Clarinetist Eugène Van Doren founded the firm in Paris.

His son Robert studied clarinet at the Paris Conservatoire. Around 1935, he developed, on the new premises at 56 rue Lepic, the 5RV mouthpiece, quick to become a classic standard throughout the world.

Bernard Van Doren, the current managing director, comes into the firm in 1967, inheriting his grandfather’s mechanical genius. He creates the B45 clarinet mouthpiece a year later, develops the classical and jazz range for saxophone; he devises state-of-the-art machinery which brings engineering tolerance below 1/100th of a millimeter and enables production to be increased tenfold. 

Ever since, innovations have never stopped in both clarinet and saxophone: mouthpieces, reeds, ligatures, but also the Flow Pack reed conditioning, guaranteeing a “factory-fresh” conservation of the product until it reaches the musician. 

The workshops of the rue Lepic were transferred in 1990 to Bormes les Mimosas (Var), close to the cane-fields. Our Parisian head-office was thus able to be transformed to welcome musicians from France and abroad: trial studios, a specialized sheet-music store, a master-class space.