Musical Instruments
It seems to me that there are two kinds of people in the world, those that can play an instrument and derive great pleasure from doing so, and those of us who can’t. It also seems to me that those of us who can’t play a note wish that we could and hope that our offspring will be able to.
Fortunately from a business point of view both groups spend money on instruments. How many friends can you count who took up the guitar and then quit right about the point where they could play “stairway to heaven”?
Every town and city has a music shop, and many schools and music teachers also offer to trade in used instruments. As with many of our ideas you will need to develop a reputation for good prices, quality stock, and or better service. In other words you need to build a better business model than the next guy.
As usual we will talk about stock below, distribution ideas include the following: -
Ebay
Website
Advertise
Schools/Bands
Rent through hotels, hostels etc.
The first thing is that you will need to target your adverts. A simple search for “musical instruments” on Ebay delivers a whopping 146,000 results. Compare this to say “used trumpet” which delivers only 23 results or “wood oboe” with 13 results; and you will see the benefit of thinking through your keywords. On the plus side the fact that there are so many adverts for instruments shows what a booming market place Ebay is for new and used instruments as well as accessories.
Google has 310 million results for “instruments” which may be the highest number I have ever seen. Narrowing this to “wind instruments” still gives over 10 million results. A good SEO firm should help you to get to the top page or two of Google on more specific terms such as “wood oboe” (512,000 results) or “used trumpet” (1.7m results). It is ok to have numerous key words but you may want to focus on 2 or 3 important ones to drive traffic. The other alternative is to take a more local approach and promote your website offline.
Advertisements can run the gamut from local newspapers and the Yellow Pages to music magazines and/or music related websites. The key is to make them catchy and offer a “buy back service”, “beginners book or CD” or something similar to encourage enquiries. Include telephone, email, website and physical address in the advert to give yourself more credibility. If you are using the Yellow Pages then remember to choose a name that starts with an A, or at least a letter close to the beginning of the alphabet, and take the biggest advert you can afford.
Approach School music heads, and band leaders and offer discounts to their members. You may also want to offer some kind of sponsorship, or assistance to members with financial difficulties. Remember Lance Armstrong (not a musician) got his break because of a local bike shop owner. It could pay dividends later on.
Many people who are travelling would like to be able to get hold of an instrument to practise, or just to blow off some steam. I have a friend who plays drums and regularly uses practice rooms when he is travelling. As long as you can take a credit card payment as deposit you can loan out your instruments, they are likely t be taken care of, and if not simply charge the card. To get hotels and hostels interested you may need to pay some kind of commission to them, or allow them to simply mark up your prices. Charge extra for renting dampers to keep the noise down.
There are all sorts of places that you can buy instruments. Depending on your business model you could simply source them from Ebay, you could buy from house clearance businesses, flea markets and garage sales.
You could source from Schools and Music teachers by agreeing to sell back to their students at a fixed mark up e.g. 10%. This works because it saves the teacher finding cash to buy good instruments, and gives you a fair profit.
If you want to sell new then www.alibaba.com has over 2,300 leads for instruments. Email some suppliers and see whether they would be willing to do drop shipping and offer bulk discounts after you sell a specified number of them.
You can also advertise in local newspapers saying that you will buy used instruments. The problem with this is that you may end up with stolen equipment. Get an ultraviolet light and check for security markings before accepting anything. Report any suspicious sellers to the authorities immediately to avoid any chance that the finger will get pointed at you.
You will meet all sorts of interesting and talented people in this business.
The instruments you sell will being pleasure not just to those that play them but to the people around them who listen.