ROSETTI COVER FEATURE
Rosetti’s co-chairmen Barry Warner and Doug Ellis
universities for the trade. JHS, Barnes & Mullins, Kemble-Yamaha and Rose-Morris (as was) and a handful of others have not only been mainstays in terms of their products, but also in the way they attract, train and then seed the industry as key figures. People stay in MI because they love it,
particularly the ‘family feeling’ that so many talk about – and often those companies are the ‘families’ from which they came. Which brings us to Rosetti, one of the older names in the trade (it dates back to the 1920s) and another of the key training grounds. If you totted-up the former Rosetti alumni in the business you’d have an impressive list. If Rosetti is the unofficial MI University
of Braintree, Essex, then Doug Ellis, joint owner and co-chairman with Barry Warner, must be the Chancellor, having been in the
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Family fortunes O
ne of the great strengths of the UK’s MI industry is the handful of companies that act like unofficial
Vandoren reeds: now part of the collaboration with Stentor
sleepy backwater with a lot of stories. Brands are still being sought and added, existing ones refined and new ideas brought into play – exemplified by the announcement this month that Rosetti has formed an alliance with that other great British stalwart, Stentor. We began by asking Warner and Ellis to give
“
A rare look inside one of the UK’s oldest – and most successful – MI companies, through the eyes of Rosetti’s saviours of yore, Doug Ellis and Barry Warner. Gary Cooper asks about life after Gibson and the future of third-party supply…
trade since he started with that other great seat of learning, Selmer, in the early 1960s, and now back running Rosetti on a day-to-day basis alongside Warner. Not only has Ellis a lifetime’s experience with some of the great brands, but he has worked alongside many of the key figures in the industry. But Rosetti isn’t a
We’re a good
combination. I do the music bit and Barry does the clever stuff.
ailments when we spoke, so he left most of the talking to Doug Ellis.) “As a quick resume, Barry and I, having had a spell at Norlin, subsequently joined Rosetti – Barry in 1984, I in 1981. In 1985 we were instructed by Thorn EMI to close the company and we offered to buy it, with another partner who we later bought-out. We moved it to Braintree in 88 and we’ve tap-danced
down the corridors of life ever since.” It may be history repeating itself, or it may
us a brief run-down of Rosetti’s past and how it came to be in the position it is in today. (We should add that Barry Warner was suffering from one of this winter’s crop of mystery
be some ancient gypsy curse, but the recent collapse of EMI Records – all that was left of the once mighty Thorn EMI in the music business – brought to mind the mess that company had made of the once proud Rosetti and which Messrs Ellis and Warner had to rescue. Started by Arthur Rosetti in the 1920s, for many years it had been run by the Czech-
miPRO MARCH 2011 21
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