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 Heise and Nick Petrella.
Nick Petrella:Hi listeners, my name is Andy Heise 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, timpaniest 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.
Andy Heise:Thanks for having me, tom, do you have? How do you protect your designs? Do you have? Is it just trade secrets? Do you actually go through the design patent process?
Tom Freer:Some things. I own three, four patents right now and I got two other patents in the works, but sticks and mallets are. It's really hard to do because so much of it is so similar.
Andy Heise:So then, is it all? It's in the materials, in the craftmanship that goes into making them. Is that the real distinctive piece of it?
Tom Freer:Exactly, and I own a trademark on this material called Hornwood, and it's a silly thing and some people's heads explode online about Hornwood and their little pictures of unicorn icons and trademark trying it just makes them so uneasy. It's just really funny to me because for me it was just a way of delineating the material I use. Because you're asking about trade secrets and stuff. There's lots of this well Hornwood's type of material available, but the material I get in particular comes from a source that no one else in this country is using and I am not about to give that up.
Tom Freer:I'm very proud of it and I protect it very fiercely, and so if people find that my trademark word Hornwood in this country is a thing that just irks them, I'm sorry, but you can go ahead and lose sleep over it, because I'm not. But as far as the patents go, there's just like my hybrid snare drum stick has a patent now and I've got a patent-bending design on my snare muffler, a couple other things in the works, snares from back in the day but that stuff is only because of its really unique materials, unique combination of materials and unique properties of what they do for the drum. It's tricky to defend all that stuff Right.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that could be expensive, crazy expensive. Suppose there's a musician listening who has a performing career, so it could be a W2 job or a solo career. The point is they have to practice a lot to stay sharp. How did you manage to grow a business while performing at such a high level, and what sacrifices, if any, did you make?
Tom Freer:Yeah, it is, it's. Wearing two hats like this is a lot. For a long time I was wearing three hats teaching and playing and doing the company. There can't be any sacrifices artistically. I Cleveland Orchestra is my number one job and I have to be in shape and prepared to do that job at the highest level. So you know, if it's, you know, one o'clock in the morning and I still haven't practiced yet, I will go into one of my studios and in the house here and practice, because I'm not gonna. You know, I'm torn between well, actually I should send that email out to those guys and order those so we have those by the end of the week, or I should practice and as no, I'm gonna go practice and I'll go take care of that later, so that that's always been an easy choice, because my playing really starts to suffer, then it's gonna affect the company and it's gonna affect the orchestra, which is even worse. So I'm not having it and I've never allowed it, yeah.
Andy Heise:And so what do you find yourself spending the most amount of time on in the business for your percussion?
Tom Freer:For me it's new designs and then executing prototypes for new designs and following them through. And then the other thing is for me is the timpani mallets. The timpani mallet end of this business for me is very close to me because I'm a there are percussionists who play timpani and there are timpaniists who play percussion and I'm a timpani player who barely plays percussion. I mean, when I got in a Cleveland Orchestra I was in really really mediocre percussionists. I had two principal timpani jobs before that and actually I mean I had a one year principal percussion assistant timpani job in Sweden, where that was one year. Franz Wilser Merst, our music director here, was actually my music director in Sweden. It was his first job and my first job and I still had no idea what I was doing as percussionist. I long story short, I had a Swedish friend, a percussionist, frederick Birlini, who plays in Gothenburg now, and he knew about this one year position where a guy was gonna be on sabbatical I was engaged to. A Swedish woman Is now the vice president of IKEA in Stockholm and she worked at IKEA then but she was in Cleveland as an au pair and taking lessons at CIM. So I went to Sweden and had no idea what I was doing as principal percussionist. But I won it, you know, and in Fort Wayne in Birmingham I was playing principal timpani and trying to improve my percussion skills and I won this job in 1991. And I was absolutely mortified and we were doing so much recording then and you know Messian and just all kinds of keyboard playing and I was given all the best snare drum parts all the time and it was I was really really lucky to have Rich Wiener here to help me and be patient until I got tenure and it was really really nerve-wracking and it was probably a solid five, six years before I felt confident as a percussionist.
Tom Freer:I always felt confident as a timpaniist. You know, yeah, I'm playing timpani this week, yeah, you know. But you know the percussion end of it was always interesting, was really really really tricky for me. So the timpani mallets have always been really really dear to me and close to me and the quality of them is vital. So I personally spend a ton of time looking at, expecting, voicing, crimping and test playing every single pair of timpani mallets that I put out and that's really time-consuming. So but it makes a big difference because our timpani mallet sales have been really through the roof lately and it's I think that's a part of it. It's we've got really good materials. The others are doing incredible job sewing and they are going through my hands before they get somebody else's hands and it's so. It's really a lot of time. So, between timpani mallets and their designs and prototypes it's pretty much where I'm at.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, and again it's the quality control.
Tom Freer:Yeah yeah, nobody's going to do it. I could try to teach somebody, but nobody's going to be as picky as I am, you know, that's for sure.
Nick Petrella:Now you said, prior to this, you had zero experience in the music products industry. So I guess, what was the biggest learning curve you had, or what hadn't you planned for that you thought, oh wow, I better get this under control.
Tom Freer:Yeah, the disruption of the sale of ProMark. That seemed to be such a really cool relationship and promising and I had not. Nobody seemed to have. Even the guys who worked in Houston had no idea that he was going to sell the company. It was a big shock to everyone and it was a big shock to me and it was that disruption was. I remember getting a phone call. I was in Home Depot and I got a phone call from someone there who's like hey, dude, heads up, you know, go ahead, nick, you have something.
Nick Petrella:Is that where you get the hornwood?
Tom Freer:No, so I'll 15 be. You got it. You got to get the secret forklift to go up to 25 feet up in the back.
Andy Heise:So only in Cleveland Heights Ohio.
Tom Freer:And so that disruption was, you know, certainly nothing I had planned for. So I mean, right out of the gate, when I became an independent, you know it was, it was at a desperation and kind of an emergency situation, like, okay, so this is how this is going to go, and that was a big. I didn't plan for that, I had no clue it was coming. But then, you know, realistically, on the flip side of that, I instantly made the decision that I'm going to be an independent and I'm only going to sell direct. And of course there was half of me that was like, oh dear God, maybe this is a mistake.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, well, and once that other company, when you decided to go on your own I mean, they were, you were coming up with the designs, but they were taking care of everything else. Sales channel marketing, distribution. So you needed that, you needed that from them, but now you're doing all of that.
Tom Freer:Yeah Well, my wife does all that.
Nick Petrella:Well, when you started, right, you, you were surely did you find that just even a little bit overwhelming like oh, now I have to have shipping supplies.
Tom Freer:Yeah, it was. It was in the beginning. I hired one of my former students, jerry LaCourte, who now works in administration at CIM, and he he just grabbed the steering wheel and he went to Walmart and he bought a shoe storage rack to keep mallets in and we got a cheap website and I had one of my brother's buddies design it and really bare bones and really simple stuff but it worked and we built it and built it up from there and he kind of told me you need to get involved on Instagram and Facebook and figure that part out. Only you can do that. And you know, in the past 10 years, august will be our 10th anniversary as an independent, but it'll actually be that like 27 years for me as doing all this. But my wife, sarah, who runs the business she went to Case Western coding bootcamp and knows a lot about building a website she built that entire our current website entirely by hand coded it all.
Tom Freer:Thank you. She would love to hear that and she maintains it all. She even does the photography and she's really good with that stuff and she's really picky and but she's also managing the inventory inflow, raw materials inflow, the orders and it's. It's a lot. It's a lot for her to do, yeah.
Andy Heise:You said there was one other person that works with you.
Tom Freer:Yeah, we've had. You have two other women who work. One is our former tour manager for the Cleveland Orchestra, who's retired now. She comes in once in a while and manages orders for us when we're swamped. She prefers being retired but we love having her because she's really good. And another person that we just hired.
Tom Freer:A couple months ago I went to college with she I'm not going to give out her name, she's actually a very successful artist in her own right. She's made jewelry for the Pope, she's got works in the Smithsonian and she's got a very busy studio of commissions. And she was at the Institute of Art when I was at the Institute of Music and we've always remained friends, we kind of had our little. Most of my friends in college days were all art students, with the exception of a few music students, and so I reached out to her and her husband to see if we could find someone from the Institute of Art who would be good with their hands, good with their eyes, somewhat crafty, you know, to try to hire as an employee. And so she came down with her husband, who teaches at CIA actually, and we gave him a tour and we talked and I asked her do you have anybody, any names you can give us and she, she officially looks at the floor and she goes.
Tom Freer:Well, I think I'd like to have this job. I'm like you and Sarah and I were both like are you joking, right? You're rather overqualified for this. 10 hours a week that you're going to work.
Tom Freer:You know she's like no, you know, I'm in my basement studio all day, every day, and this would be really nice to get out and have a change of pace, and I used to come down to another studio down here all the time. It's just I like being down here, I want to be around humans and be able to look out the window. And I love your dog and you know it's just like and she is so skilled, I mean, she's everything we show her. She gets it the first time and she's even able to voice Timpani Malice as well as I do now. So she's she's able to do a lot of different things at a really high level, and that's the kind of employee that we need. You know, it's really tricky to find people, you know, for business in general, there is so hard to get anybody that wants to work and it's hard to get people that want to stay, and we really, really lucked out with her and it's just working pretty smooth right now.
Andy Heise:That's great Well, tom, we've reached the part of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions. Ok, and the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an entrepreneur, in your art form?
Tom Freer:I would say Be an independent, build your own website and sell direct, and let things grow slowly and naturally. Don't be tempted to jump into an overcrowded pool. Keep things simple and small and manageable, so that the uniqueness and the high quality of what you're doing, whatever it is, is higher than anybody else's. And give yourself, create that advantage for yourself and then fight to maintain it for yourself.
Andy Heise:How's that? That's great. I usually don't interject with these last three questions, but I just I have to say I talk with a lot of my students, a lot of artists I work with. They think that, ok, I have this thing I do and in order to start a business quote unquote with it, I'm going to have to change something about what I'm doing and do things differently and whatever. Like there's some outside force that's going to require them to totally change who they are and what they're doing. And what you just said is just further proof that that's not the case. Right? Who are you? What do you do? What do you do really well, and just keep doing that.
Tom Freer:And yeah, that's exactly right. I mean you have to, before you launch that website, simply decide what is your market, who is my market? Who do?
Andy Heise:I need to sell to. It's the first person that's going to buy something from you.
Tom Freer:Yeah, yeah, exactly. And why are they going to buy it for me and not from someone else? And once you figure that out, what is your unique ability, your superpower as a company and a product? Just stick with it. You don't need to dumb it down for mass market at all. And because you can sell direct at a high price with a high margin, and you don't need to dumb things down, make it cheaper, make it less, than sell tons of it. You know, let it grow slowly and organically. It'll always be better.
Nick Petrella:That's good. What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Tom Freer:I would uh. Short answer for me on that is, when it comes to orchestral music, something that should change, I think, in the structure, whether it's the Fort Wayne Philharmonic or the Cleveland Orchestra, philly, boston or wherever. Giving the musicians more of a voice in programming, rather than the current business model that they use, is going to be vital in the very near future, if not immediately, because right now musicians have you guys won't be shocked to hear this, but listeners might. Business, major orchestras basically have no voice whatsoever in programming. Soloists or conductors, none. The voice that we have is utterly superficial. Managements generally like to reach out and get your quote input, but generally none of it's ever used. We're going to hire the conductors that we see fit. We're going to hire the soloists that the music director wants. We're going to program what the music director and the artistic director want.
Tom Freer:We all understand there's all kinds of reasons for that, because it's all built on this 100-year-old business model that the music director knows best, the artistic administrator, artistic director knows best. There's always that built-in problem of relevance. We have an artistic advisor, an artistic director. God forbid if we gave any decisions to the musicians. He might look a little irrelevant. What if the musicians came up with some really good ideas that would not. How are we going to handle that? That's a really tough, tough question for administrations to look in the mirror and say if we really want to move forward and be more accessible, we have 105 people on stage that we can tap. They will always give you the argument that, well, they can never agree on anything. They're all difficult and they're all artists. That's just wrong. It's simply wrong. I'll give you a prime example of that.
Tom Freer:I once tossed out an idea for our management to consider, which would be. What if, guys, what if we had an offering amongst the subscription series that was called the Musicians' Choice Series Four concerts, two concerts, one concert to start, one program which was the repertoire soloist and conductor that was guest conductor, that was selected by the musicians. How do you think that would sell? And I can see Nick has a big smile on his face because, like, obviously customers would want to buy that. Oh my God, that program is picked by the musicians. That soloist, that guest conductor. Well, I'm buying that ticket. I want to see what they want. I didn't even realize there's. The other problem that presents to management is that I didn't even realize that I thought the musicians picked all the programs. You know the clientele, the market generally has no idea how all this works, because it's you know.
Tom Freer:Orchestras these days are constantly talking about inclusiveness, whether you know we need more black artists or female composers, and you know, on and on goes the list, and which is all beautiful and should be happening in terms of inclusiveness. But the dark secret is there is not really inclusiveness from the musicians on stage. We are deliberately excluded at most every turn, and if you want to make things more accessible and reach the widest audience, they should really try listening to some of our suggestions much more sincerely and realistic. There's a lot to be garnered for them from that.
Andy Heise:Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice anyone's ever given you?
Tom Freer:I've had quite a bit. I think realistically it goes back to you had a question about patents and how I protect things and all that. I used to think like getting a patent was like some really cool thing. It's kind of expensive, but you know what that's going to protect anybody from copying my things. And I remember talking to.
Tom Freer:There's been plenty of advice, but this one really has stuck with me a lot over the years because when I talked to this guy I'd already owned two patents and that person was Gary Kvistat, who owned Woodstock Percussion Woodstock Windchimes and he just sold the company recently, actually a few weeks ago. So Gary and I have always been friends because he lives in Woodstock, new York, which is Ulster County across the river from where I grew up, and my father lived in Woodstock and Gary actually accidentally bumped into my father and Woodstock and they became buddies. And of course I knew Gary because he studied with Rich Weiner and went to Overland and Nexus and all this. This is before he was, well before he was in Nexus. But anyway, I had been talking to Gary about patents and he gave me an incredible story about I guess I think it was an Asian company I can't remember where that was knocking off his windchimes and selling him at Walmart.
Tom Freer:They looked identical, absolutely identical, and I don't remember if they said Woodstock or they had a different name, but the designs were the wooden paddle and the wooden disc and everything was just identical. And he went after them because he owned patents on all of that. And his advice was patents are real cool. They can be helpful, especially if you're selling a company. It can be very helpful, but in the short term they're only as valuable as much as you want to spend. I'm not going to spend that kind of money If somebody's going to copy my snare drum sticks this is before it's mass market, though, right.
Tom Freer:Yeah, right, yeah. So it's like that kind of thing really really gave me pause and made me think about how many more patents do I want to spend money on? So I've been really. You know, at that point I was talking to him about I'm going to get a patent on this, I'm going to get a patent on that and patent on that, I get my snare drum stick and this and that. And then he's like, yeah, you might think about that a little more cautiously. Patent attorneys all tend to get really wealthy on the fight. You know, if you take somebody to court over that stuff, the patent attorneys make lots of money. But in the end you're lucky if you can get it in the stop.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, tricky, well, perfect, tom, it's been great to have you here. I know I had to. Typically we let people talk and we do follow up questions and stuff, but I had to fight myself from asking follow up questions or this conversation would have been another hour. So thanks so much for being here, and I know our listeners are going to learn a lot.
Tom Freer:Well, thank you. Thanks for having me, it was great.
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