Experience Matters Tuesday, September 29, 2009
There is a billboard up near Cleveland for an insurance company that reads in bold letters, EXPERIENCE MATTERS. That not only applies to insurance companies, but to music stores as well. Stanton’s Sheet Music will have been in the business for 50 years as of July, 2010. Staff members have come and gone over the years, but many have stuck around for quite a while and they all contribute to the experience of the whole staff in some way or another. One of Stanton’s original staff members still works here on a part time basis, several others have been here over 30 years and the knowledge passed down from one employee to the next over the years is invaluable. As new employees are trained, they learn the way things have worked well for years, and often contribute new ideas to improve the process, which are then adopted and taught to the next generation of workers.
As held true with former employees, several of our current staff are former school music teachers, many are currently teaching music privately and several are active in vocal and instrumental ensembles large and small away from Stanton’s; they bring all that experience to the business. Also, the whole present sales staff of nearly twenty people consists of college-trained musicians, and several have advanced degrees. Even the majority of people in our bookkeeping, shipping and receiving departments are musicians.  That’s a lot of experience!
Our way of picking music to recommend to our customers is dependent upon the accumulated experience of the sales staff. Every year, they read through the hundreds of new titles that the publishers send to the store, and –relying on their musical expertise and experience in knowing what has sold well in the past– they pick the absolute cream of the crop of the choral, handbell, general music, marching band, concert band, jazz band and orchestra titles to recommend to Stanton’s customers. The experience of our staff is a commodity that our customers can count on. The music that we recommend will be the best sounding, most highly programmable and most educationally valid sheet music that is available. That’s something we think you should know. Yes, EXPERIENCE MATTERS.