STENTOR COVER FEATURE
f you were asked to pick the most forward thinking company in the UK’s musical instrument industry, where would you begin looking? Pro audio or hi tech? The fashionable guitar and amp companies? But what if we were to suggest that one of the UK’s most far- sighted music companies is actually that doyen of beginner and intermediary orchestral strings, the venerable Stentor Music? If that proposition seems far-fetched, it’s
probably because Stentor rarely makes a fuss about its internal workings. It introduces new products, produces highly professional publicity material, attends shows, supports its retailer customers, promotes education, but rarely does it adopt the character suggested by its name – the Trojan War herald, whose voice was said to be as loud as that of 50 of his comrades. But Stentor was first into China by several
years – and not simply buying instruments from China, but one of the first in the world to actually own a factory there. It was also Stentor that was one of the first MI companies in the UK to fully computerise its business.
WWW.MI-PRO.CO.UK
Back to the Future I
Stentor Music tends to keep itself to itself, so some people might be surprised to hear it is a £10-million-pound business. More than that, Gary Cooper reveals that the Chinese revolution in MI started here…
Reigate in Surrey might seem an unlikely
spot for such a dynamic business, but that is where Stentor Music – still a family business after over 100 years and destined to turnover some £10 million this year – is run by Michael Doughty and a small team. Stentor’s historical roots reach back to the
1800s when Edward C Doughty, second son of a Lincolnshire farming family and Michael’s grandfather, graduated from Trinity College and became a professor of music. In 1895 he registered the name Stentor for a range of gut violin strings and rosin, in the process founding the business that continues today. Life was no easier for a professional musician then than it is now and Doughty, like so many others, tried to make a living as a composer and teacher, no doubt thinking of instruments and accessories as a useful addition to his income. How little times change. He experienced some modest success as a composer and went on to form his own music publishing business, which around the time of the Great War became the Stentor Music Company.
Michael Doughty has driven Stentor to great heights in 50 years
In addition to publishing, Stentor, which then operated from a small shop in York Road, Wandsworth in London, also sold violins and it was above the shop that Michael Doughty’s father, who was to succeed Edward, was born. The company was a success, importing and retailing violins and accessories, but during the Second World War, in common with everyone in the trade, it struggled, though somehow managed to actually manufacture strings during the period, on a home-made string winding machine. Slowly, as the war years and their dour aftermath passed, Stentor began to make progress again. “It was a very tiny business when I started full-time, in 1959,” Michael Doughty recalls. “We were keeping it going with strings and making rosin, but I grew up knowing old violins, which we had all over the place. I remember taking stock one year and there were 270.” By now, Stentor was based in
Woodmansterne in Surrey and had become active in buying and reconditioning
miPRO DECEMBER 2010 25
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