Hi everyone, nick Petrella here. This episode is sponsored by Steve Weiss Music, percussion specialist since 1961. If you're looking for a rare piece of sheet music, a specialty gong or anything percussion, steve Weiss Music will have it. Please visit SteveWeissMusiccom or click their link in the show notes. That's S-T-E-V-E-W-E-I-S-S Musiccom. Our percussion series sponsor.
Announcer:Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heiss and Nick Petrella.
Nick Petrella:Hi listeners, my name is Andy Heiss and I'm Nick Petrella. With us today is Tom Freer. Tom is the founder and owner of Freer Percussion and he's also the assistant principal timpaniist and section percussionist in the Cleveland Orchestra. Tom is a quintessential music entrepreneur and created his manufacturing, distribution and retail business by applying what he learned over the years as a performer and teacher. We'll link to both the Freer Percussion site and Tom's bio on the Cleveland Orchestra site so listeners can learn more about him. I'm looking forward to this interview because I've used some of Tom's mallets professionally for many years and have been very impressed with his design ideas. Tom, it's great to have you here. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Please walk us through the steps you took, from the concept of designing and licensing your offerings to creating Freer Percussion LLC.
Tom Freer:Started the mallet. Part of my existence kind of started while I was a student to a degree. We all realized that the sticks and things that we had in school at CIM were not exactly everything we needed. So I started making some things. Then when Koyd Duff initially had his first commercial offering of timpani mallets made by Ron Vaughan, ron Kraft, I was 17 years old, freshman at CIM, and they came to me. Duff and Ron Vaughan came to me and asked me to do all the covering for these mallets, because I was already pretty decent at making mallets at that point. And in long story short, I had to say no because it was a very, very low offer of pay, at a dollar a pair, to do all the wrapping for those mallets. The experience, right, right, but the experience and I was really, really wound up about it because I don't want to say no to Mr Duff. But I got to say no to Mr Duff because I just want to practice and I want to get the most as most I can from him and not be worried about making mallets. So that you know I'm glad I didn't follow through with that. And then I got my first job in Sweden and while I was in Sweden I realized I need to make some more timpani mallets, some more percussion mallets, and made some for myself.
Tom Freer:I came to Fort Wayne Philharmonic and played Principal Timpani there. That's where things really really took a bigger step. And we were doing West Side Story and I needed Maraca sticks for the timpani. And I don't think at that point that, like to Amel Richards, vic Firth, maraca stick was not a thing yet. This is we're talking 1987. So I took my shower curtain rod which was really crappy, flimsy, it wasn't even a lume and I don't know. It was really. It was metal and it was a tube and I plugged it up, I put BBs in it and I plugged it up with masking tape and a piece of cork and I made a masking tape for it. I still have them and I covered them with felt and they worked and Bram Denbar and everybody was very impressed, like that's pretty cool, and I thought, well, it does the job, but I think I could do this better.
Tom Freer:And then I started taking more additions while I was in Fort Wayne and I came up with a double-sided hard and soft side base trim mallet from Mahler three. I created my what's now called my US2H timpani mallet, which is a small felt core covering green billiard cloth. It was actually that stick I actually came up with when I was at CIM. I actually went to a while I was at CIM. I went down the road on Euclid Avenue to a guy, a shop that specialized in the covering pool tables, and the guy gave me a ginormous bag of green billiard cloth scraps and I was like, well, this is great, this stuff is hard and I think this is what a Goodman Green always intended to be. And you know, and all my guys in school are like, we make some of those for me, you know.
Tom Freer:And then also in Fort Wayne well, actually, not even in- Fort Wayne, I think it was like the seventh grade, I made a bamboo stick with an inch and a half court core and I remember pulling that stick back out when I was in Fort Wayne I'd forgot I'd even made it in high school and that wound up being a really useful stick. So then by the time I got to Birmingham, alabama, playing Prince of Tempty, there I was taking more auditions and I designed a roller and the started coming up with ideas for double sided timpani mallets, not just a bass drum mallet. So yeah, those little steps all just kind of exponentially got bigger and bigger and then by the time I got to Cleveland Orchestra it was like really really took off. Rich Wiener I remember when I first got here we did La Mer and Rich Wiener pulled out all of his La Mer sticks, which were, you know, five pairs of different brands Bruno Musser, old Lady, old Deegan, all these mallets that don't exist anymore, and this is the only mallets he used on La Mer and they all sounded really good and he was really well known for his interpretation of that Glock part.
Tom Freer:And I said, well, rich, this is amazing. But you know, I mean he can't get these things anymore. Maybe I could make these. He said that'd be amazing if you could make this. You know so, and things kept taking off from those original growth points. You know.
Andy Heise:So you were making all of these different types of sticks, like the two you just alluded to. In Cleveland you were making them. You had the idea and said nobody's making these anymore. Maybe I could make them with the intent of selling them to other percussionists.
Tom Freer:But not actually so much Realistically. It started with the immediate need. It's like we only have this much and we don't. We don't, and they're good, but they wish they were different. So let's see if I can find a wood turner and make what we wish we had. You know, weeders, glock, malibst don't exist. Let me see if I can get some retan and some balls and figure something out. And I really had no intent of becoming a company at all, really not. It was the immediate need at hand.
Andy Heise:And well, and so I guess that this isn't a real quick. This isn't a scripted question, but I guess that gets me to the question of okay, so how does how do you go from not intending to do it to having you know, tom, the for your percussion website where you're selling a bunch of different I'm not a percussionist, if you couldn't tell already have a bunch of different mallets and sticks and accessories and that sort of thing 172 skews and counting.
Tom Freer:That's a lot, yeah, basically necessity. I think I was started teaching soon as I came to Cleveland in 91. I started teaching and my students became fairly successful and they were constantly. They constantly had needs and it always turned out that their needs were not available on the market. All right, so let's figure something out, let's see if I can make you something. And you know it, just by luck a student would win an audition use. I mean not by luck, by their hard work, obviously. But you know, as a company, the luck in it for me is that, well, that student used my prototype and he won. And then of course it's always happens with auditions, people get starstruck with whoever won. You know well what are they using. I need some of that mojo, right. What sticks is he using? Wood drum, blah, blah, blah. And honestly the same thing.
Tom Freer:I designed all the Pearl Philharmonic line of snare drums and I designed Clevelander drums before that and a couple snare patents. So it was licensing to Black Swamp, yada, yada, yada. So the reason that's relevant is that my I was like Pearl's dirty little secret for a long time. We really advertised the fact that I did all this design work until the 20th anniversary, you know, and we did a signature drum. But actually the cool thing was with the pancake snare drum that we released like five, six years ago yeah, maybe 18, it came out 15, 19, 10, 11. Yeah, 17 or 18.
Tom Freer:And I had had that drum, the prototype of that pancake drum. My students were using it in auditions since 2005,. You know, I still have the prototype. It still sounds pretty good. But I had been begging Pearl to do that prototype drum because my students kept taking it to auditions and people like the hell's, that pancake drum, what is that? Is that a Philharmonic or not? How can I get one of those? I did not want to make snare drums. It's already getting busy with sticks and so I kept bugging Pearl to make that pancake drum. And finally, you know, years and years later. But it's because the whole point of that is that it's because guys are going and using them in auditions and people are looking and then they win and then they're like well, he had this secret drum that Tom made for him. It's like well, it's a big secret.
Nick Petrella:Well, you know you brought up a point that I was gonna ask a question, this question later, but I'll ask it now. So your business model really does focus on the long tail strategy, and by that I mean each of your designs. It's their design to produce a specific sound and there's an infinite number of timbers to be produced. So while that's great for musicians and you said your students always come up with unique ideas it's great for musicians and they need the ability to make just the right sound. How receptive are retailers to stocking your lines, and do they inventory all 178 SKUs, drop ship them or only stock the top sellers?
Tom Freer:Yeah, I have an interesting business model with these guys. I mean, I sell direct only in North America, with the exception of my one dealer in Montreal now Tempano percussion in Montreal and but otherwise there. You can't get my stuff at any other online retailer anywhere any brick and mortar stores except us, no-transcript. I call them international retailers because they're not distributors. I mean they don't buy vast amounts from me at a 50% discount and then distribute them all over the Canadian retailers or other German retailers or Sweden or wherever. So we're in quite a few countries now, but I just refer to them as dealers. They buy whatever they want to buy, as much or as little as they want to buy. They usually wind up buying some of everything. Then they tend to see what's selling the best and they'll order more of that. But we generally have no dogs that they feel like they get stuck with and are undesirable for their markets.
Nick Petrella:You look after that, all yourself, all those sales.
Tom Freer:Well, my wife, Sarah. She runs the company, so she looks after all of that business sense on her own. There's just myself and two female employees that do everything.
Andy Heise:And that's why it's not sustainable for you to do the whole distributor model right, Because you're making all of them.
Tom Freer:I personally do all the design and testing and everything. And at our shop we have a 4,000 square foot loft downtown Cleveland 1875 shovel factory and we don't do a lot of making what we do. There is a lot of assembly. We send out Britann and bamboo to be sized, then we send it to be laser engraved and then we bring it in house, we put finish on it and we glue the balls on, assemble the timpani chefs.
Tom Freer:I have a team of Amish women who are all sisters and nieces and cousins who do all the sewing and they all specialize in certain models and they do really good work. I train them very intensely and stay on top of them on their quality and consistency of work and I've had to actually let two of them go in the past 10 years because they just didn't like cut it with their sewing skills. But that's pretty rare among them. They're all really good sewers and the quality that they do is as good as I can sew, so that makes things pretty easy. But we don't do a bunch of lathe work and CNC machining in our shop. It's mostly assembly matching, weighing, bagging, tagging, shipping out.
Andy Heise:How common is it for a symphony musician like yourself to have another business, that they're working or other forms of income?
Tom Freer:I don't think it's really that common. Actually I mean Nick, and I can go through a list of orchestrated players over the years.
Tom Freer:You know here Vic Firth, you know here and there who've had stick and mallet companies, but in the grand scheme of things it's really not that common. In the Cleveland Orchestra we have a bass player who is also a real estate agent on the side and he's retiring this year. We have another bass player who works in management and development and we have a violinist who owns a slew of ATM machines and we have me, you know.
Tom Freer:So out of 105 people, there's only three, four of us that are kind of heavily involved in a side business. So I think amongst most orchestras, if you're an Exxon level orchestra, it's not really that common Tom.
Nick Petrella:when you get an idea for a new item, do you immediately think this is going to be great and I have to do it, or do you let the idea grow on you? I'd like to know how much you rely on the input of others for marketability as well.
Tom Freer:Normally, and I keep a notebook full of ideas and drawings and it'll always be something out of necessity how could this existing mallet be better or something that doesn't exist yet? And I'll make it and try it, and tweak it, and tweak it, and sometimes it just turns out to be. I don't think this is really necessary. It's really not so much better than what I already have, or it's not always some great Eureka thing, but as far as what was the other question about marketing relying on others, about marketing.
Nick Petrella:How much do you rely on others, on their input about the marketability of an item?
Tom Freer:Yeah, marketability I don't think about that as much because I'm in a niche market Right, I'm in a good grip on a very niche market and marketability of all my products it's kind of eye rolling. It's like, well, how many double-sized triangle beaters does one really need? But if I make something and I try it in the Cleveland Orchestra I'm so lucky to have this incredible test lab at my fingertips for 30 years I try it in the orchestra and if the guys all look at me that sounds really good and I feel like this sounds really good, or I get some big thumbs up from a conductor, then it's like, yeah, I think I should make this as I do. I have spent time.
Tom Freer:I sometimes ask some of my artists who have a lot of confidence in what do you see out there that I don't make? So I make a lot of different choices that you think I really need to make, that I really need to add, that's missing, and they'll sometimes give some really good suggestions. Sometimes I get really nutty suggestions from them or they suggest something that's already on the market, that they didn't even realize on the market, but other marketing things. I've talked to other people I know in the industry who know a lot more about the industry. I don't know much about the industry side. I rarely go to PAS and so I talk to people and ask them their advice about marketing and things. But I use Instagram a lot, mostly because it's short and sweet.
Andy Heise:Tom, what knowledge, skills and abilities as a musician do you think translate well to running and operating a business? Or are there gaps that you had to fill skills, knowledge, abilities you didn't have going into the business?
Tom Freer:Yeah, I think the obvious answers to that are the musician aspects of me have been helpful, mostly with work ethic, creativity, work ethic to follow through with an idea and not be really, really industrious and persistent about it. And something that I've garnered from being in the Cleveland Orchestra is the demanding sense of quality. I don't want to make any product that's average. I want to make things that are really the highest quality level unique materials, unique designs, proprietary materials, proprietary designs things that are really, really unlike anything else and made at an incredibly high level. Yes, I mean, in that way, the orchestra mentality pays off and contributes.
Nick Petrella:You had addressed marketing a little bit but I have another question about that. So it's been fun to see your business grow over the years and early on, as you said, it seemed to grow a lot from word of mouth from colleagues and former students taking auditions and I'm sure that still goes on. But has your approach to marketing changed over the years?
Tom Freer:Very little and honestly, I mean we used, for example, we used to. I've been an independent since 2012, but I've licensed my stuff and been around as a mallet company for over 20 years, but the marketing scheme used to be OK, let's buy some paper, ad space and percussive notes and pay a little extra and get a little tiny thing on their web page to the point where we don't do that anymore at all. I really like using. I mean pretty much the only thing we do is on our website and we use Instagram as a way to get people to go to the website.
Andy Heise:So, tom, you've kind of addressed this because you said you kind of just happened into selling sticks that were useful to you and useful to your colleagues and therefore probably had a broader niche audience. But when you started Fear, percussion, did you have a business plan and how do you think about the future of the business?
Tom Freer:I did have a business plan. My business plan at that second was I am going to get this up and running immediately, I don't care what it takes. I am not going to have any downtime, I am going to exist. There's not going to be a year period where what happened for your percussion and the rumors and good Lord. So I was just like we are going to get this up and running. I'm going to be an independent, I'm going to do this myself. I have no idea how in the hell I'm going to do this myself and but I'm going to do this on my own and I'm going to have complete control. And that was the business plan.
Andy Heise:See to my pants really Sure. And what about, you know, thinking about the future? Any sort of strategy or planning that goes into thinking about the future of the business?
Tom Freer:Yeah, I mean we're growing and even through the pandemic we had a short slowdown and then all of a sudden it's like everybody realized OK, we're going to be at home practicing and if auditions, are eventually going to happen.
Tom Freer:so I'm going to buy my stuff and I'm going to stay home and practice and get ahead of things. And so where our growth has been like 167 percent I looked on PayPal this morning and it's stunning to me. So we're trying to keep up with demand, is you know? Because I recently had evaluation of the company done. In six years Looks like this is where we're going to be at, and I just I think to myself, dear God, how am I going to manage all that? You know? So just the, there's going to be more growth, but I don't want to grow so much that we cannot maintain quality, because then it's worth. I mean, it's, it's. It's all about the quality and small, yeah, small batches.
Tom Freer:Exactly Small batches, highly quality controlled. And you know, I'm certainly have no intention of, like you know, suddenly reaching out to retailers and saying, hey, let's do a whole bunch of volume and I'll cut corners here and there to meet the demand it's. We're going to grow a little more, and then the trick is finding ways to do a bit more growth and still maintain and not cut any corners, and maintain super high quality.
Andy Heise:Yeah.
Nick Petrella:You have a lot of endorsers on your website and I know from experience that it can be very expensive to maintain and acquire new endorsers, especially for a small company. For those who want to start their own arts business and say they want the influence of endorsers, how would you suggest they build an artist program?
Tom Freer:For me. Most of the people come to me and a lot of former students probably 25 percent are former students who want to be an artist and come to me. But other people come to me randomly. Sometimes it's really surprising to me, very surprising. People who have their own line of sticks or somebody else will come to me and they're just really disappointed in the quality or something. You know the Army Old Guard is a really good example, that drum line.
Tom Freer:I never had any intention of making any kind of marching sticks. I don't want anything to do with being in that market because it's really not to sound disrespectful of that market. It's a beautiful thing what they do, but it's not my market and it's a very, very crowded market as much as the drum set market is really, really crowded. But I remember Mark Riley and I met. He was the head of the drum line for the Old Guard and I've always been like a super closet fan of theirs. Like I love those guys. I love the way they play and those rope drums and the amount of skill they have to play on that kind of drum. It's just jaw-dropping to me. And Mark Riley and I met at a Percussive Arts Convention and that's one of those situations where they were all. They use white tape on their sticks, so nobody knew that they're all using a different stick in the line and he really wanted everybody using the same stick.
Tom Freer:So, long story short, he and I had a beer and we're. You know, I was just laying on my admiration of the line and he's like well, I admire your stuff, I use a bunch of your snare sticks. And then I asked him where he's from. He said oh, you would never know, I'm from a little town in New York. I'm like I'm from a little town in New York, try me. He said I'm from Milbrook, new York. And I was like I'm from Milbrook, new York. Oh, that's funny Get out of here.
Tom Freer:And and we were just looking at each other like boy, that is weird. You know Dutchess County, I mean that we're both from the same town and I'm older than him, so you know we never knew each other. But it was really really funny that it just happened to be that. And so we just struck up this instant report and he's like look, I really want to have a stair seat for the line and you know it'd be great. Would you be interested to make it? We talked to another big company, who we won't mention, very big company, who was willing to make them a stick as long as it was one of the six they already make and they'll put. They weren't willing to design anything unique for them and so he was not interested and I said I will. You know, I instantly I was like I'll make you guys, I'll do whatever you want I'll do.
Tom Freer:You know it's not a moneymaker for me by any stress and imagination, but you know it's one of those situations where they came to me and it's like, yeah, that's cool, but a lot of artists will, will, will, come, and so I really use a lot of your stuff. It'd be great if I could do this and I go to some people and ask them if they're interested at all, and it's, it's. It doesn't cost, costs, next to nothing for me to acquire an artist endorser and you know, we'll give them a little bit of free stuff out of the gate and a little tiny discount, and it's, it's just has to be at a manageable level because you know, generally you don't. You have to be careful of that kind of thing, because what value are you really going to get from an artist? You know, are they really going to be involved? Are they really going to contribute?
Tom Freer:I have some artists who contribute a ton and are super proactive. I have others who I can't get them to send me a video in the past five years, you know as, like gosh, come on man. So you know it's not hard to do it, it'll. If it's really going to be worth your while as an entrepreneur to have some kind of artist roster, you know, make an incredible product and let them come to you first, then let it grow from. There would be my advice. That's great advice.
Andy Heise:And so, along those same lines, you work with a lot of artists. Do you see any artists out there doing anything kind of cool and innovative that you're like? Okay, that that's. That's pretty cool.
Tom Freer:Yeah, as a matter of fact, working right now with a new artist, todd me and who teaches a Baylor and Todd's you know kind of a jack of all trades there.
Tom Freer:He does orchestra playing, he's great marimba player, a lot of chamber music, and so he and I just begun developing some new marimba mallets, which I have one model of marimba mallet which was kind of designed for using in the orchestra, but he likes them so much he wants to see more models, which is really cool because it's not a problem, and some special mallets for chamber music where right now they're designing a mallet, you know, in particular for rebonds, because everybody's playing that piece.
Tom Freer:Nobody really has a mallet they love for, and so I'm trying to design something that's really unique and really going to hopefully wind up being sort of a universal kind of chamber music setup, multi percussion mallet, because there's very little or none of that available right now and I think if I can come up with something that's really really great that people just love using for chamber music, especially multi percussion stuff, it'll be useful. Another example is one of my artists, david Nyberg, in New York plays Broadway, does three or four different shows right now. He's got some really specific requests for that market and I think that I find that really interesting because that will also obviously carry over to chamber music and multi percussion and very specific needs. And he's got really good ears and he's already kind of made some things for himself that are sort of do the job, but he's like, please, you know, I think you could do this at a different level and let's try to work together. So, yeah, some, some artists bring some really cool things to the table and it's totally worth digging into.