Encouragement from the Word

My tme in the bible this morning was in Phillipians 3 and I was greatly encouraged by this passage.  The business continues to struggle, and if I took my encouragement by what I see with my physical senses there would be little to be encouraqged about.  Sometimes the Lord uses other Christians to encourage us but there is nothing like taking in the Word of God to keep my thinking on the right path and see his work in my life.
     I came to know the Lord when I was nine and this passage talks about knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection.  This is the Lord's work but the passage encourages us to not look at our immediate circumstances but to "press on" toward what the Lord has for me in the future.  I am encouraged to work hard at the tasks set before me but know that the Lord is also at work. 

black friday: A marketing opportunity

     I have never particularly liked shopping and certainly never have liked shopping in a crowd of shoppers.  Now that I am on the other side of the fence and am a retailer I am feeling the pressure of making these holiday events profitable.  My store will be open from 10 to 7 as is the usual hours on this day, but I am doing some advertising featuring some new products at very special prices.
     Today was a good day with better sales and more traffic in the store.  If this week is good I can expand my orders for the Christmas season and try to capture more of that business.  I am soon going to have to decide how to keep the store open while in Chicago and how long I can stay.  I also have to very soon decide whether to attend the Midwest Band Directors convention.  I have attended this event many times when I was teaching and enjoyed it very much as a band director.  Attending as a merchant will be very different and one day I would love to attend as an exhibitor.  There would be some very good benefits from attending such as:
     (1) finding new sources of product.  The big distributors will be there like Selmer and Yamaha but there are many other smaller folks that might love to have another outlet for their products.  Anything to set my store apart would be good like offering a quality brand that is not easily found elsewhere.
     (2) Finding new customers :  The band directors that attend all control a school budget and need everything that I sell.  It is a bonanza of potential customers that are in an environment that is unique and much more conducive to relational selling. I am a retailer but was a band director for many years so know exactly what these folks do every day and have a good insight to their needs.
     (3) Educating myself on the latest technology: The latest and best in technology used in the classroom is all there and the dealers of this product are eager to connect with potential buyers who can in turn market the product.
     It is still another expense so I will need to try to be as objective as I can about the cost verses the benefit.  It is something that I want to do already so being objective is hard.  Decisions like these would be easier to make well if I were still involved with a business mans group like the Christian Businessmen s Committee as I was in Chicago before the store.  This week I attended a luncheon and the speaker compared life in corporate America verses the life on an entrepreneur.  In the corporate setting you are working in teams and you do not want to take risks but an entrepreneur has to operate alone in a very exposed position.  Leading and risk taking are part of the job.

Chicago travel: memories of the blizzard

     In some of my previous posts i defined what a snowbird is.  I have at times described myself as a snowbird in reverse.  A snowbird travels to the north in the sjummer and comes to Florida in the winter.  They are definately here as evidenced by the traffic and doubled attendance at church.  I will be heading to Chicago sometime in the first week of December to stay for two seeks or so and work as a tuner and then portray Herod in the living nativity at church..  That is why I have called myself a snowbird in reverse.  The business and this event bring me to Chicago in the opposite season as is normal.
     It has actually been  almost a year since I made the trip and last year when I drove to Chicago I drove right through a 20 inch blizzard that was bearing sown on the place.  I drove through the night on that occasion and arrived at my first tuning appointment at exactually 8:30 AM.  I have to climb up a huge snow drift with a big tool box in hand to ring the customers bell.  When the customer opened the door she was shocked that I was there at all much less on time.
     This trip I am planning on flying and I hope the weather will be milder than last year.  I do miss the snow aq little so I guess I have not yet become totally aclimated to Florida.  It is a little different too when you know you will be back in the sunshine in a couple of weeks.  We have performed our Journey to Bethlehem many times with snow on the ground and a little snow does add to the setting although there was no snow in Herods home when the events actually took place that we are recreating.
     This is our 20th year to present Journey and I am looking forward to seeing many friends in Chicago and especially to see my two sons again.

Business travel: essential, expensive and difficult

     For a number of years now Renshaw Music has operated in two states 1200 miles apart. The biggest part of the piano tuning business is in Chicago and now here is Florida there is a large music store.  Travel to Chicago in December has always been a combination of business and a tradition of portraying Herod in the living nativity offered to the community by my church in Chicago.  this is our 20th year to produce Journey to Bethlehem  and I have participated every year every night for all 20 years.
     Some of the challenges of this trip have been that I have always driven.  I used to drive the whole trip without an overnight stop but these days I make the first day a good 15 hours starting at 3:00 AM, and then the second day is comparatively easy.  Driving was necessary because I needed to carry all my tools and parts so that I could do more elaborate work on my customers pianos.  Because primarily of the store I believe this year I am going to fly.  It has always been true that the trip would be cheaper flying than driving when you consider meals and lodging and the cheap air fares usually possible on this route.  The new variable now is the store and the time on the road that would not produce income from tuning and take time away from my tending to the store that would produce income.
     Journey will also produce some real down time from the business as a whole.  As much as I have come to enjoy Florida, I will get to spend some time with my two sons who live in Chicago, and reconnect with my church family at First Baptist of Oak Park.  The business demands of such a complicated enterprise are very hard to get away from and I am usually in need of this real down time in order to finish the year strong and prepare for the Christmas season.  After doing Journey for so many years it just would not seem like Christmas without my role in Journey.
     When I do these trips to Chicago I spend weeks before the trip packing tuning work into the period I will be in town so I am certain the tuning income will make the trip turn a profit. I usually don't make much of a profit but if I just break even I would still need to invest some time in the Chicago enterprise to keep the business healthy there.
     It is always a very busy time but in spite of the expense and grueling schedule I return refreshed and feeling like the company as a whole is in a better state.  These trips require very careful planning often for weeks before I depart.  It has been many years sense I have flown and I am looking forward to arriving refreshed and ready to go.

Store open: the hard work begins

Renshaw Music

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       I have been open now for two months. I had a grand opening and last month a ribbon cutting.  those events were good for the visibility of the store in the business community.  I made some choices that I kne3w would present certain challenges such as to be self funded.  I am debt free which is good but I do not have the benefit of elaborate advertising or complete stocking from day one.  I am doing without elaborate shelving and counters but the store still looks good and the product will grow as the store develops.
     Some of these challanges I expected but there were some surprises such as:
     1)  Refusal or resistance from large suppliers to make Renshaw  a dealer for their products.  Reasons given are territorial.  The nearest large music store to me is about 40 miles and I am told by some that that is too close.  The idea is that another dealer that sells their products would be unfairly impacted by another dealer that is "too Close".  I think that is not reasonable because given the choice of driving 40 miles to get a specific brand of new instrument the customer would choose an alternate brand from the competition or go with used.  I also know that there are dealers much closer than 40 miles apart in larger metropolitan areas like Chicago so this rule must not apply everywhere.
     2)  Large minimum orders.  The same dealer that flatly refused to offer me a dealer status would also require that the first order be $60,000.  I am told that if a customer laid $8000 on my counter for a new instrument this dealer would refuse to sell it to me.  This is a line of reasoning that I just find hard to understand.  If someone makes something why would he refuse to sell only one.  Is it better to sell one or none?  When one manufactures something I always thought the idea was to sell it.
     3)  Stocking wisely:  We are back again to marketing.  Now that I am open I have customers coming into the store telling me they want to buy a certain product or a certain brand or specification of product.  I stock what is specifically requested especially if that customer actually comes back to but the item.  I also need to supply products that I know are desired by the population group that I have not met yet. 
     I do enjoy working in the store and as I grow I will be able to major on my strengths more.  One thing about being small is that you have to do it all and in a sense time management is a major issue.  The things that are not my strengths seem to take me a much larger time to accomplish than someone that is more talented in that area.  There is always a balance between saving time by delegating tasks to someone who could do it faster or trading your time for money by doing it myself.  Sometimes it costs less to hire someone else to do a task if you save enough of your own time or the use of others services increases profits.

Jazz society promotion: refining the idea

     The jazz society promotion with two jazz pianists that recently ended was a qualified success in that I added four new customers to my business in South Florida.  I am doing it again with a concert on Dec 12th featuring Bill Alfreds classic jazz band.  I will again put it on my web site, and post info on the store bulletin board.. I have 15 tickets this time and my goal is to add 15 new tuning customers to the business.
     With the snow birds coming back and the holiday season starting, there should be more traffic in the store so this should bring some takers without any additional effort.  I am in the process of launching a advertising campaign for the business in general and hope to make all the advertising more targeted.  To this end I plan to use a consultant that attended the entrepreneurial academy course with me. I am a general purpose music store but I think I need to select a few other target markets that the store can serve such as:
                   1)  church musicians
                   2)  student musicians
                   3)  Working small ensembles
                                    a) renting studio rooms for rehearsal
                                    b) carrying recording and amplifying equipment
                                    c) exchanging space on web sites  or selling space on my site

     Identifying the target for marketing efforts is the first task and often the most neglected part of a targeted marketing or advertising strategy.  If the target of the marketing is at all unclear then marketing and advertising efforts are often less effective and time and energy is wasted.  Time and treasure is always limited so using it to the best advantage essential to getting the best result.