Our 2006 year to date at our main store is $600,000. Last year was $568,000 for the whole year. We will close at around $800,000 to $850,000 which will be about 50% up from 2005. Our Fallon store (less then one year old) pays for itself, but the numbers are smaller there as we are just beginning to develop our student base. It will not take off until the first quarter of 2007. We are less than three years old, so our growth is unusually aggressive despite several area store closures and their liquidation sales.

    We have more than 400 students and are growing at 30 per month without radio or print ads. We have innovative programs like student level 1 showcases, which each teacher is encouraged to help his or her students with. We use the Berklee Get Your Band Together book and CD as part of each lesson. Once a month, we hire a band and have studio students play live what they have learned with a pro band. We also have monthly Teacher Shows, which are a chance for teachers to show off.

    The economy is fantastic, with huge growth everywhere. I knew we had two to three years to get Sparks Music off the ground before Guitar Center came, and not knowing where they were moving to made me nervous, but our desire to make our stand helped us build on our strengths apart from an unknown looming reality.

    Our retail side has been financed entirely by our studio. We designed a system in which we manage the students as clients and pay the teachers as employees and associate private contractors at various pay scales. We manage teachers and students, retail, repair departments, and rental with a staff of five part-time employees. Dolores, my wife, is the real powerhouse of this venture.

    On the retail side, we sell all categories fairly well. Of course, guitars -- Michael Kelly’s the bomb! We do well with B.C. Rich and Ibanez at our Fallon location and Traben, OLP, Floyd Rose, and Aria here. Give me a guitar under $475 any day of the week! We sell Hardman pianos by having several samples and having a sales book to order from. This way we are not sitting on a lot of inventory. Piano sales are not good for us, but students and customers feel good seeing them in our store anyway. There are probably a lot of collateral sales due to this. We sell Yamaha, Korg, and Viscount digitals, and although they are not selling well yet, they will and we are ready for that. We love Mapex drums, as they just have the price point for us. We also sell Tama in our Fallon market.

    We tried all the Web ideas to no real avail in the first two years. I signed us up to a Yellow Pages.com fiasco in which the sales rep convinced me they would market our site and bring us huge sales. Zip. Cost? $2,000 and I had to fight them and I lost! Now we have Hanser Complete. That was the best marketing tool we could have invested in. We also have a Web site marketing company and another Web site tool we pay for. I don’t hire anyone who does not double as a Webmaster. We make several sales per month, we have a tour of the studio button, in store stock, pre-owned and consignment sales button, and lots of info on our events. It’s been a painful exercise, but the Web gives us a ‘big look’ for less than newspaper ads.

    My prediction is as long as parents want their kids to grow up with the opportunity to focus on something other then the state of dismal world disfunctionality, they will encourage and support music in their homes, churches, garages, and headphones. We are in the fantasy-fulfilling business of making the music we can, and loving the music we can’t make without a jealous heart.

PRODUCT OF THE YEAR: “Michael Kelly Guitars.

Mike Manning, Owner
Sparks Music and Learning Center
Sparks and Fallon
NEVADA