Instrument Repair Can Fix Customer Relationships

Media and technology gadfly Eric Garland, co-founder of data-based metrics company Big Champagne, often converges music, technology, and retail in his thinking, once taking Guitar Center’s business model (and with it, the most recent Republican presidential nominee) to task, stating, “Retail in the 21st century will be centered around specialized knowledge, unique offerings and personal relationships, both local and digital. Any retailer – even one backed by Mitt Romney [–] is doomed if they defy those requirements.”

Without getting into why big-box retail environments and personalized service aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive (they’re not), it’s also a good way to look at one of the most intimate points of contact between an MI store and its customers that meets all three of Garland’s criteria: repair services, which are certainly specialized, unique and person-al. It’s not unlike the relationship between doctor and patient – you take something of yours that’s near and dear and is broken or damaged, whether it’s an arm or a guitar, and bring it to someone trained to see beyond the wound, able to look three or four steps ahead, to know what it’s really going to take to not only make it better, but make it right.

The Few, The Proud

MI repair is a relatively small cohort. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 7,240 people practicing the craft in the U.S. in 2013 (a number that includes piano tuners, many of whom also do repairs). Geographically, they’re focused in the northern tier of states from Indiana to New York, with additional concentrations in California, Texas, and Florida, with the vast majority of them working in retail shops, followed by freelance. They earn, on average, $16.82 per hour, with annual earnings just under $35,000. (A study commissioned by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce’s research center provides some granularity for Music City: the 153 people employed there doing MI repair and piano tuning earn $12.09 an hour.)

That’s not a lot of money, and one assumes MI repair specialists complement that income with other revenue, almost certainly including working as musicians or music teachers. But while, in general, low pay can suggest poor career choices, it can also indicate an inverse ratio of passion, which is only occasionally monetizable, but almost always very valuable. Knowledge, competence, and enough obsessional ardor for getting in deep with a sick instrument to the point of ignoring economic upward mobility is a strange and wonderful thing to find.

Finding Empathy

Repair professionals interact with the store in any number of ways, including as employees and as freelancers who use the store as the interface with their own customers. But regardless of how they connect with the store, once these individuals do, they’re part of your brand. Instrument repair offers a huge potential for synergy, because such services bring bodies through the store, and because as the repair person’s reputation grows, it can add luster to the store’s.

Treat these experts well, though, because it’s not an easy gig. Luthier Paul Jacobson offers some insight on his well-written blog (pjguitar.com): “Don’t give up your day job… The economic return on luthiery activity never gets very large, and this makes it difficult to capitalize your business while trying to make a living from it. I worked afternoons as a railroad switchman for almost twelve years. The work was a bore, but it paid well and was not particularly stressful. It gave me my mornings for guitar making, the time of day when I function best. Live in penury, so you can save as much as possible to plow back into your business. This is hard, and you will have to endure it for many years.”

It sounds downright Dickensian, but it places the luthier squarely in the same garret as those who buy and play those guitars for (hopefully) profit. So find a way to make instrument repair work for retail. It’s a truly empathetic connection to the customer.