Summer is drawing to a close and loins are being girded for back to school festivities. It was a great summer of sailboat racing, campfires, family get-togethers and the Summer NAMM Show in Nashville. Now it is time to get back to business with the vigor that seems to go with the season. The Game of Business is really an interesting one. The constant is that nothing seems to stay the same. From year-to-year the players change, the layout of the board changes and sometimes even the basic rules seem to change without notice. Then, almost without warning, it seems as if someone pushes the reset button!
To give the whole scene the ambience of a video game gone wrong, we have seen SWAT teams invading factories to enforce obscure and ill-considered domestic and African business regulations, and piano dealers closed down for the heinous crime of importing pianos made in the early 20th century. And watch out for the Shanghai airport, you could pay $200 and still draw the “Go to Jail” card! Strange times, indeed…
Our Retail Music News has recently expanded to 192 pages to accommodate the new products and innovations that will allow you to stay in the game. Our business plan stresses R&D (Research and Development) and P.I.(Product Innovation) rather than I.P.(Intellectual Property)—which seems to have become an attempt to stifle market change by hiring batteries of legal eagles to try to enforce ownership of body curves and expired patents. So open up the pages of our latest collection—enjoy the contents and let me know if we have missed something. After all, that’s where most great ideas come from!
Richard Keldsen
San Francisco
September 2012