FEATURE RETAIL EVENTS


“I think today, if we make a decision to buy


something, virtually all of us do our intelligence gathering about that buying decision online. That doesn't necessarily mean buying it online, but what's the first thing we all do today? We Google something – and you can get all the information that way before you even set foot in the dealer's store.” Don't stars draw the crowds any longer? “If it's a big star, yes – but how many


manufacturers are able to afford to bring big stars over? None of that stuff has anything like the currency it once had, due to the internet.” It's often said that drummers do things


differently – for example they are much more willing to attend clinics and roadshows than most other musicians. But that, too, has changed, says leading percussion products distributor, Craig Fenney, of The Music Shipping Company. “They're not as popular as they were – they're not as well attended. Drums are still the most popular but not even the small regional drum shows that were once quite important are well attended now. “I went to a drum event once for a major


drum brand where I won the raffle because there were only five of us there. Partly they've been killed by the recession but also partly by the shows like Drummer Live, which pull in all the big names. It's like the festivals killing medium sized gigs. People think, 'Why go to a show in Warrington, when I can see five drummers in one day at a show?'" And yet the retailers MI Pro spoke with do seem to value them. Take Noel Sheehan for example. Leicester's Sheehan's Music is widely acknowledged to be one of the most pro- active stores in the country, not just hosting shows for manufacturers, but organising its own events. And the chief of these is the annual Acoustic Avalon, now in its 17th year. Sheehan is a great believer in such events. "Very much so. I think retail stores rely on


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brands to help drive customers into the stores – that's part of what they get their margins for. Some are very good at this and some are very poor but yes, they undoubtedly have a great value. They make the end-user feel special when they see a manufacturer getting involved with in-store occasions, so we are very much in favour of these events. "There has been a falling-off, though. Over


the years we have had a lot of involvement with woodwind, brass and orchestral strings, as well as guitars, and the degree of support that we are offered is much reduced compared with what it used to be."


What about public attendance – has Sheehan seen that diminish, too? "That's true to some extent – but the answer to it lies in being more inventive about what you do and how you market it. “There's a lot more competition for people's time now and we have to adapt to that and get better at doing it."


And anyway, he says,


it's probably unwise to set too much store by numbers alone. "Many of our suppliers


who are still keen to do things, don't look at a body count any longer, they look at the quality of an audience. As an example, we have recently done promotions with Yamaha for their Clavinovas and it was said, 'look we want 20 people in the room, but the right 20 people'.


“Chasing numbers can be


sometimes fruitless and a targeted audience can make for a better event." Another industry veteran


of roadshows, GoTo Guitars' Tony Owens, feels that the edge has gone from dealer events, however. "They've lost their


There’s never a month when we don’t do a roadshow somewhere in the country.


Simon Gilson, PMT


effectiveness," he says. "You can't go out any more and just do a show – well, not unless you've got someone like Tommy Emmanuel to do an hour and half's free show. The people we guys can afford are not in that league. And times are changing generally, too. People don't go out like they used to, to have a few beers and watch a band. They're more likely to stay at home, have their friends round and watch a film. It really is a different world out there – a lot of the function of a show can be done on the internet, including watching people play the instruments and talking about them." But even those


distributors less than 100 per cent convinced of the merits of dealer events still


plan to carry on doing them. Both MSC's Craig Fenney and GoTo's Tony Owens said they had plans to do further dealer events this year and recent activity from the likes of Epiphone, Westside, Yamaha and Headline Music (who recently took Paul Reed Smith on a UK tour) shows that while the roadshow may be less of a spectacular than it once was, it still has promotional value. PMT's Simon Gilson – with long experience at the helm of one of the UK's few successful MI retail chains and Britain's second largest MI retailer – believes they do still have a role to play.


"Sometimes they can be


incredibly successful. The two occasions when Sound Technology were distributing Taylor and they took Doyle Dykes round, for example, were fantastic – and the greatest success of all those was when they went to our Birmingham


(Above and below): Taylor Guitars is known for pulling out all the stops when it comes to retailer events


store and we had 400 people in the building, which was incredible. The emails and the letters lasted for months afterwards, as did some of the business, because it was such a successful event. Since then, I would say they have had varying amounts of success. "The bottom line is that it doesn't matter


how few fish there still are swimming around the bottom of the sea – there are still some fish, and it's up to you how fast your boat is and how good your net is to catch those fish. In a recession – in fact even without a recession – you do get times in this industry when it just goes quiet, for no obvious reason and when that happens it's very easy to fall into that humdrum 'what are we going to do?' attitude. But we've always managed to get it going again and events play their part. "There's never a month when we don't do a


roadshow somewhere in the company. We had a Peavey one not long ago, a seminar on PA, in Manchester. It only drew about 60 or 70 people but they were all people who wanted to learn and it was very successful. And that raises the question of location. Anything we do in Manchester is always successful, as it is in Birmingham – but Southend, where I've been in business for a very long while – is pretty much a waste of time, and I've never known why, despite all the years I've been here." Our sample, of necessity, was too small to draw firm convictions from, but we did get the sense that dealer events may be better regarded by dealers than they are distributors and manufacturers – and perhaps that's in the nature of things. The retailer, after all, is on the frontier and it's nice if a bit of support turns up every now and again from the big guns. It seems, for most, the the roadshow event is still alive – even if it's not quite the highlight of the year it once was.


miPRO JUNE 2011 22


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