With more musicians than people who can fix instruments, local repairmen say they aren't bothered by more competition moving into town.
Bryan-College Station will welcome its second music repair shop Wednesday with a ribbon cutting. However, two former employees of Holze Music Co., which went out of business a year ago, didn't let an outside entity come to town to meet the need for another music center. Instead, they created Thorn Music.
Owner and operator Josh Thorn and education representative James Maclaskey opened the doors to Thorn Music in February at 702 University Drive E., Suite F100, in College Station.
"It is extremely difficult for any small business to compete with the big-box or Internet retailers, so we will rely on providing personal service and hope that will gain the loyalty of our customers," Maclaskey said.
Starting from Square 1
After losing their jobs in April last year, Thorn said, the hardest thing about starting up the business was coming up with money. Once the pair earned enough to rent a location, they moved in behind Fast Eddie's on University Drive. Thorn said they've been working on starting the business for a year and have done it primarily using credit cards as a draw account. They were unable to get any small-business loans, he said.
"We really started with nothing and are just growing slowly as we can," he said.
Fortunately, Thorn said, he bought his own instrument-repair tools, which is a "very substantial" cost. He acquired them working with Holze Music Co., which permanently closed the doors of its 10 locations throughout Texas last year after almost
70 years in business.
The Texas Comptroller's Office revoked the company's sales tax permits because the Waco-based business hadn't paid more than $191,000 in taxes. Holze Music, which operated a Bryan store, paid the delinquent taxes but was unable to recover from the financial setback, owner Rob Gibson said in a news release last year.
Thorn, who worked for Holze for about six years doing repairs, started an apprenticeship there after getting out of the Army.
Maclaskey started working at Holze in August 2007 and had been a high school band director for 31 years, the last 13 of those at A&M Consolidated High School.
For the past several years, Holze Music and The String & Horn Shop had met the needs of students, school bands and orchestras, as well as other local musicians, he said.
Thorn said the shops serve about 24 band programs and 11 orchestra groups for schools. It's difficult to estimate how many instruments are being rented and leased out, he said, because the shops are expecting more beginning students to come in during the school year.
"With the demise of Holze, we felt like it would only be a matter of time before additional outside entities would come into the area to fill the void, and we believe that those needs are better served by locally owned and operated retailers who have a vested interest in the community," Maclaskey said.
Supplies and service
Thorn Music carries everything from band and orchestra instruments and accessories to "pretty much anything the schools use or carry," Thorn said. The store also carries guitar strings and accessories, keyboards, microphones, cables, amps and much more, he said.
The primary focus is on band and orchestra instruments, supplies and service, Maclaskey said. The shop calls on the schools that were Holze customers. Thorn Music hopes eventually to expand service to become a "full-line" store that will stock pianos and guitars. Currently, these instruments are offered on a limited basis, he said.
Maclaskey said he makes weekly visits to schools in Caldwell, Brenham, Hempstead, Navasota, Madisonville and Hearne as well as those in Bryan-College Station.
He said he provides pickup and delivery for school accounts and for individual customers outside Bryan-College Station, so customers are not required to travel to get supplies or repair work.
"With my years of experience as a teacher, it's my goal to provide the service to our clients that I expected to receive when I was in their position," he said.
Instrument repair makes up the biggest part of the business, and rentals come in second, Thorn said, adding that customers can try out the instruments when they visit the store.
"To buy it before you hear it, what's the point? It's like buying a car before driving it; it would be just because of the looks," he said.
Eventually, Thorn said, they'd like to take the business to a more noticeable, larger spot because their 500-square-foot spot is "bursting at the seams."
They want to grow, but not too fast, Thorn said. That's something they learned firsthand as they watched Holze collapse from overspending by going from five locations to 10 in just over a year, he said.
Thorn said they believe they got to see and learn a lot from the months leading up to Holze's demise and plan to focus their business more locally.
"It's intimidating going from balancing your personal budget to balancing thousands of dollars for this place," Thorn said.
'Quietly plugging away'
The String & Horn Shop in Bryan has been renting, repairing and selling musical instruments for 30 years.
For almost 11 years, Clayton Wuensche has worked there as a wind instrument repairman -- because he got his "hands dirty on horns at 11 years old."
Wuensche said he learned all the aspects of band repair at Western Iowa Tech in Sioux City, Iowa. After graduation, Wuensche said, he opened his own repair shop but decided he needed to further his education and hone his technical skills. After working with several well-established repair technicians around Texas, Wuensche started at the Bryan shop in 1998. It's now the only shop besides Thorn Music that repairs instruments.
"I'm just kind of quietly plugging away," he said while he worked. "That's what we music stores do."
The String & Horn Shop has a repairman devoted to string instruments -- Harold Turbyfill -- whom Wuensche described as a "guru" of the trade.
Turbyfill received his bachelor's and master's degrees in music education from East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. After repairing instruments for more than 40 years, Turbyfill is one of only a handful of repairmen in the country who has a repair and maintenance manual that is nationally published by the American String Teachers Association, said the shop's co-owner Susan Rieger.
"We are excited to have had both of them with us for over 10 years," Rieger said of Turbyfill and Wuensche.
Starting in a recession
Except for a lawn care business in high school, Thorn, 29, said, he's never owned a business.
Maclaskey, 55, said this was also his first venture into retail ownership.
"The most difficult thing was committing financially and taking that first step," Maclaskey said. "Josh and I both could have probably been more financially secure working for someone else."
Though Brazos County hasn't been as affected by the national recession as the rest of the country, Thorn said, they couldn't get a small-business loan. Instead, they simply got a "good luck."
"We hit that point where everyone started saying 'recession,'" he said about starting the business. "When the economy hits its upturn, we kind of hope to be on that roller coaster back up."
Maclaskey said the recession has caused them to start smaller than they might have liked in terms of inventory and location.
"However, if we come out on the other side, we should be stronger for it," Maclaskey said, adding that everyone has been affected by the economic downturn. "I am confident that music programs will continue to be an important part of schools, as long as they continue to receive adequate funding, but the current situation will cause everyone to tighten their belts and look for the most economical options."
The String & Horn Shop serves schools, Texas A&M University and the occasional walk-ins. The nation's recession actually does an interesting thing to music repair shops, Wuensche said. Schools tend to keep old instruments rather than buying new ones, he said.
Wuensche said he tends to see more work as a result of the economic downturn.
Then there are the children, he said.
"Any time you take a piece of soft brass ... and you hand that to a child, it's just a matter of time before it ends up in a shop," he said.
Wuensche said he's seen damage done to instruments that he didn't think was possible to duplicate. Sixty percent of the damage is a direct result of lack of care in maintenance for the instruments, he said.
"Let your imagination run free with that."
Then there are the "dads who come in with heads hanging low," he said. Wuensche said he sees fathers all the time come into the shop after having taken a pliers to an instrument trying to fix it but succeeding only in causing more damage.
The tools to work on instruments are "very, very specialized," he said. Wuensche said he's fortunate to personally own all the tools and equipment in the shop.
'More friendly than vicious'
Wuensche said one of the most important things is that he plays the instrument before it leaves to shop to ensure its quality. Few people notice the small problems with their instruments that can crop up over time, he said.
He said he could play every instrument that comes into his shop -- an "occupational hazard" -- because it's "the only way to know a repair is complete."
When Holze closed, Wuensche said, the String & Horn Shop "naturally" saw an increase in business, being the only source in the Brazos Valley for music rentals, supplies and repairs.
The competition now with Thorn Music open is "more friendly than vicious," he said. He's known Thorn for a long time, and there will always be more musicians than repair shops.
"Since I can't repair all the instruments in the state of Texas, I'm glad there are other guys to do it," he said, adding that he already stays constantly busy.
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