How does Musicroom inspire current and future music creators and learners?
At Musicroom, we pride ourselves on understanding and supporting the needs of our customers, including teachers, students, parents, amateurs, and professional musicians. To inspire people to want to make and learn music, it is important that they have the tools and resources they need. Whether they want to learn how to play the ukulele, find the latest graded exam materials, record music at home, prepare for a performance, or start their children on their musical path, we stock everything they need both in-store and online.
Inspiring current and future music creators and learners is at the core of our company values. Musicroom is part of Hal Leonard Europe, which is one of the Hal Leonard group of companies – the world’s largest source of music publications, representing many of the world’s best-known and most respected publishers, artists, songwriters, arrangers, and instrument manufacturers. Musicroom shares Hal Leonard Europe’s vision of “lifelong music-making for everyone” and its mission of being the best global provider of tools and resources for learning, teaching, creating, and making music.
What’s the best thing about having multiple stores in locations across the country and what makes it difficult?
Our eight retail stores serve local communities across England, Scotland, and Ireland. Our e-commerce business successfully covers a different location: the web! Musicroom.com is the UK’s leading music specialist online store. Showcasing all the best Hal Leonard products as well as a wide range of industry-leading third-party brands, we mimic our online stock profile in-store. Recently we expanded our online presence to Germany and France with the introduction of two new stores – Musicroom.de and Musicroom.fr. These sites allow us to better serve local European markets, and we can provide access to hundreds of thousands of products, including an extensive selection of German and French local repertoire delivered directly from our central European distribution centre. In the next few months, we plan to introduce additional online stores in further European territories.
A shared challenge for many retailers has been the competitive and changing retail landscape which has been impacted by the pandemic and disrupted further by supply chain pressures. To combat this, we make sure we have the right stock profiles both in stores and in our distribution centres for online customers. Our store teams stay connected and involved with their local music communities to perfect stock profiles for different product areas. Throughout all of our locations, we maintain a “one team” approach that keeps us united no matter where in the world our teams are.
What does Musicroom value and how do you measure success?
We value and pride ourselves on always starting with music. Music is why we exist as a company, and we believe that music should be accessible and affordable to everyone! We value our customers – as they are our community and will always remain at the centre of our business. We prioritise excellent customer service and our reputation which we measure based on customer experience and feedback. Another of our core values is that we celebrate success, championing individual, team and wider business achievements. We are ambitious and sales driven, but success is also measured in how we live out these values.
How do you encourage Musicroom staff to learn and develop?
It is important to us that our store teams are constantly learning and developing. With a potentially overwhelming volume of new products coming in each week (from sheet music to musical instruments to pro-audio solutions and beyond), it is important that we support and encourage them in building product knowledge so we can best serve our customers.
We hold weekly meetings between Hal Leonard Europe head office and Musicroom store management to present and discuss important new product launches and to support promotional campaigns. Additionally, we hold regular training sessions on new or important instrument and pro-audio brands to improve the technical skills of our teams. Finally, we have an annual Musicroom retail conference to discuss a wider range of topics and strategic development plans. This ensures our Store Managers have the tools they need to individually support their teams in-store and online.
How do you foster a sense of community amongst the Musicroom team as commercial life becomes even more disparate?
Musicroom staff are passionate about music, friendly and approachable. Our teams, regardless of location, have a united goal to provide the best possible customer experience and support music-making for as many people as possible.
We place a particular emphasis on promoting equality, diversity and inclusion throughout our business. Our workplaces should reflect the diversity of our society, and we encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply for roles with us. We’re working hard to foster an inclusive culture at Musicroom where everyone is welcome, and we celebrate the strengths that come from diverse viewpoints.
Our Culture Committee helps encourage employee engagement and collaboration. The committee includes representatives from across our business that get together to plan socials, events, and report to our leadership team on the issues that are most important to our people. It is vital that all our teams across the organisation feel connected, whether they work in an office, one of our distribution centres or on the shop floor.
