This is chapter TWELVE – to read the previous chapters from the start GO HERE
The start of this new Marketing role at Ellaways Music for me it was really all about, “hit the deck running”.
Plans were underway to develop a new Brisbane Guitar Festival, a monthly original music showcase, Weekend Warriors and the online web store. This was the beginning of always juggling many plates in the air at one time. Or maybe I had always been like this, however, the key to this was to always have fun – and fun we did have. I also had a visit to the Gibson Factory in Nashville, USA, thanks to Con Gallen, the importer of Gibson Guitars (and Ellaways of course). My wife, Jul and I, went to San Francisco, LA and Mexico – oh for those great junket days!
It was July 1999 and I had met a young chap at Cybeat, Andrew Roberts and he told me that his newly formed company, Ephox, were developing a new friendly retail “back end” for online web sites and I thought it good to get them in to talk about what may be possible. Their new startup company was part of an incubation project, Software Engineering Australia, which was a federally funded non-profit organisation promoting startups and software engineering in Brisbane, before the Creative Industries concept (more on that coming up).
Andrew and his programmer, Angus, told us about a new software device they had created called EditLive! This was going to give us the ability to make changes to the web site, without us relying on a web programmer to make daily updates. (now more common in 2013). It was an exciting opportunity for us both to work on this project and we all agreed Ellaways Music was a great partner to utilise to assist in the development of their software in a real world example.
We started the project in late 1999 and we launched the first web site for Ellaways Music in early 2001.
Our launch was unique, as it was one of the first online web stores in the music products industry and it had a large range of products to sell online. Our joint launch was at the Queensland Art Gallery, where we had a procession of politicians and celebrities to celebrate our new online store.
Not to get too far ahead of myself, however, back in 2000, the Australian Academy of Music (who had been my client whilst being a rep for Australis Music) had gone into Voluntary Administration. By 1999 it was the largest independently owned music store in Australia, annual retail (and wholesale revenue) of $16 million (Ellaways Music in comparison was approx around $4 mill in sales in 1999) and had over 80 staff (Ellaways had 20). John Morris senior was in retirement the previous two years and his three sons had made some major changes in the years prior, moving the store three times in a short span of time, in Spring Hill, and settling on a three story building and a massive store on Leichardt Street, opposite their original store.
There was much speculation around what went wrong with the Academy of Music, even John Morris Senior had written a small 30+ page overview of what had gone down, praising his son’s work, exposing a devious accountant – however he had never acknowledged the amazing group of people he had assembled over the years and how they were the “day to day” health of the business. From a distance I saw some decisions the sons had made that undermined their own management and staff and investment in wholesale music products that were in direct conflict with major brand suppliers (that they owed large sums too). It was a sad day to hear about this all going down (only five years after my own business crisis at Music Worx) and in the end the building and music store were “purchased” by Peter Hayward, my old boss who owned Australis Music (see how small this music world is?).
Back at Ellaways Music we had forged a collaboration with four other local music stores from around the outer regions of Brisbane. I had met all these music store owners over the years and more recently as their rep with Australis Music. I had always admired a festival in Victoria called – Frankston International Guitar Festival. It had been running for a few years and was funded by local council.
As a group, we decided to fund it all ourselves and call it, BigFest 2000 – Brisbane International Guitar Festival.
The five stores collaborating were Carrol’s Total Music Solution, Capalaba (owner, Paul Carroll), Music Spot, Browns Plains (owner Andy Neil), Word of Mouth Music, Ipswich (owner, Rob Hassem), Key Music, Morayfield (Steve) and Ellaways Music.
We booked the Waterloo Hotel at Fortitude Valley for April 2000 and had a line up of amazing Australian guitarists, Kevin Borich, Izzy (Screaming Jets), Kirk Lorange, Phil Manning, Phil Emmanuel, Simon Patterson, Deiter Kleeman, along with a host of local guitarists, Julz Parker, Matt Mikkelson, Simon Gardner (how did I just remember that??). Ellaways Music didn’t have Fender or Gibson (Carroll’s, Music Spot, WOMM all had access) in April 2000 (Ellaways only stocked Ibanez, Yamaha, Maton and Washburn Guitars) but by end of 2000 they had Fender, Gibson and Takamine as well. We had over 1500 payers on the day and at the end of the day only cost each store $300 each!. A great promo that only, unfortunately never saw a second year.
At this time we also started a whole new idea called, Klub eFactor. Being based at Kedron on the northside of Brisbane, Ellaways Music had been a traditional “Mum and Dad” store, it was even called – Ellaways Music, your family music store. The idea of Klub eFactor was to present an opportunity for local artists, preferably original artists of all genres, to perform live at the Kedron Hotel. We would provide the sound, lighting, gear and artists (musicians) would sign up through the month to perform on stage. We would feature about 12 new acts a month. It received some great interest from Radio 4ZZZ, who enjoyed the fact that original music was coming out to the suburbs and getting a few hundred attending each month. We were also pretty stoked with the diversity of the night too – Hip Hop starting with acoustic acts, moving into Pop, Rock and then Heavy Metal at the end of the night. It really represented what Ellaways Music was trying to establish. It was all about the music.
Every few weeks I would continue my emails and phone calls to Rob Walker at AMA (Australian Music Association) in Victoria. Rob was good at trying to deflect me about Weekend Warriors, however, he gave me promising news at last that the Director of Marketing of NAMM USA . Joe Lamond, was coming to Australia in September 2000 to attend the annual AMAC Conference (the Australian Music Products show) held at the Gold Coast. Joe had worked prior at Skips Music in Sacramento, USA, running the Weekend Warriors music program. This was an exciting development, as we would now get all the first hand wisdom from Joe when we met.
I had our little collaboration group still meeting and they were all keen to hear about it. We all met up with Joe Lamond in September 2000 and Joe handed us a hand book how to run the program. NAMM had developed a license to allow others to run it in America and we were all excited to know more about it. We only spent one hour with Joe – and the cruncher for me was his parting line to us. “Weekend Warriors will become your life, remember it is all about FUN – if you lose that focus it will never take hold, you will be doing it, not for the money, but for FUN, remember that always”. This stuck with me and I became the obsessed evangelist for Weekend Warriors in Australia. But first, I needed to convince Ellaways Music we do it, we had a more pressing concern, we had decided to do some major store renovations at our Kedron store and it looked like we wouldn’t be ready to start anything in 2000. As the year closed in 2000, I had reconnected with an old music friend, who had just started running a weekly showcase, Music Platform at the Paddington Tavern in Caxton Street.
Vic Kena and I had a coffee and a chat that changed the course of our lives – and was the start of many great music making moments.
Greg Dodge ~ “Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” 