A Year in the life of the MI Industry
Today, we’re taking a walk back through the last year. We thought it might be interesting to reflect on what we worked on month by month, along with all the external factors that affected the MI industry. We even take a look back at some of the news shared by member companies in our space throughout the year (take a peak, you might get a mention).
Because, hey, if you can’t be a bit reflective at Christmas, when can you?
We started the new year with a focus on export. As part of this, we outlined the work of the Export Academy and focussed on the sessions it would be running in 2022. We also brought you the news that the Government would be offering support to those attending Music China after MIA lobbying (a good outcome, even though the show was ultimately cancelled for foreign visitors) as well as running a webinar session with representatives of DIT which focused on the Government’s new export strategy, which we reviewed here.
Following our Annual General Meeting, we announced details of the new MIA Board for the coming year. We were excited tell you more about our Directors; a diverse group of industry professionals, with a board range of skills and experience.
In February, the Government announced the details of its plan for ‘Living with COVID’, and we held a session to talk through the implications. Also in February, we started our work around helping MI Manufacturers get to grips with the UKCA mark.
In March, the Government had more announcements to make – this time it launched a policy consultation into an Online Sales Tax. We began to explore the wider issue and help members who wanted to take part in the consultation.
Also in March, we announced a new series of training courses commissioned from The HR Point as part of the MIacademy. These courses covered Employment Law Awareness, Topical HR Issues & Dealing with Difficult HR Situations. They were really popular, and were designed to empower you through knowledge of the basic principles and to help you identify when to seek further advice.
Our fantastic Marketing Expert, Brontë, made her blog post debut in March. She talked about Marketing Strategy, and shared a very exciting and free social media strategy checklist from our friend Hel Reynolds at Comms Creatives, all based around Tigers(?!)
There was big trade show news in the first part of 2022. NAMM charted the post-pandemic path for The 2023 and 2024 NAMM Shows, and announced that The 2023 NAMM Show would take place on 13th-15th April, with the show returning to its traditional dates in 2024; the 25th-28th of January. Following this news, the MIA published an exclusive video interview between Executive Director, Anthony Short & NAMM’s President & CEO, Joe Lamond. We also brought you the news that The Musikmesse Frankfurt trade fair was to be removed from the companies portfolio of events; it had hit the end of the road.
Our members got busy in March creating a log-in and business profile for the MIA’s new website. We gained the ability to lock-out content, so that all of the good stuff is available only to our members.
In member news… guitarguitar handed the business to its 160 staff and became employee owned. Casio Music UK was recognised with a “Product Excellence Award” for its CT-S1000V, the first vocal synthesiser that can literally turn text into a musical phrase and then “sing” it (pretty cool!). Orange Amplification celebrated their history and released 3 new entertaining and informative videos that explore a time when experts in their field were ‘just doing stuff’ that ‘nobody had thought of’ and they ‘made it kinda work‘.
The quiet modernisation of the MIA really started to gather pace. The MIA Executive Team and our stellar group of Directors and Future Leaders Network shared their work on the most important opportunity our industry should embrace over the next decade – values. Industry peers collectively and collaboratively decided to look up, look out and look long, with the outcomes being shared by Steven Greenall, the Chair of the Board.
For Earth Day, we stopped and thought about changing consumer behaviour. We analysed a really interesting survey run by Deloitte around consumer attitudes to environmental & ethical sustainability. Spoiler alert: 28% of consumers said that they are making positive decisions to avoid certain products, and there could be a fairly seismic shift heading our way…
We launched our regular feature Under the Spotlight, which turned out to be some of our most popular content. It highlights the unique qualities and passions of MIA members and uncovers the personality of your business, and what makes it special. Huge thanks to the 25 companies who took part in 2022.
At this point in the year, depending on who you followed on Twitter, or indeed your connections on LinkedIn, you might have started to see some fairly cryptic posts about the EU Commission and MAP. And if this was the case, you might have been wondering what the hell all the fuss is about. So, we explained what actually happened and how it impacts MI.
After talking to lots of members about the very important changes in the VBER/VBEO guidance that came into force on the 1st June, we knew that it was hugely important (and empowering) for manufacturers and distributors to understand how they can shape their reseller agreements to best support the go-to-market strategy of the brands they represent. That’s where our ‘Make Competition Law work for you, not against you‘ virtual events started to kick in.
Over the last year, the Government launched the Help to Grow scheme to support small and medium-sized businesses as they emerged from the pandemic. This programme was designed to drive growth and job creation through technology and innovation. As well as sharing details on the scheme, we organised a webinar with Laurance Basco who works within BEIS so that you could learn about it directly from Government. The MIA’s General Manager, Alice, actually ended up taking the Help to Grow course, and she’ll tell you more about that in the New Year.
In June, the National Plan for Music Education finally landed. The good news was that the plan included a £25 million capital investment fund for musical instruments and equipment, including those adapted for young people with special needs and disabilities. From the moment it was announced, we’ve been liaising with partners and ultimately, the MIAformed part of the Task & Finish Group, to advise the Department for Education on the planned investment of £25m on behalf of Manufacture, Distribution and Resale.
In July, we launched our Retail Incident Report service. We asked any Retailer that finds themselves on the wrong side of either a significant theft or some form of fraud/scam to take a moment to share the details of the incident with us so we can alert other members and hopefully prevent further instances.
The Future Consumer Index Report was published. This is a document put together for the British Retail Consortium by Ernst & Young and it’s derived from a survey sample of 18,000 consumers across the most developed retail markets in the world. It’s both accessible and engaging, and it’s particularly useful because it paints a picture of what the behaviour of consumers is now, and what it is likely to be over the next 6-12 months. Our Executive Director, Anthony Short, drew out the headlines and published a blog considering the data from the point of view of the MI space.
We held a popular Intellectual Property 101 session, where a top lawyer from our partners at Briffa talked members through trade marks, design rights and copyright – what they do, how they would affect your business and what you can do to improve your IP position.
We announced our TikTok for your MI Business course, run by entrepreneur and winner of Social Media Marketing Awards, Hel Reynolds. This course was tailored exclusively for the MIA, and it taught you what you need to know to make it on TikTok for your brand, helped you work out exactly what kind of content to produce and showed you how to reach a whole new audience on TikTok and promote your music business in a fun and engaging way.
In members news… Focusrite were recognised with a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise. World-renowned piano manufacturer, C. Bechstein brought together some of the North West’s best musical minds for the grand launch of its flagship centre in Manchester’s Northern Quarter and UK-based Ashdown Engineering celebrated 25 years in business and released 3 new products to mark the occasion.
And that wraps up the first half of the year, look out tomorrow for part two…
