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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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25 years ago, Loudspeakers Plus found a unique niche for themselves, supplying music dealers all over the U.S. with loudspeaker components. At the time, there were few outlets for dealers to buy replacement and repair parts, and often major manufacturers would not stock these items. Loudspeakers Plus became the “one-stop shop” that supported all the major loudspeaker brands so dealers could quickly and easily solve customer repair and replacement issues. Today, Loudspeakers Plus stocks over 95% of the speakers, high-frequency drivers, replacement parts, and components for virtually any major manufacturer that matters.

Founder and CEO Jay Peabody says that their formula for success is simple “Give every customer the right product at the right price.” And his team’s dedication and years of experience ensure they will get exactly what they need when they need it. We spoke with Jay about the origins of Loudspeakers Plus, the importance of providing great customer service, his thoughts about advances in the speaker industry, and more.

What is your favorite album of all time and why?
That’s tough, I don’t think I could pick just one. My parents exposed me to a lot of different kinds of music. Before I was 10 years old, I had seen concerts by the Monkeys, Johnny Cash, and Andres Segovia. It was an amazing, wide range of music. As I was coming of age in the 70s, I gravitated towards heavier music like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and Rush. But if I have to pick one, it would probably be Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy.
Great choice. Now, what first got you started in the audio industry?
I took kind of a convoluted path. When I left college, I had a degree in mass communications. I started working for my father’s promotional tech writing agency. I was writing copy and supervising product photography and things like that, but at the same time, I was an aspiring professional musician. I played bass guitar and sang background vocals. So, I was also a touring and recording artist for a few years. After some time, I realized that playing music probably wasn’t going to turn out the way I wanted it. My dad had a client in the music industry, and I started working for them. They made microphone connectors of all things. That snowballed into getting into the speaker business, and in 1999, I started my own company.

Was that Loudspeakers Plus? Can you tell us more about how it started?
Yes, it was. When I started with this other company, I moved up in the ranks and then I moved to another company and became a general manager, but the corporate thing didn’t work well for my personality, so I decided to do my own thing and just focus on speaker products. I took a chance with my savings and it seems to have turned out pretty well…at least I’ve been happy with it. Now we’ve been in business for 25 years. I must be doing something right. [Laughs]

Tell us about Loudspeakers Plus? We’d like to hear about both your business and the customers that you serve.
If you’re a speaker designer or small speaker builder, if you’re an artist or a musician, if you‘re a DJ or a PA company, or working on club, school, or corporate installs Loudspeakers Plus will not only provide you the original speaker parts that you need to design or build something, but also help replace and service them to get up and running fast. If we can’t help you, we’ll direct you to who you need to speak with.

It doesn’t matter what brand, people call us every day for help with JBL, EV, Mackie, and EAW products, to name a few. Those companies are great but contacting them is not the most efficient way for a customer to get support when all they need to do is replace one speaker driver. That’s where we step in. Basically, much of our business is supporting products that are out there to keep them going so customers don’t have to just throw them away when a part is damaged.
We don’t just do one-offs though; we’ll sell up to 50-70 speakers at a time. That’s the range where we operate.

How do you feel your background influenced your decision to do this, and how does your background influence the company overall?
Product-wise, I already understood what I was selling because they were the products that I used as a musician, speakers, so that was a no-brainer. One side of the business is understanding what it is that you’re selling. The other side is the attitude of how you approach people. Partnering with them and helping them solve problems has turned out to be the most successful part of our business. Over time we develop relationships where people can really count on us.

There’s no substitute for great customer service.
Yes, but it’s the kind of thing that you don’t see as often as you used to, especially with large corporations. As we go into the digital age, we’re less likely to connect human to human and engage with each other. Hopefully, as we continue to move forward, we’ll go back in the direction where we did have that more personal connection.
Where we’re a small business, when you call Loudspeakers Plus, you’re not talking to an endless phone tree or automated people who just push numbers, take orders, read from a script, and don’t know what they’re talking about. If I need something to help a customer, I can go back to the warehouse to find what they need or to the shipping department to send them what they need. I’ve done that from the beginning, so I know every aspect of the business. In fact, everyone in our company can be consulted to a point and do other things, outside of their job description to help customers, whatever it takes.

You and your company are well-known and well-respected in the industry. In your viewpoint, what’s the main reason for that?
In our small industry, word gets around and reputation is everything. If you talk to our customers, they’ll tell you that we help them, provide answers, give them advice, and solve problems quickly. We’ve done a great job of that, and I think our longevity reflects it.

What would you say the most important technological advancement has been in our industry?
There have been so many advancements, and it seems every few years those things are trumped by something better. I never thought I’d see wireless technology get to the point that it’s at as quickly as it has. I’m not just talking about wireless itself, but the integration of high-definition audio and acoustics with wireless technology. That doesn’t affect speakers as much as it does performance and musical instruments.We deal primarily with speaker components and it’s interesting to see their evolution over the past 150 years or so since the first speaker was built. The basic physics of speakers hasn’t changed much, but the technology and materials, and the understanding of acoustics and acoustic design have changed considerably. Those advancements have made speakers basically unrecognizable from products even 20 or 30 years ago, let alone 100 years ago.
So, the most significant innovations on the speaker side of the business have been in the acoustic design of speaker cabinets. Also using advanced materials like neodymium magnets which provide high power while being very lightweight. Those in my opinion, are the big innovations.

What is the accomplishment that you are most proud of?
Our customers trust and respect us. I take great pride in that because we’ve built relationships where people can rely on us. I’m not just talking about when they need something in an emergency. Of course, we come through for them in those moments, but I’m also talking about the day-to-day when they are planning their business. Whether they’re doing a club install or getting a back line ready for a tour, they know who to call.
Can you tell me about your company culture and your philosophy for leading the team?
My philosophy is when someone asks you if you can do something, you’ll say ‘Yes, I can do it.’ If you can’t do it personally, you’ll talk to another team member, and they’ll help you. As a small business, we cross-train and can do much of each other’s jobs. Everyone here at Loudspeakers Plus can make a product recommendation or ship a box. Our customers count on that. It’s just whatever it takes for the customer at the time.

How are you poised for the future?
That’s a tough one. I never would have thought or predicted what we see today, even 10 years ago. We started the business in 1999, and things have changed in the world for everyone, in every aspect, not just our industry.

We think as a small business, our resiliency and ability to pivot and do things is how we are poised for the future. I’d like to think that we have an advantage over larger companies because it’s hard to stop a loaded train when it’s moving fast. But if you’re in a sports car, you can stop quickly and turn if you need to. That’s kind of a weird analogy, but the big players in our industry try to plan years in advance, and put so much energy into their focus on innovations. Because of that, they simply can’t switch and pivot like a small company like us. When the changes come, we can change quickly with them.
There’s no doubt that the customer relationships that we’ve built also have us prepared us for the future. One of the most important ways we grow our business is by referral. I can’t tell you how many phone calls we get every week that start with “I talked to someone and they said you could help…” In most cases, this starts a relationship that we’ll have for years to come.

What music are you listening to these days?
My musical tastes have matured in a lot of ways since I was playing bass in a metal band. I’ll listen to Eminem. I’ll listen to Megadeth. I’ll listen to yacht rock. I’ll listen to Paganini, and jazz, too. I’ve been listening to Charlie Parker and I’m reading a biography on him right now. I’ll even listen to house music. It runs the gamut.
Is there anything else you want to add?
I’ve had a long and wonderful relationship with Celestion and I have to say the whole 100th anniversary celebration with them at NAMM was just a total success. It was fantastic to get together with everybody and that night it wasn’t about business. We’ve already done the work to be successful and it was just about celebrating how we got to where we are through working together. My wife was with me, and it was such a feel-good thing. It’s one of those times I’ll think back on and fondly remember.

On the occasion of our 100^th anniversary, A Century of Sound: The Story of Celestion is a detailed and engrossing history that tells how Celestion grew from a company building radiograms in a tiny factory in South-West London to become the internationally renowned loudspeaker brand it is today.

Covering 226 pages, this hard backed volume is packed with photographs, illustrations and marketing materials that bring to life a journey spanning the advent of radio broadcasting through to the emergence of guitar speaker digital impulse responses, taking in the pivotal roles that Celestion has played in early home entertainment, the invention of speakers specifically for the guitar amplifier, the early days of pro PA systems, the golden age of home HiFi and the development of high-performance sound reinforcement.

Written by our own John Paice with contributions from Jerry Gilbert and long-term Celestion aficionado and guitar legend Brian May, A Century of Sound: The Story of Celestion is a must-read for all fans of audio technology and offers much to a wider audience interested in 20^th Century British social history, and the many twists and turns that occur along the way to attaining global brand recognition.

A Century of Sound: The Story of Celestion is available to buy now from selected on-line retailers.

Click here for a full list.

(Pickering, ON) — Canada’s Yorkville Sound has come a long way since its beginnings in the back room of the original Long & McQuade music store in downtown Toronto where, in 1963, co-founder Peter Traynor built the now-iconic Traynor DynaBass bass amplifier as a rugged, reliable alternative to the models of the day.

Today, Yorkville Sound designs and manufactures a full line of professional PA systems and loudspeakers, instrument amplifiers, installed audio systems, studio tools, microphones, and accessories under its Apex, Traynor, and Applied Research, and Technology (ART) brands, with 220 employees at the company’s 150,000-square-foot facility in Pickering, Ontario.

A leader in instrument amplification and a pioneer in loudspeaker horn and cabinet innovation, Yorkville Sound also distributes dozens of iconic pro audio and MI brands including Gibson, Epiphone, Ernie Ball Universal Audio, and Manley for Canada, and HK Audio and Hughes & Kettner for North America.

In a remarkable career spanning 36 years, Yorkville Sound VP of Internal Affairs Brian Weafer has played a key role in propelling the company forward. His background as a musician and engineer, complemented by his dedication to championing a close-knit corporate ethos that puts the needs of musicians first, has been pivotal in shaping the company’s path.

We sat down with Weafer to gain his insights into music, Yorkville’s trajectory, and the ever-evolving industry landscape.

What is your favorite album of all time, and why?

The two greatest influences for me are Todd Rundgren and Joni Mitchell.

For Todd Rundgren, it’s always going to be Something, Anything. All the songs were so good. He played all the parts himself, he recorded it all himself. It was one of the very first of those kinds of albums, like Prince did and Stevie Wonder used to do.

For Joni Mitchell, it’s Hissing of Summer Lawns. First of all, Joni Mitchell is Canadian. She used to perform in a street called Yorkville in Toronto; it was the Haight-Ashbury, hippie neighborhood. The original music store for Long & McQuade—which we’re all part of the same company—was on Yonge Street, right at that corner of Yonge and Yorkville. Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, all these people used to hang out on that street and play for nothing in those days.

When our founders, Pete Traynor and Jack Long, started the company, they went outside and looked at the street sign, it said “Yorkville,” so they called it Yorkville.

What got you interested in music and audio?

I was a jack of all trades when I was young. I played trumpet, French horn, guitar, lots of different instruments. I built my first guitar amp when I was 13 with my dad because we couldn’t afford to buy one. And you know where my dad got the schematic for the amp? From Pete Traynor, the guy who started Yorkville with Jack.

How did you get your start in the industry, and with Yorkville?

Well, I played guitar from a young age, but I also studied as an electrician. I was a quality-control tech for a big wire company. And then I was a touring musician for 10 years. When I came off the road, I saw a job in the newspaper that said that a company was looking for somebody to test guitar amps and things like that. So, I joined, and it was a good fit.

What’s your current position and how did you get there?

Within a very short time of getting the job, they asked me to go into purchasing. And then a short time after that, they asked me to be the warehouse manager, then the purchasing manager. Then I was a vice president of this and that. It didn’t take me very long to move up. Now I’m Vice President of Internal Affairs.

How did your background influence the job you do now, and the company overall?

I was a musician; I had the quality control background. I had an electronics background; I had a computer background when nobody even knew what a computer was. When I was on the road, I studied computer science at a correspondence university. I was building my own gear, tinkering, all those things. I think that tinkering and doing things yourself is what makes good companies into good companies

In the music business, for equipment to tour and be used in these harsh environments, you have to build it almost from the ground up yourself in order to maintain the quality at every level that can withstand the rigors of the road. Because everybody will tell you that it’s okay for somebody’s stereo to have a particular circuit board, but that would not last in a guitar amp, because it’ll just vibrate to death; or in a PA cabinet, where it will just break apart. So, the company has always been quality-minded from day one.

Yorkville is legendary in the industry. In your viewpoint, what’s the main reason for that?

I think we fought tooth and nail to stay true to the vertical integration, all in one building. To this day, everything is made in the building. The metal and wood are brought in and made into things. The electronics are all built in the building. The designers are in the building. It’s been that way since day one. There’s such a push to keep it that way, to keep Canadian people at their jobs.

It’s a culture. And it is very family. I always tell people, we’re an international company who’s managed to maintain that sort of early ’70s culture. That’s hard to do because you’ve still got to compete.

What product do you consider your company’s most innovative?

Yorkville innovated a lot of things over the years. The wedge monitor was kind of invented by Yorkville. Affordable, powered compact mixers. And then Bass Master amps. We had converted Fender-style amps, changed the front end a bit so that they would handle a bass guitar signal.

What do you think is the single most important technological achievement in the industry?

It’s very hard to say what the most defining thing in our industry has been. I think people would say the invention of powered speaker cabinets has been a pretty big thing. And Bluetooth, obviously.

There’s always been a great amalgamation between consumer and high-end consumer products that merge into pro sound, and vice versa. If you had asked me a long time ago if Bluetooth would ever be part of pro sound, I would’ve said no, because why? But then consumers were using sound products for their house parties. And they wanted to be able to run their Bluetooth through their little speakers, like they do their stereo. So, lots of companies started adding all these features, and eventually there’s a merger between what’s considered consumer electronics and what’s considered a pro PA now.

What is the accomplishment that you’re most proud of?

Oh, it’s all the friends I made here over the years, for sure. It’s like family.

Tell us a little about your company culture and your philosophy in leading the team.

I don’t think you’ll find anybody in management in this corporation—and it’s big, now—who hasn’t had some background in music performance.

Some people have had a career at Yorkville for 45 years. The mentality today is that people don’t realize that it is possible to have a forever job. You can have a job that pays you every single week for 45 years, and you can get married, raise kids, buy your house, and put your money away, knowing that that’s there for you. It’s like being in the same band for 40 years. Like the Rolling Stones.

How is your company poised for the future?

We’re not super mega-rich when it comes to investing in things because we’re always about sustainable growth. We’re still big believers in brick and mortar; we support our music stores, and now we’re up to about 100 music stores, so the business grows hand in hand, and it’s quite sustainable.

I’m sure everybody benefits from e-commerce. But in the end, you wouldn’t want to buy a multi-thousand-dollar guitar without sitting down in a store and playing “Stairway to Heaven,” you know? It’s a hands-on, tactile industry.

What music do you enjoy these days?

I still play guitar; I’ve recently switched over to swing jazz and finger-style jazz. My line has been, I used to play three chords for 3,000 people. Now I play 3,000 chords for three people.

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