Thomann Music, one of the largest music retailers in the world, has been a family business since its founding just over 70 years ago in 1954. Located in the small village of Treppendorf, Germany, the company has grown to become a global leader in the music retail industry, with over 1,800 employees and a thriving online business. In an exclusive interview CEO Hans Thomann shared insights into his journey in the music retail business, the company’s phenomenal growth, the secrets to their customer-centric approach, and his vision for the future.
What is your favourite album of all time and why?
That’s tough to answer. My music tastes could be best described as an all-arounder, so my favourite album will change depending on my mood. I listen to everything from classical to contemporary rock.
How did you get your start in the music retail business?
In 1954, my father founded the music shop that would become today’s Thomann in Treppendorf. That’s part of the village of Brugebach in Bavaria, Germany.
Don’t tell the Labour Standards Office, but I started “working” in the shop when I was just a kid. I really loved working in the shop with my father and with great pride, remember selling my first instrument around the age of seven or eight.
Things got even more interesting for me during my formative years as a teenager and young adult. There was so much innovation in the MI space, with whole new classes of electric instruments, synthesizers, PA gear, and more coming onto the market. What an exciting time to be involved in the industry!
Our shop in Bavaria was far from the big cities. By keeping my fingers on the pulse of both local tastes and industry developments, I had a knack for connecting our customers with the instruments that they loved…I think my late father would agree. In 1990 I took over the company as CEO and I am still doing it today.
How did your background influence your job today and the company overall?
The two key points are: I come from a musical family and also worked for and now lead the family business.
My father’s great passion for music was the prime motivation that led to him start the shop. He had strayed from the path that my grandfather, a farmer, had laid out for him. He worked hard to become a musician, and after finding fulfillment in being a musician first, he then found fulfillment by providing musical instruments to fellow musicians in the region.
Growing up under the strong example that my father set, this passion for music is something that I, along with my brother and sisters inherited. We keep it alive within the family and within the company.
Most people who work at Thomann are musicians; they know what they’re talking about because they truly understand and care for our customers.
Secondly, I believe that when you’re in charge of a family business that makes you profoundly identify with and care about your job. That’s because you’re not a hired hand, you’re continuing a legacy. You see your staff as family and it’s easy to feel responsible for them.
Even when we became a very large business, I always knew it was possible to stay a family company. I never wanted outside investors who would skim the cream of our profits off the top while not having any investment in the industry beyond its financial aspects.
I am proud that three generations of my family work in the company right now and hopefully Thomann family members will be a part of the company forever.
You and your company are legends in the industry, what do you feel is the main reason for that?
We love music. Just like when my father started the company, music is our passion. I truly believe it is as simple as that.
Sure, we sell instruments, but we also know what those instruments and music can truly mean to people. It’s always been more important to us that our customers get the instrument that they really need and which will truly make them happy, rather than the one with the highest profit margin.
We’ve always wanted to be more than just another store, and we’ve done that by providing things like money-back guarantees and unparalleled after-sales service. And we support our customer’s growth by providing online content on all major social media channels and entire web portals devoted to musicians’ concerns and interests.
What do you think has been the single most important technological achievement in our industry?
For us as retailers, this has to be the Internet. Of course, there have been revolutionary developments within instrument categories, and even entirely new classes of instruments or other goods – electronics and software, to name just two. But the one thing that has completely revolutionized the world of retail is “online”. This is how we communicate with the vast majority of our customers; this is where our sales happen. We have a huge team that takes care of every aspect of our online store and social media communications, and our pioneering work in this area is frequently recognized in the industry.
When I took the helm at Thomann, I had the good luck of having a team that was confident that the Internet would offer real advantages for retailers. This was early on, but we were already doing a significant mail-order business, and that put us ahead of our competition as far as imagining how the retail landscape could extend beyond the brick-and-mortar walls of our shop.
We realized that as a small music store in the countryside, we couldn’t rely on customers coming to us, and the only way to grow was to take steps to go out and find them. Our competitors and even some of my friends thought I was certifiably mad when we started sending our “Hot Deals” catalogues to customers. Their belief at the time was “No one is going to buy something as personal as an instrument by mail,” they’d say as much. Well, look at where we are today!
So, the jump into online sales was not as much of a conceptual challenge for us as it was for other retailers. Of course, it was a new sales channel, but we could easily adapt to it by doing what we were already doing in catalogue form.
Luckily, everyone on our marketing and sales team were on the same page, unlike in other retail companies. There were no fights between old-guard traditionalists and “upstarts” and we ran both catalogue and online sales side-by-side for many years.
I’m convinced that the next big thing will be AI, of course, and I am confident that we are in a good position to use it in ways that benefit our customers, too.
What accomplishment are you most proud of?
I am very proud that I have continued and built upon my father’s legacy. The music retail business, of course, has grown to dimensions my father would never have thought possible – and to be honest, I didn’t foresee it in the early 1990s, either. But the Hans Thomann Foundation, which I launched in 2012, is how I most feel I am fulfilling my father’s legacy.
I spoke earlier about my father’s passion for music and how his dreams were not aligned with what his father had in mind for him. My father had to make his way in music with barely any familial support. He scrimped and scrounged to pay for music lessons, instruments…really, everything himself.
Many young people find themselves in similar situations to my father, especially those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds. Many young people don’t even have the chance to encounter the joy that music can make you feel in their kindergartens and schools anymore. The Hans Thomann Foundation supports a wide variety of projects and scholarships that make music accessible to more people, and I think my father would be proud.
Tell us about Thomann’s company culture and your philosophy in leading the team.
In many ways, as we’ve grown, we’ve still managed to keep the virtues of a small company. We’ve always been on a first-name basis at Thomann. To this day, everyone still calls me “Hans”, and they know they can get in touch with me directly if they have an issue. This is quite unusual in Germany, where the professional world is still more formal.
Of course, with the company being so much bigger now – our staff totals about 1,800 – we’ve put in more formal channels of communication with a team of ombudspeople, but I am still available to everyone.
Plus, our hierarchies are still comparatively flat, which improves communication between staff members at every level of the organization and me.
Lastly, we believe that happy employees make for happy customers and that is one of our key principles. To further this end, we provide our people with a range of benefits, such as discounted meals in the on-campus restaurant, a gym, gaming rooms, a quiet zone for break times, a staff kitchen and dining room, and many others. We also put on events including a Summer family day and a legendary Christmas bash.
How is Thomann poised for the future?
This is a very current topic for me. I am getting on in years and I’ve been thinking about how we can ensure that the Thomann spirit will continue even when myself and the others who’ve built the company from the ground up no longer work here.
Step one was to put in place a strong team of executives so that everything doesn’t depend on a single person. To that effect, we introduced a C-level team of executives a few years ago who oversee the general responsibility of large divisions of the business – Operations, Marketing, Logistics, HR, and so on.
Just this year, I’ve set up a foundation that is now essentially the sole owner of Musikhaus Thomann. I’ve transferred almost all of my shares in the company to the foundation. The foundation’s charter specifies that in the future the company must be run along such lines that the spirit of Thomann continues.
What music are you enjoying these days?
As I mentioned, my taste is very broad, but these days I’m finding myself listening to blues and rock more than any other genres.
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