The Exchanges

Q Oh, wow. So you would, that's a great idea. So you would just do the recording for free. So you got church choirs and the schools, and these were your clients. Like, who else were you recording?

A Everyone we've talked about, but it would be choirs and bands, and I would record them in their auditoriums or their cafeteria. I did many, many, uh, presidents of companies, CEOs of companies. I'd go into their boardroom or the, maybe the speech they were making. I remember one year I did a, I recorded a speech of the, uh, CEO of General Motors. He was down in Defiance, Ohio, and all the way through his speech, he kept referencing the current year, and he meant to reference the next year. So he gets all done with his speech, and I figured out how to use a razor blade and tape and change all those references that he made And I was a hero for them, and for many, many years, I got lots of their recording business, because I made him look great, you know.

AI assessment note: “I did many, many, uh, presidents of companies, CEOs of companies.”

Q So I guess you become, at a certain point around this time, a dealer for this machine, for the Kurzweil And why was that a good use of your time? I mean, I mean, what made you think I should just start selling these machines for Kurzweil?

A Actually, I wasn't that smart, but I mentioned the Kurzweil rep kept coming by and getting my sounds, and he would take them to the other dealers up in Chicago and Detroit and Minneapolis, and, and I kept telling about my relationship with all my friends. By then I had about 300 friends around the country that had their own Kurzweils. And he kept saying, why don't you become a dealer? Why don't you become a dealer? And I said, oh no, I'm too busy running my recording studio. And eventually, uh, he talked me into it. He said, I'll set you up to be a parts dealer. That was in the fall. And, and by Christmas time, I had sent out a newsletter again to all my friends and going, hey, I've just become a Kurzweil dealer. If you want sound block A or B or C or D, and each one of them had a bunch of different new sounds in it. I am a dealer for all that. So send me your check and I'll get the parts to you and I'll help you get it installed. So through the month of December, I started getting check after check, because the kind of people that had these machines usually were pretty successful, or they were universities, and they didn't have a great relationship with their local store, and so I was a little bit the lifesaver for people that had Kurzweil K-to-fifties, and I'll never forget, it was a couple days before Christmas, my, my rep friend called me and said, hey Chuck, I really need …

AI assessment note: “eventually, uh, he talked me into it. He said, I'll set you up”

Q Um, but how did you You know, this is pre-internet. This is like the early fax machine days. Like, how did anybody find out that, hey, there's this guy in Fort Wayne, Chuck Suriak, he's making samples on the Kurzweil, and, uh, they're pretty great. Like, here you go, Steve, you wonder, like, how would, help me understand how anybody even knew what you were doing?

A Yeah, great question. There were two ways. The first way is there were a couple manufacturer reps working for Kurzweil, and they would travel around the country to other music stores. And happened to be one from Southern Indiana who called on all the stores in the Midwest, and he would see me as a customer, as an end user, and he'd come by and trade sounds with me, and he'd take them to the other music stores, so that's one way, but the real way I really made it happen is there was a magazine back in those days called Mix Magazine. Mix Magazine covered recording studios around the country, and they would list their equipment. You know, they have a, an MCI tape recorder, they have a, uh, an Atari Consul, and they have a Kurzweil K-i-fifty. And anytime I would see that they had a K-i-fifty, I would immediately either call them or write them and go, wow, you have a K-i-fifty? I have one too. And I was open to trade sounds with them. Generally, I found out most of the players were just players. They weren't technical. They weren't into the musical side or the making sounds for it. And they'd go, well, I don't have any sounds, but I sure would like yours. And it was kind of funny. In the early days, they were on a floppy disk that was a three and a half inch, kind of a semi-rigid disk that the Macintoshes used. And I'm running recording sessions, but I'm copying disks on the side. I…

AI assessment note: “There were two ways. The first way is there were a couple manufacturer reps”

Q All right. So, and, and I should mention by this point, you know, you were called Sweetwater Sound and, and, and that I've heard different kind of, you describe different variations on the origins of the name. What, what is this name? I mean, where's it come from?

A So when I was out in the country, a lot of farmers had little wooden signs by their property. They'd sell Bill's acreage or Steve's farm or whatever it was. And when I moved into Fort Wayne, Uh, I knew I didn't want to be C and B audio anymore, so this is about the second or third year of our business, and I had two acres of land, and I had a little creek in the backyard, and I literally just put a bunch of names on a piece of paper, and I'm thinking about this little creek in our backyard, I go, water, that's kind of sweet, and it became sweet water, and so I put a little sign, it was about two foot wide and a foot high that said sweet water, didn't say what it was or anything, but that helped me get past the zoning officials, and yet my musician customers could find me.

AI assessment note: “I'm thinking about this little creek in our backyard, I go, water, that's kind of sweet”

Q days a week? Was it, I mean, you've got, um, customers ordering, you've got a pretty robust business. You've got to get the, the shipments out. Obviously it's not like today was the next day. Everyone expects the next day, but still, what do you remember about your lifestyle at that time? Cause I think you'd mentioned your first wife, And maybe your marriage had split up by that point?

A Uh, no, she was around for about 20 years. Um, but you know, I would say that was probably, uh, a sacrifice, uh, by being so engaged in the business, and she had other interests, you know, that we separated. Thankfully, there were no children involved at the time. But no, it was, it was definitely a seven day a week, and it was early in the morning to very late at night. Uh, I loved what I did, though. I mean, I never considered it work. And whether I was selling to a customer or programming our next database updates, I did that for a long time. You know, all the systems that figured out the UPS shipping in those days and salesman's commission. I wrote all the code for that because I like, I like technology. Yeah.

AI assessment note: “it was definitely a seven day a week, and it was early in the morning”

Q 200 square foot mobile home to, you know, a little bigger place than 5000 square feet. And then by 1991, you got 10,000 square foot place. So this is a robust business. I mean, you're just Was there not a lot of competition? Were there not a lot of businesses doing this kind of work? Or what explained, you know, really just the growth of this thing at that time?

A Well, you know, there were about 5000 other music stores across the country, so there was lots of competition. Every town has two, three, four music stores. I don't mean this at all arrogantly, but what we really worked hard on is having relationships with our customers. What I heard all the time was, I can't believe you can service me better out of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Then I can get out of my local store in LA or New York or wherever it may be. And I never really competed on price. I always wanted to be a fair value, but I didn't try and undercut the local dealer. We just wanted to know the products better. We want to make better recommendations. We had this incredible service. Um, you know, we will fix anything we sell. By that time, the internet is starting to happen. So we had all kinds of online educational tools. Our goal was to always add more value. And so if we sold a keyboard, We would include an extra bank of sounds. If we sold speakers, we would, uh, show you diagrams on how to set it up and that sort of thing.

AI assessment note: “there were about 5000 other music stores across the country, so there was lots of competition.”

Q And did you, like, one of the things I find fascinating about, especially good sales reps, is they often have a script, right? And so there's like, they will know what the five or six things the customer might say, and there's all kinds of ready responses. Were you guys able to develop those kinds of techniques as well?

A You know, we didn't really do that so specifically because every conversation was different, but what we did do is what we called the perfect conversation, and that really meant that we weren't going to negotiate the price until the selling was done. I wanted the customer to understand where the right place to buy it. I wanted the customer to understand it's the right product, and once we get through all of that, then eventually we'll talk about a selling thing, but for me to quote a price, which is what all my competitors did, you'd call around and go, I want a Yamaha this or a Gibson that, but They would just quote a price, and to me that's silly because I don't know how the customer's going to use it or what else they want to use it with, and so I was not going to quote a price until the selling was done. We're the right place, and it's the right items for them.

AI assessment note: “we didn't really do that so specifically because every conversation was different”

Q Um, and, and I should say, Sweetwater does sell on Amazon, right, like, like other third-party sellers, but Amazon has gone after a lot of other competitors in big markets, like Toys R Us, right, but not Sweetwater. Why do you think that is? I mean, I mean, Amazon could just decide to undercut you by You know, by selling the same things you do, but for like, 10% less.

A They could. And I'll tell you the reason we're on Amazon is access to customers. But that being said, Amazon has decided that there are other markets that are much easier to get into and to be an expert at. You know, I've mentioned it multiple times, but the expertise that we have and the investment we make in our people to offer, they don't want to have people. I mean, you can't, it's hard to call Amazon and talk to them on the phone. We encourage people to talk on the phone. We, we We have those sales engineers and tech support people that really understand the products, and I think people are comfortable buying little inexpensive things on Amazon, or if you know exactly what you want, but when you have any question or anything like that, you'd be more, much more comfortable buying that sort of technology from Sweetwater.

AI assessment note: “Amazon has decided that there are other markets that are much easier to get into”

Q Okay, so around 8586, you become eventually the exclusive dealer in your area for Kurzweil. And so, at what point did you sort of begin to become a person who wasn't a recording engineer, but a person selling Studio equipment, musical instruments. Like, how, how long did that take, that transition?

A Yeah, so I told you that I became a parts dealer in December and started sending all those parts out to my friends in January and February. About, uh, March of that year, I got a call from a friend, and he said, hey, Chuck, I want to buy another Kurzweil K-i-fifty. I said, whoa, you already have one. I just loaded yours completely up. You know, you probably have 30,000 dollars in your machine. Why do you want another one? And he says to me, he says, Chuck, a Kurzweil, I only placed 12 notes at one time. And I hold my fingers up, And I go, well, I got 10 fingers. What do you mean 12 notes? He says, no, no, no, no. He says, I do orchestrations with full orchestras, and I have to hire an orchestra for a day or two. It's thousands of dollars. He said, if I had another Kurzweil, I could do 24 notes at one time. And so I called the rep, and he says, oh, no, Chuck, I told you that to open a Kurzweil as a re, as a retailer, a new dealer, you have to buy 10. And, and I'm, 10? Yep, yep, you gotta buy 10. And so eventually over the next couple months, I sold those 10, and over time, I sold a lot more. You know, back to your question, by 1990, I do remember one time with the Tascam recording equipment, probably the most popular brand of recording equipment, the national sales manager came to see me with his rep, and they wanted to sign me up for the really basic, basic equipment. And I sai…

AI assessment note: “You know, back to your question, by 1990, I do remember”

Q And how did you guarantee that they are going to do the things that you really need them to do, or that you, you have a certain view about your employees, the business, the community? How do you bake that into a guarantee for ever?

A Well, I don't know if I can do it forever, but, but when I did interview them, and I interviewed them as hard as they interviewed us, and we talked to references of other companies they had done, the best thing I can tell you is they've done exactly what they said they would do, and what they really did is they sped up some of the stuff that I was going to do anyway. You know, I'd have done things in sequential order, very monitored and measured, taking on selling band instruments, as an example, or opening the warehouse on the West Coast, or they did it all at once. It was a little bit stressful for the team, but it allowed us to go even faster, and that's, that's what they really brought to the table.

AI assessment note: “when I did interview them, and I interviewed them as hard as they interviewed us”

Q I mean, there's a, there's a sort of a, you know, kind of a stereotype of a good sales rep, right? Who's somebody who's just aggressive and just, uh, just relentless and just closing the sale, closing, closing, closing. But you're bringing in people who were actually not coming from sales. These were people who were like music gear nerds.

A Absolutely. And we never wanted them to close, close hard, as you've described. We wanted them to present the right options to the customer, and jointly with the customer figure out if that's the right thing for them. I've always preached that I never wanted to sell customer more than they really needed. There were many times a customer would call in for a very expensive thing, and I would find out that that was too much for them, and they really should buy a less expensive thing, but get all the other accessories to go with it. I've always believed everyone in our company, whether it's a sales engineer or the receptionist is either adding credibility or taking credibility away from our company. And I got to have people always adding credibility. We empower everyone in our company to make the right decision, to do the right stuff. If someone would come to our store or, or phone into the receptionist and say, my keyboard, you know, quit working or they're empowered to replace it. I mean, we might ask a question or two, but they're empowered to replace it. They're never to ask a manager. They never would use the excuse. Well, I have to get management approval. No, if you want to replace it, you replace it. And you know, the worst case from our point of view, we'll get it back. We'll fix whatever's wrong with it. We'll turn around and sell it as a demo or a used instrument. Uh, so…

AI assessment note: “we never wanted them to close, close hard, as you've described.”

Q And so how did you see, what do you remember about imagining what this could be, like where this is going?

A You know, by then, we started to have enough credibility with our customers and our vendors. I should back up. Our vendors in the early days, they didn't understand when I was operating out of my house. They'd never heard of such a thing before, and many of them wouldn't do business with us. And I remember going to trade shows and begging them to do business. I tried to explain to them how we were different, and no, no, you're just a mail order, you're just a catalog, you're just gonna lowball and hurt our other dealers. So it took a while to get their credibility. Eventually they start coming one by one and wanted to do business with our company.

AI assessment note: “I should back up. Our vendors in the early days, they didn't understand”