The Coming Millennial Moment

There has been much fretting published about what the world will look like when it’s run – as it inevitably will be – by members of the Millennial generation. The reality is that it will likely look pretty much the way it does now – maybe a little better, maybe a little worse. And that includes the MI retail universe.

“Mills” get a bad rap, with studies abounding that portray them as quixotic and without dedication; demanding of recognition without a willingness to put in the hard work; and shaped by 9/11, texting, and two nasty recessions, all while living at home with their parents. Some research even suggests that male Millennials are the most gullible cohort, the group most likely to lose money in a phone scam.

Of course, much of that research on Millennials was done by Boomers and Generation X-ers, while also yelling at them to get off their lawns. The reality is that Millennials, while shaped by their unique experiences and having been brought up in a media-saturated environment, are as willing to work hard at success as anyone else. They just may not approach it quite the same way. For starters, their definitions of success are different. A 2015 study from Workplace Trends indicates that they are motivated to be leaders because they want to empower others, while only 10 percent care about legacy, and just five percent say they’d take a leadership job for the money. That stands apart from the Horatio Alger-ish mindsets that are the narratives, real and imagined, of much of the current MI retail world, still largely comprised of individual and family owned shops that are heading into their second or third generations.

Then there are the Millennial tools, which are largely mobile, interactive and socially connected, and which are still regarded as Flash Gordon ray guns by preceding generations, who are still wondering why Amazon is looking at trading FedEx for drones.

But Millennials are on the verge of coming into their own era of MI management, in retail and in manufacturing, and they see a business landscape ready for innovation and renovation, one that hasn’t fully leveraged the power of social media or connectivity. These are the areas where the next generation will make their marks.

Talk To Them

I asked Adam Levin about that. He’s the third generation of Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center, in Wheaton, Maryland. The store is named for his grandfather, who started it with his wife, Marge, in 1958 in Washington, D.C. Nearly 60 years later, Adam, 29, runs the business with aunt and uncle, Abbe and Alan, stepping into his father Robert’s shoes after his untimely passing.

“The music business is slow to change,” comments Levin, more an observation than a complaint, quickly adding, “What did you expect – it’s a business that’s largely about vintage instruments.”

Levin’s philosophy is one common to more thoughtful Mills: “Respect for the past, but flexibility for the future,” he says. It’s a bit surprising for a generation that has Mark Zuckerberg as its model. But Facebook had no past to ground it – to weight it down or act as its launch pad. The legacy MI retail and manufacturing businesses use the past as both.

Levin’s experience seems typical of any next generation’s initial interactions with the preceding ones, especially when those who came before were successful. When he came aboard in 2011, Levin immediately focused on the company’s website, which he saw as dated and un-integrated with the mainstream business. The family at the time seemed to view Adam and the website as made for each other, in the sense that they both seemed to belong to an alternate universe. But he eventually overcame their single biggest fear – that online sales would cannibalize in-store transactions – and showed them that the future of retail is a synergy of both virtual and physical sales.

It’s a happy ending after a fretful time, the kind of narrative that is playing out now and will continue to as the generations cycle. In the process, MI retail is going to come out the other end looking differently in some major ways. Levin says the personal interaction that is at the heart of the MI retail experience today will remain largely intact, even as much of it will take place online.

“Even four years ago, [online sales were] a mouse click and little else in the way of interaction,” he says. “Personal interaction seemed like it was becoming obsolete. But it wasn’t.”

In fact, Levin forecasts, what the current generations of MI executives now view as separate channels will eventually be merged into a single “omni” channel, one in which online and in-person become virtually indistinguishable. That’s not far-fetched, considering how deeply the larger retail design industry is embracing the concepts of immersiveness, VR and AR. Blurred lines won’t just be a song title anymore.

Adam Levin is a member of a small group within NAMM called Young Professionals. YP, as it’s also known, has 265 members. Compared with, say the nearly 100,000 who attended the 2016 Winter NAMM Show, it’s a drop in the generational bucket. But its under-40 cohort, which also includes names like John D’addario III and West Music president Robin Walenta, comprise the core of what comes next. They arrive with an amazing toolset and will confront an industry that’s lauded for its preservation of the past and notorious for its resistance to change. If this was on HBO, I’d watch.