SOAR VALLEY INTERVIEW
Launching a new brand in MI can be a tricky manoeuvre at the best of times –
but launching two in the worst of times? Andy Barrett heads into the oxymoron that is Soar Valley and finds that received wisdom is well worth questioning…
manufacturer Moeck to establish a dealer network, setting up a percussion distribution company was, it is fairly safe to say, not even the glimmer of an inkling. By the time he returned to England a few weeks later, concrete plans were already formulating. What Ledsam saw was an almost untouched niche, handling the instruments and the music of one of the richest traditional cultures in the world. He shipped over books and products and set about convincing the UK retailers. “Most of the dealers had not heard of
W
hen David Ledsam was sent to Ireland in 1983 by the German recorder
Into the Valley “
Above: David Ledsam (managing director), Sheryl Findley (invoice manager), Darran Bramley (sales manager) and Ryan Swift (advertising and marketing)
along and one can end up with a warehouse full of stock, and looking a bit foolish. As it was, the Riverdance phenomenon
lasted up until, Ledsam estimates, 1993 – although many would argue that the Irish trad scene is as healthy a mature market as one is likely to find these days. But he had already been looking around for the next vein to mine. “As the Irish thing plateaued, I was thinking ‘what next’, but it wasn’t difficult to know where to look. “I had been aware of African percussion
half of the items we were dealing with,” he recalls, “But many took the risk of putting them into stock. Things ticked over fairly well for a while – and then Riverdance came and the company doubled in size as a result almost overnight.” As we all know, however, when a
fashion sparks a fad, it really is ‘easy come, easy go’. It is only a matter of time before the next big thing comes
www.mi-pro.co.uk
since the early ‘70s when some great acts toured the UK, such as Osibisa and the Drummers from Burundi. Then in the ‘80s the Paul Simon album, Graceland, and the work Peter Gabriel was doing with world music really opened people’s minds, so I brought in some random djembes from Senegal. To be honest they were not great. They sounded good, but were a bit rough. Then we met Kambala percussion from the Ivory Coast and were blown away by the quality. I placed my order just in time – otherwise distribution would have gone to Hohner UK.
“Then it was a case of ‘okay, this is working – what’s next?’ So we looked to Brazil. After a slow start, this too became really big.” Which made it three out of three for Ledsam and took Soar Valley from the mid-80s to 2008, by which time, he knew
What Ledsam saw was an almost untouched niche, handling one of the richest traditional cultures in the world.
that he would need another string to his bow – and it wasn’t simply the fear of the unpredictable world of fashion, either. The boom period the world had enjoyed since the mid-90s was crumbling around us. Government funding for music education was certain to be reviewed and the alarming rise of the national deficit made it clear to anyone with eyes to see that belt-tightening was just around the corner.
July 2011 35
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