The DIY ethos: surviving through eclecticism

Honestly, as much help and support as I've gotten from people--family, friends, customers, employees and suppliers--Skyline Music would not have survived (nor would it have had the character) during any period if I were a person with narrow interests. Were I just a guitar freak, band-o, tech guru or simply a salesman, it wouldn't work.
You see, we've never had enough capital to hire people to do the background stuff. The very few times when we had to rely on outside help on mission-critical tasks, it's been a disappointment--or worse.

I learned right away that advertising companies--from newspapers to yellow pages and other media, like ValPak--didn't understand our business. From odd gaffes due to unfamiliarity with our products and services (I received one proof for a Christmas ad that offered special pricing on "Metro Gnomes". Certainly a collectible series of Urban Elf figurines...) to a complete disconnect with the way we wanted to present ourselves (one ad rep pitched a "cheapest lessons in town" approach), it was obvious I had to do that myself. So early on I started designing any ad we placed (by the time we got  a PC and PageMaker, i submitted everything as camera ready art). I also wrote the articles that ran when we bought into any of those "place an ad, get a writeup" packages some small papers offered.

Of course, that opened the software thing as well. Learning PageMaker, Photoshop, Word, Excel, and Access--and later web design software--isn't a course I took. I sat down and cranked my way through the manuals and tutorials, read books and magazines, and figured it out. Not that I'm an expert at any of it. I learned what I could, and implemented as much as I could. I wish I'd had someone to explain it to me--it would have been easier and faster. But no one I knew had much background, and early on when I asked about databases and point-of-sale,supposed professionals just laughed at me.

So I did what I could myself, and usually had some fun with it.Were the results elegant? FAR from it. But they worked n some fashion, and we still rely on most of the paste-ups and McGuyvered solutions today.

On the merchandising front, my meager skills in carpentry and other tool-based activity allowed me to finish off studios, build displays, and do some electrical work we couldn't otherwise afford. Even down to the backdrop for the Front Porch stage, it's all been home grown. Sometimes there's been a helping hand at the brainstorming or assembly stage, but it's always been someone from the store that helped.. Yet every task I've tackled, someone has come up to me while I was doing it and asked, "Where did you learn to do that?" I'm astonished at the dads who saw me tiling the ADA bathroom who couldn't get over the fact that I didn't hire someone to do the work. With what money?

Repairs have been the same--I didn't train as a repairman, nor do I consider myself one. I just learned how to do a few things, and found I could rely on myself to do it faster, and often better, when it was something I was confident doing. Guitar setups, wind repairs, the little i do with violins--there are all people who are far more experienced and talented. I've just managed to do the easy stuff. But most of the stuff we see IS the easy stuff, and it's been more profitable and efficient to have me do it.

Thankfully, the biggest plus in my column is that I like making things, and can (given enough hands-on time and development think-time) manage to do OK with stuff. Far below the level of expert, only occasionally approaching "talented amateur", but adequate for the need and within budget--which is usually zero. Without that, we'd have no database, no website, no publications, no fixtures, far less revenue, and no Skyline Music.

The Opening Days...

One of the things I mention when talking about he first days of the store is the oddness of the timing. When I left the (now defunct) store that I worked at. I had already set the wheels in motion to open my own store. I had been fed up with the situation since August of 1986, and by the time October came in, I had consulted with my parents (who loaned the seed money), my wife Rhonda, and the one teacher who had encouraged me to open (Cheryl Fitiak). By the end of October, I had a vendor's license and had settled on our Dover Village location in Westlake. The shopping center's first building was under construction, and based on the completion date (and the amount of latitude my new landlord was willing to give me), we decided to open at the start of February. Not the easiest time to launch,  but with no expectations, it wasn't a worry. I really didn't think about the fact that I was opening on Groundhog Day...it became a running joke after the fact. (If I saw my shadow, I'd wait six more weeks before opening, etc.)

During November and through the Christmas season, I contacted suppliers with mixed results. Most suppliers didn't give me the time of day, and those that did made me jump through many more hoops than suppliers in the industry do today, where anyone with a web address and a credit card can be a dealer for some lines.

One of the first people I talked to who took me seriously was Fred Salvador at Harris Teller. Although he's set to retire at the end of 2011, at this writing I still talk to Fred and order every week from his company.

While I was lining up products, I was cranking down on the new computer I had purchased for the store: an Apple IIC (with classic green phosphor display) and the Imagewriter II dot matrix printer. Seriously, it was pretty cutting edge for the day. I used it to draft all the documents for the store, from lesson brochure to the first mailer, start the basic billing system, etc. Finished documents came from my uncle the printer at my dad's insistence. I guess my uncle owed him money, and this was the only way he thought he'd see it. It wasn't the best working relationship. It took a few years to free myself from it, but I found another printer for the mailer (eventually using Kinkos for the final year or two of publication).

All the while, I was anxiously waiting for the keys to my new store. Construction delays--and the holidays--meant that the January 1 completion date wasn't going to happen. I got the builder to let me start working in the unit while the frame up was going on, and I continued to spend time underfoot until the drywall crew finished. Even then, theunit didn't have locks, so about mid-January when merchandise started to arrive, I'd sit in the unheated unit until the UPS driver, Tom Fiebig, showed up with boxes. I'd load them into my van, since I couldn't keep them at the store.

But even as the building was finished, we had a problem. The electric company wouldn't schedule service until all the inspections were complete, and based on the construction delays, that meant electricity would be available...about the 10th.

So we worked with a propane bullet heater and a bunch of 100-watt bulbs hung from the rafters. The moisture from the heater condensed on the walls, cold from single-digit January temperatures...so much that one studio had the  paint wash off as the moisture ran down from freshly painted walls.

Once the furnace was in and gas hooked up, we got heat and work lights by running an extension cord from the old house that stood where Subway and Stay In Style are today. Every time the furnace blower kicked in, the lights would dim. By the time the drop ceiling was in, we had tiles lifted so work lights could drop through.

February 2 came, and we opened under rustic conditions. The first sale (a set of guitar strings and a pair of drumsticks) came on day 3 while still under temp power. Saturday the first lessons (3 piano students for Joyce Roman--Cheryl was scheduled to start in March) were taught under the same conditions. I'm sure Mary Eagleeye and her daughter Becky thought we were part of the Underground Railroad or something.

But we got power, and in the sparse traffic of the first few weeks I finished additional studios. Cheryl started in March, and that brought us 30+ students. The first drum lessons and some flute, clarinet and sax students trickled in, plus a cello student or two. By the time June hit, we celebrated our hundredth student...but that's another story.

The Name...Why Skyline Music?

I've answered this question too many times to count--
--but here it is, so perhaps I can answer it a few times less in person. Skyline was the band I had for the decade prior to opening the store, and anyone that had known me during that time knew Skyline was me. It was, I hoped, a beacon that said, "here I am!" The group was a seven piece unit that played a lot of country clubs and corporate functions, plus a wedding or other event here and there. We didn't do bars much, (one nighters paid more), and while we snuck some originals in, it wasn't a big part of what we did. We played for entertainment, which meant giving the crowd what they wanted to hear...not unlike retailing.

The reason we named the band Skyline is a little foggy at this remove, but in part it was because we played a broad range of material, from jazz to pop, disco at one point, etc. We were more urban than country, and the city image, we thought, gave us a more, shall we say, cosmopolitan flair. I came up with the concept for the original logo. It was rendered by a graphic artist friend of our bass player at the time, who selected the typeface (called  "Stop"). Stop was pretty hard to read, so I restyled some of the letters, and the circle silhouette logo was used from 1978 on. By the time I opened in 1987 it had undergone a couple of slight revsions, and I just added the "music" to the logo.

There have been a number of variants since, but the two most significant were recasting the typeface ("Skyline" is set in Bauhaus, "music" in Catflisch script.) and later removing the circle to create what we refer to as the "line logo"--just the name and the city outline. There have been anniversary versions, and at our 15th anniversary we added a "sidecar" number logo. The 20th anniversary used the sidecar again.The original intent was to use the sidecar only for "milestone" years, but Jill pushed me to create one for each year after that, and I did with varying success. Some numbers are less sexy in this regard...but there it is.

The Never-Ending Quest

Retail is never an accomplishment, it is an ongoing process.

To me, there is never a sale, a month, or a year that I can hold up and say, "Look what I did!" No sooner does the sale, month, or year close than the next quest presents itself. Oh, there are milestones, times when you get a little ahead, or victories here and there. But there's no time to reflect on it, because the heartbeat of retail has to keep pumping. Rent will still be due, payroll will come up, and even in the most cash-positive businesses, you have to think, plan, and prepare for the next sale. If you don't, things will change, like taking your hands of the steering wheel. There is no autopilot in retail. The market shifts, new channels open up, new products and procedures become available, and it affects the way your business runs.

Oh, there are those who still do everything 1980s-style. But I know that our store would not have survived without the changes we've made. We HAD to sell on ebay, participate in Shopatron, and create a website. The financial tools we've added--a new checking account and credit card processor, remote check deposit, etc.--were crucial to our cashflow. Even our YouTube channel, facebook pages, and cafepress shop are important parts of our marketing efforts, even though there is little they documentably add to the bottom line.

One of my big frustrations, in fact, is that right now the day-to-day of the business consumes too much of my time. Not that I'm whining for a day off (oh, I'd use one if it were possible, but not right now). I want more time to explore these new options, create new designs, find new tools. Instead, I work as fast as I can to crank through repairs, answer lesson inquiries, and track down obscure items at suppliers. All necessary, of course. But once I had the luxury of having others on staff to do those tasks so I could plan and chart our course. Now, I shoot from the hip. Granted, I can do repairs faster (I'm in every day, all day), and I'm the best point-person for the lesson program and several sales departments. I don't mind doing it. It just keeps me from doing the things that only I can do. I can't delegate that creative, questing part of the job without removing my character and vision as well. To have someone else do it is like agreeing to an arranged marriage. It could work out. It could be horrible. But it denies serendipity, vision, and removes the value of personal choice. Even if it worked, it wouldn't really be me.

So I'll do the questing in the in-between moments. the rest of the time, I have to turn the gears to make things work. Here I go again.

The Origin Story

I never set out to have my own store.

In fact, if you had mentioned it to me six months before I made the decision, I'd have told you, "no way in hell!". It seems that a lot of the turns in my life path have been...not impulsive, but certainly sudden. You can see the path that led there, but it's not unlike walking down a hallway lined with doors. An obstacle presents itself, a door opens, and I'm n the next room. Or, I poke my head in an open door, step in, and it shuts behind me, perhaps. I became a band director not because I pursued the career path, but because someone suggested me for the job without my knowledge. I began writing columns for The Music and Sound Retailer, one of our trade publications, not because I applied and submitted an article, but because I wrote a letter to the editor. Adam Remson liked my writing style and asked me to do a guest editorial...and over a dozen years later, I still write a monthly column.And, thankfully, get paid to do it.

I would have been completely happy to be part of a successful team. I liked retail, I liked music gear, but I wanted to gig and play, not own a brick and mortar storefront. Working at a now-defunct store called Music City (later Ohio Guitar), I was introduced to the industry and liked the combination of customer contact, selling, gear, promotion, and music. It was multi-faceted, and I soon devoted far more than the hours I was paid for to help the store. It was a tough time in the mid-80s, lots of transitions, corporate dismantling, rapid technology shifts, etc., and the store struggled. The owner of that store wanted to make a pile of money, collect Corvettes, and work a less-than 40 hour week. I was a good fit for that, because I was happy to help and his relatively relaxed management style gave me freedom to experiment and inject my personality into the store.

Until things got tougher and he felt I was a financial drain on the store. I was a different kind of salesguy, too, and for a number of reasons he distanced me from the store and cut me off from day-to-day decision making. However, teachers in his store were unhappy with the way teachers and students were treated. One of them, Cheryl Fitiak, was done with it, and also angry on my behalf because it seemed as though he had me doing all the work of running the store for minimum wage. She said, "You should start your own store." I told her that was ridiculous. She pushed the issue, and said, "If you open a store, I will teach for you and bring my students with me."

That was the moment that began Skyline Music, some time in October, 1986. Whatever reservations I might have had (and honestly, I was too naive to really see all the challenges and pitfalls) was trumped by the fact that she believed in me enough that she was willing to risk her livelihood to follow me into the venture. With the exception of my wife, only one other person has had that level of belief, and I didn't meet her until almost 20 years into the project.

Rolling the Rock Uphill

Today was a day when I had to deal with supplier problems, enough that I'm ready to scream. I actually started a post to vent, but I've though better about it. If you're gracious enough to read this, you don't need to hear me gnash my teeth and spout venom. It would seem both out of character and uncomfortably inappropriate, particularly in a blog celebrating our history and achievements of the last 25 years.

I will only say that no matter how many years pass, the problems remain the same. The good part is, many of our most unpredictable inspirations and elegant workarounds came at the door of adversity. All those platitudes about Necessity being the Mother of Invention (therefore, Necessity = Frank Zappa) and "if you have a lemon, make lemonade" ring true. I can hardly wait to see what inspiration I come up with THIS time.

-------------------
One Thing About this Blog:
at least in its real-time online form, it won't be chronological. I may take the historical parts and organize them into some sort of narrative later, but what you'll see here are my memories and feelings about the history of the store, filtered through my long-term perspective. As such, there will be gaps and downright omissions; that's how our memories work. I will skew the topics to positive ones...this isn't a tell-all, show the seamy underbelly of the industry epic. I'll explain some of the issues and personalities to some extent, but really, this is the story of what we've accomplished, and the people who helped me do it. Funny anecdotes? Sure. But this is just a companion piece. For someone who is curious about the store ("Why did you call it Skyline Music?") Or interested in the origins of our signature events (for example, Hawaiian Shirt Day was a spinoff of the Garage Sale. Fascinating.) this will tell the stories, and we don't have to worry about time, I don't have to tell the story ten times in a row to various people, and you can check it out at your leisure, if you're interested, rather than stand politely while I bend your ear talking about something that may have happened before you were born..

There will be other venues for faculty, staff, customer, and supplier memories of the store, curated on facebook or compiled for the website. We'll begin collecting them as 2012 unfolds, aiming for a mid-year peak in the celebration. Stay tuned--as these channels open up, I'll also link them here.

Interwoven Threads

This many years down the road, I think what surprises me the most are the long term relationships that have come from that first day I put the shingle out. It isn't just the continuity of individuals--sure, we have wonderful long term relationships with area teachers (Piano teacher Cathy Gilchrist was one of our very first regular customers, and we still see each other regularly). But the number of lives that have been blended in with the store still astonishes me...
Rich Pokrywka was an early trumpet student of ours. We saw him through grade school and high school. He went off to BW to major in music and then to Georgia for his masters. Married and starting a family, he returned to the area and taught at the store. He left again to pursue his doctorate at OSU, and came back again to teach. He's been associated with the store in some way for over half of his life.
The Ryan family deserves special mention: their oldest son Dan took lessons with Cheryl before the store ever opened. Add the other ten Ryan siblings, most of whom took lessons at the store...and we've had a family member in the lesson program almost continuously for 25 years! Mark is still taking with Cheryl at this writing, and Carrie just left for college.
The Hamms have contributed two of their kids to the Skyline workforce. Darren started in guitar at age 9, and began working for the store at 16. Deanna was a couple of years behind him. Darren was on staff and fully involved in the planning of some of our long term signature events: Hawaiian Shirt Day, Mardi Gras, and Christmas Eve would probably not have flown without his enthusiasm--or at least willingness to humor me and go along for the ride. It's one thing to plan an event. But staff members (first) and customers have to buy in to it. Darren was a willing partner in crime on events, even when attendance was low. There will be blog entries for all our signature events...some war stories will undoubtedly emerge. Darren and Deanna's parents, Don and Dianne, are still Front Porch regulars, and Dianne has been Queen of the Boo-fay at Mardi Gras since year one. Having the support of an entire family-for many years--is gratifying beyond anything.
There are so many more--families that have supported the store, students who have returned to enroll their children, kids who worked for me and now have careers and families, and who still keep in touch. Faculty members, spread all over the world, who still remember teaching at Skyline Music with appreciation and fondness.
Touching lives this way, weaving a tapestry from so many threads...it's not what you think about when you ring up a sale or sign up a student. But it's probably the most accurate measure of the success of what we've done. Profit is nourishment to keep the business running. But food is not who we are, and profit is not the story of our business. We help people make music. That's what I've always said, and it is the definition I'm proudest of, always.

How Different the Times...

One of the things that we take for granted is the technology we use. For those of us who grew up with television, life with radio alone (that would be broadcast radio, gang, not the Internet version) seems quaint. Even if you don't watch TV, you're aware of it and its impact. Kids today have never lived without cell phones and the Internet, and likely wonder how we got anything done in the oh-so-primitive 1980s.

My mother would have been 100 on October 21, 2011. She had me well into her 40's, and while the insanity of a woman in her 50's with TWO toddlers isn't that odd now (given the grandparents faced with raising their grandkids)  in the day, it was more than odd. It was downright aberrant.

In related fashion, many of the things we did with the store seem both quaint technologically and were odd in the society of our industry. In 1987. the computer we started the store with (at a time when 2/3 of the industry did not use computers) was an APPLE IIC, along with its Imagewriter II dot matrix pin-feed printer.(Thanks to one of our first students, John Kurokawa, for rubbing that in recently in an email on LinkedIn.)

We cobbled up our documents pasting text blocks and images with rubber cement onto a template, in a process that makes scrapbooking look like magic. It's why I jumped on PageMaker the instant we had the opportunity. The fax machine was an expensive gadget, and we only got one (eventually) because all our suppliers expected us to have one.

There was no reason to email, no Internet to speak of, no ebay, facebook, or twitter, of course, and even a decade in from our opening, a store website was far ahead of the curve.

But while we couldn't do the things we do today (including now, YouTube and CafePress)  because the technology wasn't widely available, it would have been difficult to seriously imagine some of the tech possibilities we have now even five years ahead of launch. (I joked about the silliness of GPS dog collars when the units were in their infancy and over $1000...now, it's an app, and why not use it to track a lost pet?) Still, we have embraced the technology we could use, adding our website, youtube, ebay, and facebook as they made sense for the business. And in each instance, I have added them myself, not at the prompt of a younger staff member pushing me to get with the times.When we've delayed, it has been a resource issue, not lack of awareness or intent. We were registered on ebay in 1998, but it wasn't until 2008 that we found the right way to integrate it into our business. CafePress was an epiphany for me--Darren Hamm and I tried to do our own designs for totes and other music novelties in the 90's, and it was just too expensive to have inventory made in bulk. Manufacturing on Demand made it work. Some ideas were in place long before technology made them possible.

But we were ahead of the curve in many social respects when in came to helping people make music. In 1987, it was odd to base a store around an education program. (The first document ever created for the store, and still virtually identical to the original, was the Private Instruction Program brochure.) Outside of the conservatory, it was unusual to see degreed teachers, female teachers (particularly on guitar and drums), or non-Caucasian teachers.Even offering a discount to students--one of the very first things I put down on paper, months before we opened) was considered crazy. "Students will buy from you anyway! Why give them a break?" was the prevailing wisdom.

In the retail music trade, we used slatwall and track lighting when most of the stores in MI were still on pegboard and fluorescent lights. Heck, a color scheme was off the wall, and virtually no one priced guitars and other big ticket items, because most stores quoted a price based on how savvy they thought the buyer was. So moms or newbie kids got regularly gouged to pay for the pros who asked "What's MY price, dude?"

It was odd for a mom to even frequent a music store. Most parents avoided the store I once worked for (moms often sent the dads in), coming in to buy when needed, but never hanging around much. Band stores delivered to the schools, combo stores catered to the teens and pros, and hoped no one else would wander in and waste their time.

Adult students, now 20% of our enrollment and growing? Discouraged by teachers and stores alike, with rare exceptions. Little kids..."you're taking your little one into a music store? With all the freaky people there?" Music stores were either stuffy institutions or boys clubs back then, and I didn't want to work for either.

Truthfully, it's not like the world was ready for change. Piano teachers looked askance at the big-haired rockers that walked in to get strings from me in the early days. The spandex crowd felt it totally uncool to be in the same room with qrandmotherly types.

We had many people who wouldn't take lessons from a woman, Asian, long-haired, (or short-haired) teacher, and that isn't even thinking about the issues raised when gay or lesbian faculty members are thrown into the mix. You also have to remember the freaked-out panic during the early AIDS years.

I've never spent time dwelling on it. No one but me realizes how much heat we took for believing that the best person to teach  might be someone whose background, race or lifestyle might not match waspy middle America. We could have played it safer, but it wouldn't have been me or what I thought was right.

So I think about this now, and I realize, from my perspective, that it was just what I did. My mom saw technology go from Wright Brothers airplanes to moon landings and beyond. Heck, she pre-dated refrigeration. But she took it all in stride, using what made sense to her (even using an Apple computer in her 70s) and didn't worry about the rest.

She was socially ahead of her time, marrying (her second husband) a man 11 years her junior, entering the workforce and self-supporting in her 20s (yes, during the Depression no less), and having kids in her 40s when most mommies were late teens and 20s. She never did any of this to make a statement. She was too early to be part of a trend. It was just how life played out for her.

Similarly, we bucked a lot of trends, but it was because I saw things differently, not because I had some grand vision of the music industry as it should be. I came to have some beliefs, but when I opened the doors, I just wanted to help people make music and take care of customers.

Sometimes, it's as much rolling with it and being yourself as anything. My mom did it...I just seem to have followed in her footsteps.

Preparing for Milestones

On February 2, (yes, Groundhog Day--the auspicious nature of our start has never been lost on me) 2012, we will begin to celebrate 25 years of Skyline Music. The sheer number of people who we've met, helped, and who continue to be our customers and friends is gratifying, and when I stop to think about it, astonishing and humbling.  There's so much to remember, to celebrate, and let's not forget, so many people who we still help every day. I may be overly ambitious even trying to blog this--but I'd wish I had if I didn't try, so here it is.

It's going to be a busy year!