Strunal, in its current corporate structure that was established in 1992, is an outgrowth (or successor) of Cremona, a joint-stock company founded in Schönbach in Czechoslovakia in 1922.
In 1945, the Amati cooperative was founded by persuading instrument makers from Kraslice, Luby and Plesná to join.
That year Cremona and all the musical instruments making companies (like the Amati cooperative) were taken over and turned into national enterprises.
That year the heads in charge of the musical industry decided that Cremona had to get closer to the established model of a single big plant with the workers close together.
The veteran old masters and workers were old and progressively retiring from the activity, the Luby population was halved all of a sudden, there were not few Schönbachers killed during the war, the youngsters were not specially interested in their family jobs and there were very few apprentices joining Cremona, so the Cremona staff was continuously decreasing all along the decade, the production decreased as did the quality.
Parallel to Cremona, a plant in Blatná, the Dřevokov cooperative, was experimenting with electric stringed instruments led by Josef Ruzicka.
These new Jolana guitars with their modern up-to-date design and good construction were an instant success all over the eastern bloc and easily made their way into the occidental market too.
As a possible indicator of the economic sentiment, Bräuer moved to Bubenreuth to reunite with the expelled Schönbacher craftsmen in the spring of 1968.
[4] In 1992, the financial health of Cremona had deteriorated from the culmination of several factors, including the departure of talented craftsmen out on their own.
Cremona, while a state owned enterprise, filed for protection from bankruptcy which resulted in a restructuring and privatization on September 1, 1992, by two partners: Under waning sales in North America, Sturnal, in 1997, broke ties with its longstanding sole customer, Geneva International Corporation in Wheeling, Illinois, formed its own subsidiary, Strunal America, Inc.
The subsidiary is based in Mountainside, New Jersey, and is the parent's sole supplier to North America.