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| Selling sound online |
November 10, 2005 |
By Karen Hall
THE INSTRUMENTS MAY BE WELL RESPECTED, BUT TEMPUS DRUMS WOULDN’T EXIST WITHOUT THE INTERNET.
Paul Mason knows he is lucky to be doing what he loves-building and selling drums for a living. But until the Internet boosted his business, it looked like he was going to have to give up on his passion.
Mason, the owner and sole employee of Tempus Drums in North Vancouver, originally decided to start his company after years in the music business.
“Within six months of leaving high school I was playing music full time in Vancouver, and I basically did that for the better part of four years,” he said. “Then I came off the road and settled south of Vancouver. I was writing and recording demo tapes, trying to get that big record deal, which never seemed to materialize. But I plugged away at it for two or three years and then realized it wasn’t really my game after all.”
Then a momentous event occurred: drum manufacturer Milestone Percussion went up for sale. Mason decided to purchase the company, and in April 1985, changed its name to Tempus Instruments.
Within a few months the company was thriving, but by 1992 the music had stopped. “I invested too much time in one particular individual who turned out to be less than trustworthy,” he said. “And to a small company like mine it was catastrophic. I got severely clobbered.”
Again, though, chance stepped in. In late 1994, one of Mason’s customers had his van stolen from his house in Miami with all his musical gear inside.
“He was sitting on the other end of the phone with his insurance cheque in hand,” Mason said. “He needed a drum set and he was simply not going to take no for an answer.”
Mason agreed to set up a small workshop temporarily, and because of the Internet, it grew. Today his business is booming. He has a successful Web site and customers all over the world, including North America, Australia, Germany, France, Holland, Russia, Iceland, Italy and Finland.
“Ninety-five per cent of everything I sell now is going to an end user,” he said. “But I also have six active dealers in the United States, I have three dealers in Italy, one in Norway, and perhaps one in England, but that’s not quite cemented.”
The company, now called Tempus Drums, relies heavily on its Web site, which was designed and is still managed by Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz, the drummer for “Weird Al” Yankovic.
“He’s always done Web site design and he’s quite good at it,” Mason said. “He and I became pals because he bought a few drums off me way back in the early days. So we got chatting and he said he did this kind of work. Well, he wanted another drum so I suggested we do a trade, and we did.”
Simple e-com
Tempus Drums’ Web site is essentially a “fairly barebones affair,” Mason said. “I think it’s very concise and to the point, and I think the copy says what it needs to say.
I have always been inclined to stay away from the bells and whistles approach that a lot of people tend to take with their Web sites. There are so many things popping up out of nowhere and you’ve got thousands of options and buttons you can push. A lot of the things I see on those kinds of sites detract from the basic message they’re trying to convey. If a Web site is done properly it can give people a very clear idea of who you are.”
The site includes a frequently asked questions section, a retail price list, latest news, dealers, a Tempus owners gallery with photos, and a history of the company.
When it comes to payment methods, Mason said 85 per cent of his sales are paid through PayPal, now owned by eBay. The service enables individuals or businesses with an e-mail address to send and receive payments online.
According to Mason, his business would not exist without the Internet.
“It’s massively more cost effective and time effective,” he said. “When I come into the workshop at 6 a.m. and there are 40 e-mails, I can spend an hour going through them. I can then go into the workshop and work for a few hours. So you have these blocks of time where you can go off and really assign yourself to specific tasks. It makes for a very efficient day.”
When Mason compares his online business today with the manufacturing operation he had years ago, the monetary differences are incredible, he said.
“We made $350,000 the best year I ever had (when the company was Tempus Instruments),” he said. “But I was losing money because of expenses.”
A full-page four-colour ad in a magazine, for example, was costing him US$3,000 for a one-time insertion. But in order for people to remember the company, he added, he had to place an ad at least every other month. At least once a year, if not twice, he paid for a trade show display costing upwards of US$5,000, and because he had distributors in Australia and Europe, his long-distance and fax bills were between $700 and $800 a month. His catalogue print runs cost him an additional $10,000.
“And then I had a couple employees I was paying,” he said. “So what’s left over? As a percentage of gross sales [the cost] was colossal.”
Cost effective
Today, Mason said he’s a one-man operation working out of a little workshop that he sublets from a cabinet company, and he estimates he’ll make $150,000 this year.
“The difference is the percentage that I keep,” he said. “Out of that $150,000, I take home half, if not more. And everything else is paid for. It’s a totally different cost structure and I think that is the chief difference now. Of course, so much of that is attributable to the Internet. High advertising costs are no longer there because I have a Web site that costs me $29.95 a month. The long distance calls are also gone because there is e-mail, which is free.”
But he admits there is one glaring setback to running his business over the Internet-he’s selling something intangible: sound.
“There’s no longer a showroom where somebody can walk in and try these instruments out,” he said.
So Mason relies on word of mouth and online chat forums where people discuss the drums and the company.
“One of the things that amazes me the most about my current customer base is the amount of trust they have in me,” he said. “Based purely on word of mouth, people are willing to send me-a guy they’ve never met-anything from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on spec for gear they’ve never played. And it’s specifically because they’ve read good things in chat forums.”
Mason said that when people consider the Internet to further their business, it’s important to look at it as a long-term development.
“What I’ve done has been a very slow process,” he said. “I don’t think anybody should expect miracles just because of the Internet. I think that’s a fallacy. But I do think it’s a great tool if you are willing to take your time with it and work at it.”
Web drums
Tempus Drums http://www.tempusdrums.com
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