vermillion,
South Dakota: The Shrine to Music Museum, 1994).
The Greenleaf family successfully led C. G. Conn Ltd. for 54 years
until the firm, estimated to be worth $35,000,000, was sold to the
Crowell-Collier MacMillan Company, known primarily as a book publishing
company, in April 1969. According to Leland Greenleaf's obituary in The
Music Trades, Lee, at the threshold of his retirement, "recognized the
danger of a takeover threat" and began negotiations with MacMillan after
Conn's earnings and the price of its stock were "severely depressed" in the
late-60s.
The MacMillan era (1969-1980) might be called Conn's decade of
dispersal. The corporate headquarters were moved out of Elkhart for the first
time in its history (at which time virtually all the company's historic
records were deliberately destroyed) and relocated in Oak Brook, Illinois.
The Conn Organ Division was moved to Carol Stream, Illinois, reed instrument
manufacture was relocated in Nogales, Arizona, the Conn Guitar Division and
the company's student brass production were shipped to Japan, while the
Scherl &
Roth subsidiary continued production in Cleveland. Selmer bought Conn's new
brass factory in Elkhart's Industrial Park (now the Vincent Bach plant). The
old Conn plant, built in 1910, was sold to Coachman Industries. All but a
small portion of this 17-acre factory site between Beardsley Avenue and
Greenleaf Boulevard was razed in 1979. Unfortunately for Conn, the
labor-intensive manufacture of musical instruments was foreign to the
MacMillan Co., not to mention unprofitable in comparison with their other
holdings. Subsequently, Conn's historically fine reputation in the field
suffered dramatically during the 1970s.
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Dr. Margaret Downie Banks, Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
The University of South Dakota
414 East Clark Street
Vermillion, SD 57069-2390
E-mail: mbanks@usd.edu
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