Designed to be Different: South Carolina’s Musical Innovations celebrates 10 years of serving music schools

When it comes to serving schools, Musical Innovations of Greenville, South Carolina is grooming a reputation that’s potentially unmatched.

The store recently toasted to 10 years in operation, with owner Tracy Leenman at the helm of the celebration. Founded in 2009 by Leenman herself, the store has been destined to be distinguished from the start.

After earning three music degrees from Syracuse University and the Eastman School of Music, working with an area high school band, and climbing up the ladder of a different local music store, Leenman had crafted a specific vision for her own endeavor.

“Our company was designed to be different – customer-focused, with honest, affordable prices,” she tells MMR. “We look for innovative ways to meet peoples’ needs, whether through new products, different rental/purchase options, or extensive product knowledge training for our staff.”

Before hitting the 10-year mark, Musical Innovations also doubled in size in 2012, expanding the square footage from 1,300 square feet to 3,900. A small staff of 12 manages the business, but their dedication to music education shines through every aspect of Musical Innovations – namely through their music education specialists, who are all former band directors who work with students, parents, and educators on a daily basis. In South Carolina, Leenman describes the musical environment as flourishing, which Musical Innovations nourishes with their efforts.

“Our schools have, for the most part, excellent elementary music programs and also some very fine secondary music programs. The SC Coalition for Music Education, which we support, is active,” she adds. “We see primarily students and parents, and professional musicians – we house the only custom flute shop in South Carolina, Carolina Flutes. Because we are exclusively school music dealers, we are able to provide each customer focused, professional service by a specialist on his/her instrument.”

Also unique to Musical Innovations are their preferred accounts: clients who get extra-special treatment for sending the majority of their students to the store, even if they have a small circle of students to begin with.

“If an educator gives us the bulk of his/her business, whether it’s a huge budget or small, and supports us, we consider them a ‘preferred account.’ Some schools have only a dozen beginners, but they spend 100 percent of what they have to spend with us,” Leenman says. “And they ‘talk us up’ among their friends. I’d rather have ten of these than one account with 150 beginners where we have to split a rental program with another company. The theory that parents ‘should have a choice’ is ridiculous – parents always have a choice. But a director who studies all the companies’ offerings, and chooses us, and stands by us, will get the absolute red-carpet treatment from us, year-round.”

Outside of their store, Musical Innovations has two affiliates in state: Rice House of Music in Columbia, and Fox Music House in Charleston. Their advocacy extends ever further, as valiant proponents of the NAMM Fly-In.

There’s also some troubling trends in the education that need to be curbed, according to Leenman’s eagle eye. Also concerning is parents’ unwillingness to provide their children with quality instruments to use for lessons and practice. Looking back at the past decade, she says that rentals are ever-growing, yet many students are being pressured to put their time and energy into advanced coursework or sports instead of music.

“While our rentals are still increasing by leaps and bounds each year, we have seen a huge increase in families who are unable to rent instruments for their children. We also see a huge increase in parents who encourage sports and other things like AP classes in place of music,” Leenman says.

“While these things are certainly valuable, parents need to understand that their child has a 75 percent better chance of getting a music scholarship than an athletic scholarship. Also, parents seem to have trouble setting down guidelines for homework (i.e., practice) that will enable their children to succeed in music. When children don’t practice, they don’t improve. When they don’t improve, they get frustrated and leave the music program. And that’s sad.”

She continues: “In the last year or so, all these trends have escalated exponentially, along with an increasing number of parents who think it’s fine to start their child on a $100 ISO (instrument-shaped object) to ‘see if they like it’ – not realizing that the instrument itself is the very reason they won’t like it. It’s like telling your child, ‘You can drive in the Indy 500 in this VW bug – and if you win, I’ll buy you a real race car.’ It’s just not fair to the children, their chance of success is virtually nil.”

Where Leenman sees this issue with relationships, she tries to flip the script at Musical Innovations, stressing how much the customers and the local economy benefits: “We try to emphasize the value, the extras, the reason to use a local company – the emergency services, the free delivery, the support for the local economy and school programs. Our challenge is to take customers beyond ‘loyal’ to ‘exclusive,’ meaning they won’t go anywhere else, pretty much no matter what.”

Still, even with a solid customer base, the South Carolina shop has more plans for the coming years, aiming to expand their current storefront if a space opens up in the strip center and also add more subdealers to the picture. At this point, retirement isn’t even on the table for Leenman.

“The next 10 years? Well, I’m excited. We have a super staff, mostly young people who will be with us for a while. That gives us continuity and reliability in addition to our passion and expertise,” she says. “But we never want to grow so fast that we can’t continue to offer the same level exemplary service. Too much growth, especially financed growth, can be a trap for school music dealers. We prefer a slow and steady growth, one that’s sustainable. Even though I’m 63, I have no plans to retire any time soon, so in 10 years, I may well be right here!”