MI Pro

Today, the company and its management has come out the other side and has the time and space to focus on the important issue: brand building.

In an industry where companies will celebrate 25 years in business, Barnes & Mullins is something of a stand-out organisation. It was founded in 1895 by S Bowley Barnes and Albert Mullins, a couple of banjo players who realised that money can be made selling instruments and accessories as well as by (or even better than) using them.

As Barnes & Mullins’ current managing director, Bruce Perrin points out, it is hard to comprehend now, but at its inception, the company was as cutting edge as the Rolands and M Audios of today and banjos were seen with the same excitement (or suspicion) as electric guitars in the 60s and 70s.

“Barnes & Mullins used to publish Jo magazine for banjo players – it was the Guitarist of its day,” he points out with a wry smile, no doubt picturing, as I did, Mick Taylor and Dave Burrluck drooling over the latest Remo headed resonator five string…

Soon, though, the company went on to establish its own musical instrument manufacturing operation, eventually scooping up brands such as Hidersine, WE Hill and Terry Gould. It has been the source of MI staples from rosins and bows to recorders and kazoos ever since, all through the 20th century and into the 21st.

Those kazoos are still made at the 50,000 square metre B&M complex in Oswestry, as are the Hidersine and Hill rosins and small runs of various TGI accessories, although now the manufacturing process is no longer a concern of Perrin’s.
“We sold off the manufacturing to the managers,” he explains. “That is now called Generation Music, but it is still based here and Barnes & Mullins still owns the brand names.” This is crucial to the 21st century B&M.

“We didn’t want to lose the manufacturing,” he continues. “But also we wanted to be clear on what our focus is – and that is marketing and selling musical instruments and accessories. In this day and age, that means developing brands.”

The company has a good cross section of those, too. Apart from the in-house manufactured lines, Barnes & Mullins distributes Yanigasawa saxophones – viewed by many top pros as the best money can buy – Antigua brass and woodwind, recently joined by a new entry level brand called Wiseman, Rico reeds (now the property of the D’Addario company), Lag guitars and the respected Admira classical guitar range, the entry level Gould guitar range, Jose Ferrer classical and Brunswick steel string entry level and, of course, Faith – B&M’s new champion in the brutal arena that is the mid-priced acoustic guitar market.

“How Faith came about is an interesting story,” recalls Perrin. “This Indonesian businessman came into my office while we were still on the Grays Inn Road in London and asked me if I was interested in selling some acoustic guitars. He was in London selling an oil tanker – as you do – and had promised a friend of his to check out a possible supplier in the UK.

“At first I told him I didn’t deal with agents, but he was insistent that he wasn’t one, so we met the guy and saw that he was making some really good guitars – and this was the start of the Brunswick brand.”

After a while, of course, pressure from China forced B&M to relocate the manufacture of Brunswick, but with easily accessible, indigenous woods in Indonesia, Perrin’s associate could make higher spec guitars at a very competitive price – and thus Faith was born.

Few in the UK trade will forget the build up to the launch of Faith during 2002/2003, with the plain black backgrounds proclaiming nothing other than ‘acoustic heaven’. When the finished result was finally revealed and it matched the quality of the ad campaign, success was sure to follow.

Over the next few years, the Faith brand carved itself a niche in the market as ‘the guitar that stays at home’, but a brand can only be maintained if it moves on, so a chance meeting between B&M’s former sales manager, Brian Cleary, and Patrick Eggle turned out to be perfectly timed. Eggle was looking to re-establish himself back in the UK and needed space for a workshop, Barnes & Mullins was looking to broaden the appeal of Faith, so the former came up with some new designs from his corner of the Oswestry facility and both Faith II and Patrick J Eggle were born – Eggle also makes a couple of very high-end Faith models, mostly for export.

As Faith I was a ball that Cleary ran with, so Faith II is one that B&M’s marketing manager, Alex Mew, has taken to heart, designing and co-ordinating the ad campaign as well as taking the brand in a new direction by picking up a couple of pretty high profile endorsement deals with The Enemy (this month’s cover stars) in October, and in November, Maximo Park.

If this weren’t enough, B&M has also spent the past couple of years getting the French brand, Lag, into the UK public’s collective head. With guitars ranging from the entry level through to the custom shop in the south of France, Lag’s Rock Chic campaign attracted enough attention to create yet more market share for Perrin and his team – although not without difficulties.

“The Lag production in China has gone through some quite difficult times recently,” he explains. “The factory (which as with most factories out there, makes instruments for more than one company) found itself being overrun by another company’s growing demands and Lag suffered as a result.

“There is now a new production manager out there and a new factory has been found, so soon we will have the next generation of Lag guitars – probably about the time of the London International Music Show next June.”

Until then, Perrin adds, “there is little more we can do with guitars”. Which again underlines not only the sheer breadth of product Barnes & Mullins has to deal with, but also the thoroughly organised state the company finds itself in today.

On the cards for now – and until next June, when the flurry of French guitars will again take priority –  the Barnes & Mullins team has the fully revamped Rico reeds brand, which D’Addario is taking down the same route as Evans and Planet Waves before it, expanding and improving the range to find wider appeal and to give other established reed brands a run for their money.

“The thing is with a brand such as Rico is that people will pay good money for a good product,” says Perrin. “I know some dealers will always argue about £1.95 versus £2.05, but I know people are willing to pay for quality.”

At this point he produces the new Rico reed holder – a nifty little case that will either humidify or dehumidify the reeds inside to keep them at the perfect moisture levels. “This is a potential sale for anyone who comes in for a reed,” enthuses Perrin. “And it adds another accessory – the pad that controls the moisture, which needs to be renewed every few months. Who wouldn’t want to sell this?”

Barnes & Mullins also has a pretty extensive tradition in the sphere of brass and woodwind, with the top of the range Yanigasawa saxophones being something of a cash cow for the company. “Yanigasawa does its own setting up, so the boxes arrive sealed from Japan,” explains Perrin. “I wish we could get more, but everyone is on a quota, so we have to deal with what we have.”

Sitting comfortably below that is the Antigua student line of brass and woodwind, which is set up in Oswestry, as is the new Wiseman line – a B&M spec’d range of entry level instruments that will start shipping at the end of this year.

Another new line for B&M, and another area where the company has far reaching experience, is Bridge electric violins. Bridge violins have been plodding away for years, maintaining a hold on its share of the market, but this has always amounted to underperforming for the instrument that pretty much set the benchmark in both design and sound for the instrument.

Now with the Oswestry boys, the hope is that it can achieve its potential. “It’s a beautiful instrument, whether you are looking at a violin or a bass, and the quality is second to none,” says Perrin.

It also sits pretty perfectly with yet another new line – the US made Coda carbon fibre bows. The top e-violin with the top non-wood bow? It’s the sort of match most general suppliers can only dream of.

Acoustic violins are also in Perrin’s line of fire at the moment. The drop in output from the former East Germany – and the increase in price – has had a lot of suppliers scurrying to China for replacements in the lower end of orchestral strings – often (as with brass and woodwind) with disastrous results. B&M has bided its time here, but will shortly be launching the new Hidersine range, made with strict quality control from a workshop in a Shanghai factory.

So while the ‘in yer face’ world of guitars has been left to its own devices for the time being, Perrin and his team of six reps on the road certainly have their hands full with… Well, just about everything else you can think of.

“The nature of MI is that it’s a face-to-face business,” points out Perrin. “Almost all of us still prefer to have the person we are dealing with in front of us. At the end of the day, it is what is on the order form that counts, but we have a relaxed approach to sales – and it seems to work.”

“People are always saying that it is hard out there,” adds Mew. “But we are consistently selling more, year on year. Our guys seem to be liked.” Selling more but business is hard… Could this be another reminder of that dreaded deflation?

“There are a lot of factors that are making things difficult,” explains Perrin. “A lot of it at the moment is dollar related. Most international business deals in dollars, especially China, but we are pretty lucky here in most cases.

“The big problem is the simple over-production from China. It can’t go on, and it won’t go on. It’s unsustainable. There were some grants for Chinese factories exporting that are now gone and new taxes have been introduced, so some of these Chinese factories will eventually disappear.

“A business needs inflation to some degree, but during this period of deflation, we should have been sitting on our margins, not dropping them.”

Perrin is most concerned by dropping margins due to his almost religious conviction that it is the small, independent MI store that is the backbone of our industry and something that should be protected.

“How many specialist stores are there left on the High Street?” he asks, quickly adding his own answer. “Musical instruments is the last specialist store and while you can argue until you are blue in the face that selling through Argos or The Range is widening the market, I think it is just another nail in the coffin for the independent. And that’s bad news for all of us.

“Starter packs used to be the bread and butter of an MI store and that has now gone. I think the real reason for selling through these big outlets is that it is the easy option.”

This is why Perrin, Mew and all of Barnes & Mullins now have brand building as their number one priority – whatever the category of instrument.

“It’s difficult for the smaller shops,” says Mew. “We have a trend that shows a smaller number of larger stores selling fewer brands, but we would like to see the smaller shops survive.”

“This is important,” adds Perrin. “We’re trying to build brands, but if Joe Punter can’t get his hands on a product and try it out, then...”

The pause is left to good effect and one is left with little doubt that Barnes & Mullins takes its policy of ‘indie only’ sales very seriously. This is good news for the smaller retailer – whatever they are selling. In Barnes & Mullins, they have a friend and a champion.