10/29/2023
In the news, there is a lot of bad stuff happening. So, I thought I'd take a few moments to tell a 20 year-long condensed story with a very happy ending...
About 20 years ago, Paul, Christine, Nancy and I started laying the groundwork for a music store in Ottawa. First thing was for Paul and Chris to move out this direction and change jobs. Paul and I have now worked together for half of our working lives thanks to music. I knew from the second I met him he was going to be important for the rest of my life. It was easy to imagine Paul running a music store with the leadership and compassion it would take.
Our first project was to fix up the old insurance building/Chicken Joint/General Store into something that could work for teaching, along with space for a store. Three months later, a week after we opened the store, this smiling, very chipper young person named Craig Peek walked through the door, inquiring about teaching. Later Randy Noy joined the team and we hit the ground firing on all cylinders. Without any of us four guys involved or Christine doing the books, we'd have bit the dust long ago, so there are many miracles involved in our story! We were trying to do the seemingly impossible right as the 2006/7 recession hit, as around 200 music stores in northern Illinois vanished the 20 years prior - it wasn't a great moneymaking idea ever, we just believed it could work if we kept expenses down and worked hard as we could... That was the core idea we started with, not unlike Field of Dreams.
There was something magical about Ottawa and its people - who would NEVER let a stranded motorist sit alone without offering to help, coming to the aid of their neighbors doing whatever they could to help out. As a new resident we had three giant oak trees fall with one blocking our driveway after a tornado struck nearby, I started up my chainsaw and noticed all these people coming towards me It was our new neighbors with their chainsaws to help us out.
For 15 years, the retail side of our business was slowly shrinking, while the lessons and repair work increased. We soldiered on, hoping people would eventually realize what supporting local commerce does to strengthen a community. I was working with a fairly well-known musician, engineering a record for his band, and we had computer problems, so we went out I thought to buy a new faster computer. First, we went to two large chain stores, then ended up at a small shop. We gave the owner our wish list of features, and he came up with a price $400 over the other two bids and a 10 day build time. Then the musician said "Ok, Joe, we'll do that, thanks, see you in 10 days". I asked him why we weren't going back to Best Buy, and he said "If I don't buy the computer from Joe, what will he do for a living, and who will be my son's baseball coach when Joe has to find something else to do to pay his mortgage, and possibly move out of the area?" Economics 101, but apparently, they don't teach that in school anymore... Lowest prices, only means you are not always looking at the best options or the side effects.
When Covid broke out, we kept hoping things would get better for retail like what happened with Guitar Hero, or the Beatles for that matter, but the music retail business itself was coming unglued. As we all know, online and mail order businesses took over the industry. That, combined with the very franchises we helped build suddenly changing all the rules: requiring us to buy 4 of anything to get pricing so we could match online pricing with out-of-state businesses that didn't charge sales tax. They used small stores like us to build their giant corporate businesses, and then turned on all of us.... Free shipping to the big retailers while killing us with it. MAP price fixing at the big chains insistence... we couldn't compete. Not unlike many other business models unfortunately, big got bigger, and the smaller ones lose by design, this just accelerated the corporate greed plan from decades - to a couple of covid years.
It became clear to the four of us and our significant others, that it was time become a tenant somewhere and sell the building and do the core of what we could afford to do and eek out livings. But somehow....at Starved Rockers Music, we didn't lose a single student!!!! We switched to online lessons, and this community supported us during the most uncertain of times that caused two of my friends with stores with 50 year histories to go under as they lost almost all of their students and teachers. The chamber gave us a grant when we could qualify for no small business loans, Dominic Crumb bought the building in part to keep our services for this community, realizing what we do and how important it is. People were even opening their checkbooks to help us cover our mortgage because they truly understand what we do at the store.... Many tears cried in gratitude for what love and support you've shown us.
We are here ONLY for and because of you!!! So when you see nothing but biased propaganda on the news, gloom and doom, political fear mongering, and a front row seat to the worst of humanity every time you open your computer, along with targeted marketing as we've all become IP addresses, not people... We want you to remember this story, the story of our little train that seemingly couldn't, set in our very sparsely populated county in the middle of the state. But we're still here!
We have something far more valuable, even priceless! We have each other! Because we've got as perfect of a community as we need. We have amazing parks to enjoy with our families and friends, some of the most amazing non-franchise places to eat by any foodies' standards, beautiful mostly family-owned farms in all directions fighting back hard to corporate farming taking over.
Sure it's 45 minutes to get this and that, but paradise does have a cost sometimes. Pound for pound one of the greatest places in US if you actually do inventory on what really matters in life, and you stop and look to the community and the people we are blessed with living along with - who appreciate this miracle we call life, working as a team together for the greater good of each other and our loved ones.
Thank you for giving us life as a business, and our mission its purpose!!!
Brian
(and Paul, Trey and Randy - and our families)
