Awesome post, John. Some things we have done are: Have house concerts. We have a pretty small place but we can still fit 25 folks comfortably. We rented a bunch of chairs, hired top local pianists. We didn't look to make any money on this (other than paying me to tune my own piano!). We did 6 of these over the course of a couple of years and they were a big hit. We would often combine them with a 2 workshop for 10 people to spend with the pianist to pick their brain about technique, practicing, etc. Do a program for music teachers. We've done workshops for piano teachers' students on a number of occasions and they are always popular. We've had groups of students come to our little shop and repin hammers! Join the local music teacher association. I've been attending the meetings regularly since last year and it's already made an impact on our business. Having some of the most successful teachers see you on a regular basis is a good thing. We should be supporting the teachers as much as possible. Start piano playing clubs. I have a couple of groups of friends that get together once a month and play for each other and talk about music (and eat really good snacks and wine too!). I would like to promote these groups more and encourage people to start their own. Place pianos in the community. We provide a piano for our local violin shop's teaching studio. We don't charge for this, but the piano is for sale. It gives us a place to put a bit of inventory, promotes our business, and helps the teachers out. We also keep a piano at a local book store. It gets used on a regular basis. We sold 3 pianos out of this store last year. We also have one in a restaurant, and an antique store. I'd love to hear others' ideas! On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 6:23 AM, John Dorr <a440 at bresnan.net> wrote: > List, > > > > I work part-time at a music store and get to read various trade > publications. It always interests me to pick up the articles about piano > stores or other music stores that are thriving despite industry trends. I > think after reading a lot of these articles I see one thread more common > than others. That is: these businesses don't just promote their *sales*; > they promote the instrument by supporting it's audience. Some stores have > recital halls available for use for free with a good piano. Most stores > have vital, active lesson programs. Some support live music by producing > various events. All of this is done with the goal in mind of creating > excitement about the instrument(s) and visibility for the store. > > > > What does that have to do with us? We, who go from living room to living > room tuning pianos? It occurs to me that we could serve ourselves by using > the same principles. Figure out how we as individuals, or as PTG Chapters, > or as the PTG can promote piano playing, piano lessons, piano concerts, > etc. Not simply promote our own business and wait for people to respond, > you understand, but actually promote the act of piano playing. If we help > others in our piano-based universe (teachers, retailers, musicians, etc) we > help ourselves at the same time. > > > > How do I propose we do this? I'm not posting this to propose any > particular way. I'm posting this to stimulate discussion and brainstorming > about how we possibly can. But just to get the ball rolling, I noted > recently that the Percussion Marketing Group (I think that's what it's > called) has a program that brings assembly programs to schools at no cost to > the school. Drums excite the kids and inspire them to bug their parents to > buy drums and percussion equipment, join a band, take some lessons, etc. > Could WE get exciting piano players into schools for assembly programs? > > > > I live in a small town. Helena, Montana. We have a newspaper here that > welcomes articles from the populace. I used to write a bi-weekly column > about music for them. Perhaps I should revive that. > > > > How can we actively PROMOTE the piano? Promote piano lessons? Work with > dealers? Work with piano teachers? Work with our PTG Chapters? > > > > John Dorr, RPT > > Helena, MT > -- Ryan Sowers, RPT Puget Sound Chapter Olympia, WA www.pianova.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100409/ba3190e1/attachment-0001.htm>
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