Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#340: Bruce Salyers (Founder of Salyers Percussion) (pt. 2 of 2)
Today we release part two of our interview with Bruce Salyers. He's the founder of Salyers Percussion—a leading manufacturer of quality drum sticks and mallets for drummers and percussionists in all genres of music.
Prior to founding Salyers Percussion, Bruce enjoyed a wide variety of experiences as a musician: he was a middle and high school band director, a percussion instructor at Harding College and had a successful private teaching studio. As a performer he’s played with ensembles such as the Arkansas Symphony and Pine Bluff Orchestras, and has published music compositions.
If you're thinking of building an arts-based business, you'll want to hear Bruce describe his organic approach to significant growth! https://www.salyerspercussion.com/
Hi everyone, nick Petrella here. This episode is sponsored by Steve Weiss Music, percussion specialists since 1961. If you're looking for a rare piece of sheet music, a specialty gong or anything percussion, steve Weiss Music will have it. Please visit steveweissmusiccom or click their link in the show notes. That's S-T-E-V-E-W-E-I-S-S music. com. Our percussion series sponsor.
Announcer:Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. Any reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick.
Announcer:Petrella
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. I'm Andy Heise
Nick Petrella:and I'm Nick Petrella
Nick Petrella:.
Nick Petrella:With us today is Bruce Salyers, the founder of Salyers Percussion, a leading manufacturer of quality drumsticks and mallets for drummers and percussionists in all genres of music. Prior to founding Salyers Percussion, bruce enjoyed a wide variety of experiences as a musician. He was a middle and high school band director. He was a percussion instructor at Harding College and had a successful private teaching studio. As a performer, he's played with ensembles such as the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and the Pine Bluff Orchestra. Bruce has also had his compositions published over the years. We'll have his website in the show notes so you can read more about his company, the products they offer and the artists who use them. Bruce, it's great to have you here.
Bruce Salyers:Hey, nick and Andy, thanks. Thanks so much for having me on, I appreciate it.
Andy Heise:It sounds like that strategy, that word of mouth strategy, with this niche product, niche products for a niche market, that word of mouth endorsement and sharing and marketing is something that you know. I hear that from my students all the time oh, we're going to use word of mouth to help tell people about our products. But it's not. You can't just say, okay, we're going to use word of mouth marketing. It kind of is something that has to happen organically, and it sounds like you foster those relationships too to enable those people to have those conversations. I don't know how to. It's not really a question, it's just more of an observation, I guess.
Bruce Salyers:I agree with you. There's some magic in the ether there. I don't know. You can't just make people like your stuff and become an advocate for you. They have to decide that on their own. I don't know what we do that makes that such a powerful force for us. So in our team meetings and I probably don't say it enough, but we just are going to continue to do what we do because it's working. I don't know why it's working and it's kind of humbling man to have that amount of support. It's like sometimes you feel like what can I do to deserve that?
Nick Petrella:Yeah, as an agent of third party, you're inherently non-corporate and I think that's the way to make it more approachable.
Andy Heise:I think there is an authenticity piece to this, To your point. I think that authenticity thing is something that is very difficult to intentionally create, but it is totally recognized when it's absent.
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, maybe, maybe that has to do with it. A little bit of my background, you know, I'm not a famous percussionist or anything and people just know me as that guy that makes sticks, you know. And you know you mentioned I was a teacher, you know. I think what makes me not corporate is my history prior to that.
Bruce Salyers:I grew up deep, deep in the Appalachian Mountains with my dad was a coal miner, his dad was a coal miner and his dad was a coal miner and I was going to be a coal miner until there were no more coal jobs, no more coal jobs. So I knew from an early age seeing my dad come home from the coal mines and I don't know if you've ever seen guys that come out of the coal mine. They are covered in coal dust and in fact a lot of them suffer and die from black lung disease. It's horrible, it's a horrible thing. And died from Black Lung Disease. It's horrible, it's a horrible thing. But I kind of tried to not have a job that was so blue collar and I did things, I think, to set myself in that direction. I went to school, you know, became a teacher.
Bruce Salyers:But I think my background, because of where I came from, you know, in a very uneducated part of the country, very poor I don't. We moved out of out of the Appalachian mountains when I was 15 years old and that was the first time I'd ever seen a shopping mall or gone into a Taco Bell. Just simply because we were so deep in those Appalachian Mountains those things didn't exist. And number two, my parents were. They weren't the type that would visit those kind of places anyway, even though we did have access. You know, within an hour, hour and a half away it may as well have been on Mars for me.
Bruce Salyers:So I felt like in those teenage years I stepped into a different world and always felt like I didn't belong in it. And you know all that life experience has to. You know it just accumulates. And you know, once I was in college I wasn't sure I belonged. So I tried real hard. You know I got that master's degree because I still didn't feel like I'm there. I'm still this dumb kid from Appalachia. I got my doctorate and I remember the first day of some of the classes there working on that DMA. I was intimidated by undergraduates that quickly faded. But the older I've gotten, the more confidence I've gotten. But I think that just leads me to just be more of a people person, because that's kind of the world I grew up in was just with people and not a lot of material objects, not a lot of corporate jobs. I didn't know anybody that nobody's dad that I knew went to work with a tie on. You know they went into a coal mine, right? So I don't know, it's just.
Nick Petrella:I just do what I do now yeah.
Bruce Salyers:That's who you are.
Andy Heise:And so, bruce, you know, especially in light of, you know, of all those things you just shared about your background and sort of your approach to business, how has your definition of success evolved over time?
Bruce Salyers:As an artist, I think success, you know, if you're making art, creating art that you enjoy, you're successful. I guess each artist has to determine what their own success is. As a business guy, you know, I sort of measure success on, you know, spreadsheets, you know were we profitable, and that kind of thing. I've always been, I think, somebody that maybe thinks of things a little too nuanced when it might just be better to just box it all up and think big picture. But there's so many levels of success. I think it just depends on what you're talking about at that time. Yeah, so for me, right now, I've finally started to feel a little successful because I have a little more freedom now and I feel that is because we've been successful with our business, that now I can. Now I can do some things I want to do and not just things that I had to do, sure. So, uh, like writing music, uh, I've been wanting to do more of that and I finally did. Um, I'll say this I'm not sure if it's good music, but it's music that I liked.
Bruce Salyers:When I sat down to write music, I wanted to add some publishing to Salyah's percussion. I wanted to publish some educational materials. You know, there's the teacher in me again, and we work with so many teachers again, um, and we work with so many teachers, um, but I thought, well, you know, I can't just ask people to start writing music for me, you know, like with this abstract idea, hey, we're going to publish something, you know. So I I decided, let me write a few pieces and put that out there, and then that'll make it easier to show people what we're doing. So when I sat down to do it though it's hard not to compare yourself to other people, like we were discussing earlier with the business and the brands but especially as an artist, guys, I work with such amazing artists, like some of the best marimba players, the best composers, drum set players we haven't even touched on the drum set world that we live in.
Bruce Salyers:That's a whole other thing. We've talked a lot about Alex and that kind of thing, but the drum set world, oh my gosh. So every day I talk to super amazing composers and performers that I'm creating. Nobody should compare themselves to those people. You know those are the top in the world. So I decided I'm going to write this music and I'm not going to be concerned if somebody else likes it or if it's hard to play or if it's easy to play or the range of the instrument. I'm just writing what I want to play and if somebody else likes it, that's good. So for me I feel a bit of success that I am able to take those liberties and not care. To take those liberties and not care, being able to relax and just do what you want to do. There's some success in that, I think.
Andy Heise:Back to the garage.
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, yeah. In fact I know the podcast folks can't see this, but I have my first four-mallet blisters that I've had in decades because I've finally been able to spend time playing the marimba of all things.
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, my background is a drummer. I am a drummer like from the heart and soul. I'm a drummer, a snare drummer, a drum set player. Yeah, um, I got labeled the mallet guy because I'm making mallets, you know, and that's a good thing. One thing we didn't touch on is that Salyer's Percussion and Encore Mallet brands, you know, are pretty well known now. Yep, especially Encore. Encore's been around for 40 plus years now. Oh yeah, greatest marimba mallets in the world. In fact, uh, at the top of my desk I have my encore mallets, nancy zeltzman series that I used in college. I always, you know, when I started making how it's, I thought, man, if my quality can compare to encore, you know, that's, that's, that's it, yeah and those are fantastic to be able to make those now.
Bruce Salyers:It's just like a dream come true, dream come true. But I even forgot where I was going with that you said one thing, one. Thing we haven't talked about no, it's okay about, about Salyers and Encore.
Andy Heise:Is that? And Encore, they've been around. Yeah, I don't even.
Nick Petrella:That's okay.
Bruce Salyers:It might, you can cut that.
Nick Petrella:No, no, well, I had a follow-up question anyway. So we had talked about publishing and I'm wanting different revenue streams. Are you looking into different revenue streams beyond publishing accessories and other things?
Bruce Salyers:Yeah, you know, something that does really well for us are our accessories, I guess, the number one being our practice pads. Oh my gosh, if I had known how much people, especially young people, love practice pads, I would have done that long ago. We sell so many pads and I've even had people recently on social media and stuff say I thought you were a pad company, I didn't know. You made sticks. And yeah, because the pads are becoming pretty popular, they're pretty recognizable because they're a bright green color. When we made them green, I thought, well, that'll either be cool or people will hate it, who wants a green pad?
Bruce Salyers:But it's worked out. I looked at all the other pads and there were black ones and gray ones and white ones. There's some colorful ones out there. I've seen some blue and some red and our colors are kind of green. Anyway, we do a lot of our logo in green and things like that. So, yeah, the accessories are definitely something we're going to do more of. We have a new pad that we're about to launch Good, a couple more on the drawing board to follow that, and some publishing.
Bruce Salyers:I have tons of ideas. I wish I could get them all. I have probably 38 books started, none of them finished. Yeah, I didn't really look at it in terms of just trying to diversify the income stream, but that's what it is. Yeah, I just looked at it as we have our main customers, even though we do, like I said, a lot of drum set stuff, a lot of the education is a big part of what we do Middle school stuff, marching band stuff, a lot of the classical percussion sticks and mallets and I thought, well, what else can we offer to serve the people that are already using our products and they're using our sticks and mallets to play music. So we're going to offer a little bit of music, and I've been a teacher my whole life so I want to do some education materials and the accessories to go along with that practice pads and yeah, I don't know, maybe a new app or something, I don't know.
Bruce Salyers:We're about to launch our new web page, so we need another, another project to take on when that's over.
Bruce Salyers:My question was going to be about how do you identify those types of new products, new services to offer, but it sounds like you kind of look at who is your core customer and what are the sort of product extensions or sort of vertical integration type of stuff or whatever that you could incorporate in that. Well, another way I see it a lot of times is that the majority of our customers are like me. Yeah, they're teachers of music, they're students of music, they play the snare drum, they play the marimba, they play the vibraphone. Those are all things that I do. So if it's something that I would want and I could use, we probably ought to make that. So that's kind of what we're doing, yeah.
Andy Heise:You mentioned earlier on that you have your first product that you've discontinued, and so my question I was going to ask has to do with have you ever had an idea that didn't work out the way that you'd hoped, and where did you go from there?
Bruce Salyers:Oh man, An idea that didn't work out the way I hoped.
Andy Heise:I probably had a lot of ideas that didn't work out the way I had hoped. I guess I'm maybe thinking product-specific, yeah, yeah.
Bruce Salyers:I understand. Yeah, I can think of a couple. Sometimes you have an idea and it really takes off and sometimes it doesn't. I think one that did take off was our Fulcrum Finder drumsticks. We printed a little thumbprint at the balance point of the stick. It's like duh, you know, quickly became our biggest selling stick.
Bruce Salyers:And I didn't. I'll give the scoop on that real quick. I did that because, number one, I was using smiley faces for my students. I was putting a sticker on there for them. I thought it'd be good if something was printed there. And the second thing that pushed me to actually do it was the margins on drumsticks are so small that I was looking for a way to add value. So that's where the crossroads meet of one being a teacher and two being a business person. I could add this and it'll be great for the students and the teachers and I could maybe charge 50 cents more. So it worked out for everybody. So one that didn't work out I can think of a couple. So one that didn't work out I can think of a couple.
Bruce Salyers:I thought the hemp-wrapped vibraphone mallets were the bee's knees. They had a unique sound. They have a unique sound. I don't want to get in the weeds on materials and construction and making a mallet, but what a mallet is wrapped in has a big impact on how that mallet sounds and feels and wrapping. We had these hemp-wrapped mallets that I thought were great. They sounded unique, very percussive.
Bruce Salyers:I thought there would be a lot of applications for those. Very durable and long-lasting. That's why I tested it originally was like hemp is durable. You know hemp ropes are durable material. I thought if I can find the right kind of hemp, you know that would wrap well, because a lot of what's available is garbage and it didn't work well at all on a mallet. But we were able to find plenty that did and they just sort of simmered there in the product catalog. We sold some. They never exploded like I thought they should. I think the people that were fans of those were kind of big fans of them. Maybe it was because they were made of hemp and less to do with how they sounded.
Bruce Salyers:They just didn't sell real well that first round of discontinued products that we talked about. That was the hemp mallets. We did them on rattan and marketed as a vibraphone mallet. Lots of people said I would love this on rattan. I heard it enough on birch that we introduced it. On birch I thought, okay, these are going to take off. And they just sort of simmered there and did all right, and that, coupled with the fact that hemp is a hard material to work with, we decided to cut those.
Bruce Salyers:That's one that I thought was going to be great and just other people didn't see it the way I did um another one maybe you'll revisit it.
Nick Petrella:It's possible, yeah something modification.
Bruce Salyers:We might do it again and just not mention that attempt. We'll call it all natural material or something. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. What, what you know what, can influence somebody to do something or not to do something? I don't think it was the sound that kept those from selling well, so all I can come up with is that it was made of hemp.
Nick Petrella:I don't know. So before we get to the final three questions, I just wanted to see if you could unpack what it's like purchasing another company. So you started by purchasing Percussion Construction and then recently, in the last few years you purchased Encore. What was that process like and what did you learn from it?
Bruce Salyers:Oh man, yeah, those are some experiences that I didn't set out to have, but I did. I bought Percussion Construction and then I sold it and then I was present. I wasn't heavily involved, but I was around when Promark was being sold to Daddario and then when I purchased Encore. I've been through the process a few times and one thing I've learned is buying and selling a business a lot of times there's no rules. A business is worth what somebody's willing to pay for it. You know there are things like your assets, your physical assets, your equipment, your real estate, your whatnot, but then beyond that there's the sales to calculate in, but then just the value of the brand name. So I guess one thing I've learned is anything is possible.
Bruce Salyers:You can negotiate a business deal a thousand different ways. Negotiate a business deal a thousand different ways. Bank financing, you know, self-financed it's all up in the air man. For me it's worked out pretty well no-transcript, and we have some great mallets for other applications. But encore, I mean, anybody that knows knows there's nothing like an encore mallet. Yeah, in fact I think some of our best mallets, um it's. It's hard for me to say one is better than the other, because it's all relative and depending on the need, right, um, I mean, I'm in a unique position where I could play with any mallet any day, any time. But again, it's probably because I'm making things sort of based on my own preferences.
Bruce Salyers:But the new mallets we're making that combine what I've always wanted to do and have been doing with the things that Encore has been doing and the latex that Encore uses. I mean, we start with liquid latex and we mold our own bands, which is such a different process than anybody else's. We don't talk about that enough. That's something that sets us apart. We don't just take a ball and slap a rubber hose over it and wrap it in some yarn, which is, you know, the way most mallets are made. So I I'm not gonna sit here and say that's a bad way to make mallets. A lot of great music has been made with mallets, you know, constructed that way. But the um with the encore latex, it's uh, it's hand wrapped, which means we can control the, the thickness, the, the amount and there you said it the tension. You know, having X amount of latex around a ball is one thing, but depending on how tight the different layers are wrapped is something totally different. And we construct mallets using multiple tension levels and not just. You know it needs to have one-eighth inch of latex. You know we measure it and how many wraps have certain tightness, and so there's really a hand craftsmanship element to making those mallets. It's not something I can just hire anybody and say make these Nancy Zeltzman mallets. That would never, ever work. It's a skill.
Bruce Salyers:When we bought Encore Mallets I had been fortunate to know Dan Lidster, who founded Encore Mallets for many years. Great human being, wonderful guy, makes awesome mallets. I got to know him by just helping each other out. From time to time I might need some rattan in an emergency. Maybe I could buy some from Dan. Dan might need some rubber heads. The suppliers are running behind. I'll help him out. So a little cooperation amongst competitors there, which I think is great. Cooperation amongst competitors there, which I think is great. You know. I'd like to thank all the people I'm competing with Can also be chummy, you know, friends, sometimes they don't see it that way, but Dan was great to get to know and we ended up buying Encore. Buying Encore, having agreed on the idea to someday buy Encore, led to us helping Dan produce Encore mallets years before we bought the brand. And that was, I think, necessary because I had to learn the skill from Dan how to wrap that latex on there. They're very different than usual mallet construction.
Andy Heise:Bruce, we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions, and the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an art entrepreneur?
Bruce Salyers:jobs. You know, as we do, we like what we do we have. You know good things and bad things about every job. But being in control of your own destiny, sort of to say, you know I don't want to say not having a boss, because that's not true you know your boss has come in many forms, number one being the customer. You have to do what they want. You're not totally free, but you're free to do it the way you want to do it. You also are responsible for any mess-ups along the way. So there's that.
Bruce Salyers:To be an entrepreneur takes a couple of things. You have to be thick-skinned. People are going to love what you do and people are going to hate what you do. You have to think ahead, prepare. I would like to say, take risks, but that comes with a little asterisk. Take risks but make sure you can afford to lose whatever you're risking and not sink your ship. There's the advice. I think that I don't like to think that I'm not brave and ambitious, but when we bought Encore, I made sure that if something happened and all the artists decided to leave and worst possible catastrophe to leave, and you know worst possible catastrophe that I would still be okay. You know, because it's not, you know, cheap to buy a big, you know, 40-year-old business like that. And that's with anything. When we add a new product line, sometimes the investment is a lot of money Can you afford. If that doesn't pan out, are you going to be able to keep the doors open? So be brave, take the risks, be patient.
Bruce Salyers:I was at a panel discussion at PASIC while I was formulating the ideas for Salyer's Percussion and the panel was an industry panel. Three or four guys that have been in the industry for Salyer's Percussion and the panel was an industry panel. Three or four guys that have been in the industry for forever. One I knew very well, the others I knew of. So I wanted to hear what they had to say, because here I am about to start this business and quite literally, they gave the advice of don't be the guy trying to start a brand of drumsticks and mallets, because that will never work Because of what we talked about earlier there's so many well established brands who needs another one Did not deter me.
Bruce Salyers:I went along and did it. That being said, I would give that same advice today. Yeah, that's funny Again, because I think we were successful because Salyer's Percussion didn't start at PASIC in November of 2013. It started in the year 2000 in a garage with a dude trying to wrap his own mallets in a garage with a dude trying to wrap his own mallets, and then, 13 years later, after a whole bunch of experience, then it was successful. It's not that it failed along the way, it just took so many different paths. So just keep on doing and you'll get there.
Nick Petrella:That's good advice. What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Bruce Salyers:Oh, man, I don't know, I'm smart enough to answer that. I think accessibility is, you know, I think we all see that in how information can reach people now a lot easier than it ever ever could. So I guess it depends on what we're talking about. In the arts there's lots of. You know the internet is a great tool for education.
Bruce Salyers:I think companies you know, like mine and others you know we tend to for the most part do a good job of helping support different initiatives to bring arts to people days of percussion, things like that, clinics sponsoring performances as long as the industry will keep supporting things like that and people are still donating, donating their time, because none of those events just happen unless somebody puts a lot of time behind it. When I see somebody organizing a contest or a day of percussion or a series of performances around their city or a tour, there's so much work that's involved and these guys that start indoor percussion groups like there's so much there. So I think it really comes down to all the generosity of all the people coming together, all the teachers, all the manufacturers. You know we just got to keep promoting it Because we want people to enjoy what we enjoy, so we got to make it happen. We got to offer it to them.
Andy Heise:That's great. Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given?
Bruce Salyers:Man the best advice? I don't know. It's hard to pinpoint it to one piece of advice, because I've tried to be a sponge and learn from everybody that I come in contact with. I guess I don't know that he directly gave me this advice, but I used to be.
Bruce Salyers:I used to live in the same neighborhood as Doug DeMauro, who builds marimbas and has for a long time Very, very world-class marimbas, and he taught me a lot about a lot of different things just watching him work and working with him. We did projects together but he ran his business and continues to sort of on his own terms. I don't think he tried to ever compete with other brands and I never thought about it that I've tried to emulate that. But now that I think about it and knowing that he influenced me, that's sort of what I do. So I probably owe some of that to Doug. He let his products speak for themselves and he taught me indirectly how important that is. I also maybe took some lessons from what he did that I would do differently. I do like to tell people, hey, we're great, and Doug is more subdued and just says, hey, there's the instrument. If they don't have the sense to hear how great it is. That's on them, I don't know. That's just one thing that has stuck with me, another one was Steve Beck from Promark.
Bruce Salyers:He was such a great man. He was general manager at ProMark and before I worked at ProMark Steve had no idea who I was. I barely knew who he was. I had a little booth I think it was TMEA or something Texas Music Educators Association Convention and Steve comes by and, just being nice, says hello and he offered me some advice and I thought, all right, yeah, I'll hear this, what is it? And his advice was in the world of making mallets, you should go after customers who you can make mallets for, that are going to market them for you. And he was telling me that because he was general manager of Promark and they were outsourcing some of their product lines and that was such good advice. Even now, at Salyer's Percussion, our business is so much bigger than our brand name, partly because of that advice that Steve Beck gave me. I don't know I haven't counted recently, but we probably make 12 to 14 brands of products in our shop for other companies.
Bruce Salyers:For other companies because there's a lot of people that well, there's marimba companies that make marimbas that need some mallets to send along with the instrument. There's handbell companies that are making handbells that need some mallets. There's other drumstick companies that focus on lathing wood but not making mallets and they turn to us to fill those needs for them and it's a especially in the early days that was a big part of our business. Now that our brand has grown, I really like it that it's not such a large percentage of what we do anymore, but it is a big piece of our puzzle. Like we could probably shut down Salyer's Percussion and just do OEM and have a nice little small business going on.
Bruce Salyers:So that was good advice from him that alerted me to a part of the industry that I had no idea about. I was young and green and didn't know. And Steve just comes over and out of nowhere says, hey man, you should look into this yeah.
Nick Petrella:Well, that's great. That's a great way to end it, Bruce, I mean thanks so much for coming on the podcast and really applaud your grit and determination and your organic approach to significant growth.
Bruce Salyers:Oh, thanks so much for letting me talk about it. I can probably ramble on for too long and I appreciate you guys and what you're doing bringing information to everybody and thanks for letting me share our stuff here.
Andy Heise:Thanks for doing it, Bruce.
Bruce Salyers:Oh, yeah, anytime, thank you.
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