Interview: RPMDA President Carol Wilbur

The Retail Print Music Dealers Association (RPMDA) will host its annual conference April 30 – May 3 in Dallas. The conference, a diverse collection of retailers in charge of print specialty stores and print departments along with reps from the industry's leading music publishers and retail services, offers members of this active segment of the market a chance to learn new tricks and socialize.

This year’s conference updates the usual program by offering new “track” schedules, allowing attendees to select specific weekend-long groups of sessions targeted for the novice print music employees, the print buyers or managers, and the owners or general managers. Larger group sessions include " Salesperson’s Guide to Consumer Print Music" and "Branding U: Stand Out in a Crowded Market Place."

We caught up with RPMDA president Carol Wilbur (Pender's Music Co.) to discuss some of the show's new changes and the goals that have remained constant throughout the years.

RPMDA is always a great place to socialize, but its primary mission is to educate. Is it difficult to convince print industry folks of the constant need for business education?

It seems like people who are better at doing things like print are always aware that there's a lot more to learn. Others tend to assume they know all there is to know. That's a problem. With this new program, we're trying to hand it to you on a silver platter. There's so much educating to do. Our regular loyal members say, "We come here because we can't get print education anywhere else." There's very little at NAMM, which is mostly instruments and accessories.

There have been a lot of changes to the breakout sessions this year. Was the desire to get attendees educated at different levels the main goal for this year's conference?

We decided at last year's show that we needed to get very focused on what direction we need to go in order to keep RPMDA going. The thing that we had been trying for the last several years was to offer adjacent areas of music interest – lesson program sessions to get non-print managers involved, for example. The big deal seems to be to get store owners and managers onboard with the concept that, "Here's a group that can educate my print employees for me and thereby make the print department a profitable part of the store." The print department can offer nonstop walk-in traffic because everybody needs print. 

We thought that maybe if the owners got there and we offered things like accessories or gift sessions – things outside the normal realm of print – then they'd be interested to come check out the print as well. We get a lot of feedback, but we weren't seeing the other print novices come in from random stores here and there. Stores weren't seeing the value in sending their employees here yet.

How do the new breakout sessions differ from how they've been done in the past?

Before, we were doing something like three breakouts a day. When you have a breakout with attendees of various levels of expertise, you could run into problems. If you have an experienced person in attendance, you don't want to talk about basic buying issues. When you have brand new people there, you don't want to throw them into the middle of new Excel sheet functions and inventory strategies. Two or three people suggested to the Board that we have a track system with different topics geared toward different categories of people.

Any tracks seem the most exciting to you in terms of the convention's development?

We already have 25 percent of our registrants as first-timers. And that's great. Our newer members from last year in fact brought up our current idea for the track system of learning sessions. So I'm excited for the "Print 101" track for five-years-and-under experienced employees, which will throw all those people together for two straight days. They're going to find common links with each other and I think their relationships will grow.  They'll be able to solve problems that they encounter in their stores and help each other out throughout the year, maybe more so than they would with someone who's already been doing this for 40 years or something. 

There also seem to be a lot of nitty gritty business practice seminars, like the one led by Bob Kohl (Long & McQuade) and Alan Friedman.

Bob is just the consummate print employee. He is so good everything. When he pairs with Alan Friedman, who is the CPA for so many music stores and knows this business inside and out – you'd honestly have to pay megabucks to have that kind of professional come into your store and give you that kind of advice.

A consistent spark of energy in recent years has been the recurring "Future View" session, which invites a panel of retailers and publishers to lead a conference-wide discussion on some of print's thornier issues.

That event always tries to keep us informed of all the changes that are going on in our industry. An example is Alfred and Hal Leonard have been branching out over the last few years into the accessory market and sound systems and things like that. People might think, "Why would you do that?" These are the ways the market is changing and there are good reasons for them, which we discuss in a unique way every year. We've also pounded social media into people's heads for years and there are certainly more steps to take in that direction.

This isn't just an issue for the retailers – suppliers want to see everyone getting education as well. The more educated their retailers are, the more smoothly and efficiently things will run for the publishers. People will be more profitable and productive and stay in business longer across the board.

These sessions can get pretty heated!

For several years, people just didn't want to talk about some things because the attitude was that if you talked about it, it was a reality. I think our first Future View session really brought out a lot of reaction because everyone is ready to contribute. When you have reps up there speaking for you on a panel and they have the same concerns that you do, it's much easier for everyone to recognize that these are real issues – what can we do about them?

For more info on the RPMDA show, visit the RPMDA's website at printmusic.org.