Tag: veddatorial
Buying & Selling
I get e-mails from all corners of the industry, from both the retail and the supply side. Sometimes, the message is “thank you” or “you took the words out of my mouth.” Sometimes, I am accused of a Pollyanna-esque, ivory tower viewpoint. (Pollyanna? Perhaps. Ivory tower? Make that makeshift tree house.) I also get people [...]
Apassionata
Almost all of us are passionate about something, and virtually all of us want to share our passion. Whether it’s music, cooking or our favorite football team, few of us pursue these passions privately. We thrive when we interact with kindred spirits, and we get excited when we introduce our consuming interest to someone new. [...]
The O’Reilly Factor
By Dan Vedda We’ve often talked about the “unique” aspects of our industry: the passionate, hands-on, geek-lust involvement of both consumers and purveyors of music products. “Outsiders don’t get MI” is the common refrain, usually referring to both the models and mechanisms of our business and the outsized passions and peccadilloes of the personalities involved. [...]
Curated Inventory
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been talking about the need for each side of the supplier/dealer equation to devote more energy and attention to our respective customers. Now that the Christmas season is in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to look at the way we should move on the road ahead. Surviving retailers [...]
Personal Touch
By Dan Vedda As I write this, the Christmas season is still unfolding. We’re walking the tightrope hourly, scrambling to bring in the items our customers need while still having impulse goods and stocking-stuffer staples on a limited budget. Searching for an upside, I know that I won’t be stuck with piles of dead inventory [...]
Supplier Service
By Dan Vedda Today, our customers demand more from us than ever before. We’ve always had to be price competitive. Before the Internet, some guy across town took out full-page ads in the entertainment weekly that screamed, “We’ll beat ANY price!!!” Customers have always expected us to service the goods we sell, back up manufacturer [...]
Instrumentation Adaptation
By Dan Vedda The fall school band season was interesting in our market. For years, it was about dealers jockeying for position. The traditional “school music dealers” would use their influence to lock down parent meetings, whereas smaller operators fought to get on “recommended” lists, undercut rental rates, or leveraged their student population and neighborhood [...]
15 Years Is An Eternity
By Dan Vedda Anyone with more than 20 years in this business remembers a time when GC was in California, Ash was in New York and Amazon was in the jungle. Truth be told, we still had plenty to worry about. There were still catalogs, shady competitors using bait-and-switch tactics, sales reps shaking down dealers, [...]
Old Values
By Dan Vedda I’ve been thinking about the way I use technology in my business. Although the benefits are obvious and well documented, I don’t believe just any use is an automatic gain. It’s a balancing act: We need to be progressive and technologically adoptive while still retaining our core values and focus on the [...]
The Future Is A Moment Away
By Dan Vedda While reading an issue of Wired (20.05, May 2012), an article by Thomas Goetz, “How To Spot The Future,” jumped out at me. Trendspotting has always fascinated me, particularly since trends are driven by people’s choices rather than by pure technology. Trends determine how we use the technology: what happens when availability [...]
