[3] In 2008 the company began making luxury furniture, using the same skills and techniques used to build grand pianos, in an effort to branch out and dodge ingravescent effects of the global financial crisis.

Such diversification is characteristic of a survival strategy that has seen Petrof through two world wars and the Nazi invasion, as well as 40 years of the communist regime, during which, following forced nationalisation in 1948, it was incorporated into the state concern "Piano and Organ Factory".

[4]: 20  Under communist rule, though factory installations were expanded and production figures increased, instrument quality concomitantly declined.

[5]: 154–155  The current company president and Antonín Petrof’s great-great-granddaughter, Zuzana Ceralová Petrofová, was among tens of thousands of peaceful protesters who successfully demanded an end to the communist regime in 1989.

[6] "During the 1930s crisis Petrof manufactured wooden railway sleepers," says Ms. Ceralová Petrofová, "and during World War II it focused on grenade boxes.