A North Yorkshire musician who has seen his business grow rapidly overseas and in the UK has secured thousands of pounds worth of funding to help him develop more new products and roll out a major international marketing campaign.

Seventy four-year-old Graham Lyons runs Nuvo Instrumental in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire and is the brains behind a unique musical instrument which he spent twenty years designing.

The Clarinéo is an easy-to-use, professional-sounding woodwind instrument aimed at children and those who want to learn an instrument for the first time. In the last year, the business has gone from being a cottage industry producing 20 instruments a day at Graham’s home to a manufacturing plant in Hong Kong with a capacity of producing 700 a day.

Having secured funding, Nuvo Instrumental is designing a range of new instruments and accessories with a flute being launched before Christmas.

The business has seen sales of the Clarinéo grow in the last six months following a major international exhibition in Frankfurt- the Musikmesse which is the world’s largest trade fair for the music industry- where hundreds of orders from around the world were placed. The instrument has since become a best-seller in the Far East.

Graham has also appeared on Simon Mayo’s show on BBC Radio 2 where he was featured as one of the UK’s top new inventors.

The Clarinéo is now a worldwide success, selling around 13,000 a year with predictions of a multi-million pound turnover by 2012.

Last year turnover peaked at almost £1 million and experts predict that this will reach almost £4 million by 2012 and double that by 2013 thanks to the new products.

Throughout its 20 year development, Graham, a former music teacher and an established educational composer, has tested the Clarinéo in hundreds of schools all over the UK and with professional musicians. Before his death last year, Sir John Dankworth gave it his backing as has well-known musician Humphrey Lyttelton who used the instrument on one of his band’s records. The Clarinéo has also been used by musicians in the London Symphony Orchestra.

Speaking about his company’s plans for growth, Graham said: “The Clarinéo is a serious, high-tech instrument but it is also extremely easy-to-use, durable and cheap to maintain. That’s why it is ideal for schools, young people and beginners. The success has so far been overwhelming and to have secured more funding to develop new instruments is a major boost.

“We hope that Nuvo Instrumental will become the go-to company for musical instruments for schools as we’re striving to improve the music learning process by taking a fresh look at the design and materials that have been commonly found in traditional instruments, many of which are over 100 years old.”

http://www.clarineo.co.uk/

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