Looking for King-Sized Service in North Carolina’s ‘Queen City’

The gleaming southern city of Charlotte, N.C., is associated more with finance than with music. Even the “shag” style of rhythm-and-blues and dancing owes its origins to the beach culture of the Carolina coast and not to the region’s biggest metro area.

Prosperity has swelled the area’s population to some 2.5 million people. Financial heavyweights continue the strong growth that began here in the 1980s, making the Charlotte area a hot market for both jobs and housing. Bank of America, LendingTree and Wyndham Capital are some of the household names that call North Carolina’s “Queen City” home.

Charlotte boasts a gleaming business district called “Uptown” and a thriving sports, theater and music scene. For more daring music aficionados, several area venues have become destinations in their own right. Earning serious cred among southerners whose tastes veer to the edgy is the Milestone Club, which bills itself as a “bare bones” staple of the rock/punk/ underground rock scene. A tad more mainstream is Charlotte’s Fillmore Club, located just north of Uptown. It is modeled after the venerable San Francisco ballroom of the same name.

But that’s enough from my notes on the agency’s Queen City intelligence briefing. Your trusty MI Spy’s assignment this month was to secure a beginner-level flute. The flute makes a good choice for a mystery shopper because middle-school, high-school and college marching bands are as ubiquitous as football in the south. And for beginners, the flute is a perennial favorite. Flutes also find their way into the music programs of well-endowed — and well-attended — orchestras and megachurches.

In his search, MI Spy learned that Charlotte has one rather unusual retail establishment: an outlet store devoted entirely to the sale of flutes. By chance, this store, as well as the other three retailers covered here, were all in neighborhoods well south of Uptown.

This prompts a cautionary note. While casual shopping in Charlotte can be confined to Uptown or to those neighborhoods served by the X-shaped Lynx light-rail system, you’ll need a car to traverse this sprawling metro. As with so many American cities, its size dwarfs the scope of its public transportation system.

The family-owned Sam Ash music chain was MI Spy’s first stop on this foray into the Charlotte ‘burbs, in part because of its proximity to uptown. It is roughly halfway between Interstate 277, the freeway that rings Charlotte’s inner business district and oldest neighborhoods, and I-285, the outer freeway.

The store is in a well-traveled shopping district right off the Bill Lee Freeway (I-77). That and its mammoth selection makes it a must for parents shopping for any type of musical gear.

Helping to navigate that big selection was a store manager who sadly was clearly suffering from a cold. Sniffles aside, his outline of the selection and the pros and cons of each model was both extensive and useful.

“We sold a lot of flutes when school started but have slowed down,” he noted. He also explained that parents can score the best deals on rentals in late August and early September. Leases are also only available at the start of the school year.

The store’s Jean Baptiste private-label line provides an economical alternative for virtually any beginner instrument, including flutes. At the time MI Spy visited, the store was offering a nice discount of 33 percent off list price on this line.

Among these, the JBFL284 provides the beginner with an excellent balance of durability and ease of use. It offers a silver-plated body and drop-forged silver-plated keys. List prices typically begin in the $500 range, but the store usually offers a hefty discount.

Next up, in order of price, are models by Selmer and Gemeinhardt, with store discounts of 21 percent and 51 percent off list prices, thus making them sell for $379 and $479, respectively. And among this store’s best sellers is the Yamaha YFL-222, which at $549 is 43 percent off list price.

“All of these should last through the middle-school years and possibly into high school as well,” the manager said. “By that point they might really, really like playing the flute and be looking to purchase a higherend instrument.”

At that point, he added, students would be able to select more ease-of-use features as well as ones giving them more control over sound quality.

A short drive from Sam Ash is a Charlotte institution, 69-year-old Howren Music and Sound. It is located in a large shopping center, close to a Harris Teeter, Charlotte’s popular supermarket chain. It’s also just west of the city’s wealthy Myers Park neighborhood.

Situated right off busy Park Road, Howren is relatively easy to find and has a distinctly local flavor. Much of the signage in the window is hand-drawn and hand-lettered, and there are student artworks as well. Inside you’ll find a wide range of instruments, with a heavy accent on student band instruments.

For this set of visits, MI Spy embroidered his usual spiel. To the Howren’s rep, he pretended to be shopping for a sibling moving from another state, with a middle schooler in tow.

The salesman who greeted MI Spy assured him that the store’s longstanding reputation has made it a favorite among middle and high school band directors.

“We are the last family-owned musical instrument store in Mecklenburg County,” he said. “We have an excellent reputation because of the service we provide to our customers.”

The salesperson quickly steered MI Spy to the store’s rent-to-own plan, in which all rental payments are applied to the eventual purchase of an instrument. Payments begin at $28 per month.

“The brands we carry for flutes are Armstrong, Eastman and Jupiter,” he said. Of these, Armstrong is produced domestically and is the store’s most popular flute for rent or sale. For purchase, the Armstrong 102 retails for $1,014.

The Eastman and Jupiter models tend to be lower in price, he noted. An Eastman EFL-210CS student model is listed at $910 on the store’s website, for example.

“Usually, we will have used Eastman models in the $550 range, but we don’t have any at the moment,” he said.

Serious flautists benefit from two other features of this establishment. The Charlotte store has a resident woodwinds instructor, in case a student requires private lessons. In addition, Howren’s has a second store in Gastonia, a town about 10 miles west of Charlotte’s airport in the western suburbs.

Lengthy Providence Road winds pleasantly through the southern reaches of suburban Charlotte, past several public and private high schools, large churches, several equally large synagogues and an assortment of upscale shopping centers. Everything is designed to complement the area’s forests and hills, and the shopping centers are abundantly landscaped and attractive.

That setting made finding the south suburban Music and Arts outlet a bit difficult. It is set in a large open-air complex called The Shoppes at Providence, where the roads run at odd angles to one another. What MI Spy thought was the front of a row of shops was suddenly its back, causing him to make a lot of circular turns and U-turns.

Once MI Spy got to the destination, he found a somewhat small but busy store with numerous customers, in spite of arriving a mere 20 minutes prior to closing, an excellent sign for business. The enthusiastic person who greeted MI Spy was, warm and helpful.

“When parents come looking for a beginner flute, they typically choose a lease over a purchase,” said the youthful salesperson. “With younger kids that is especially important because they often change their minds. Additionally, a purchase doesn’t give you the option of upgrading as easily as you would with a rental.”

Leasing an entry-level flute costs $38 a month and provides the parent with a choice among instruments made by Yamaha, Jupiter, Armstrong and Gemeinhardt.

This chain’s rental programs are ongoing and linked with the musical needs of area schools, something that makes this an attractive option. “The price also includes repairs if the instrument is damaged,” he said.

The downside to this is that buying an instrument is apt to be pricier than at other music stores. Moreover, Music and Arts’ lowest-priced instruments are apt to be used ones. Here, the Yamaha YFW-222 goes for $615 while the Jupiter CF-500 will run $548. If you lease a flute and act early enough in the term, you might get some of the cost applied to the purchase price.

Protection plans add another $69 or $129 to that, should you wish to have a one-year or two-year plan, respectively.

For serious flautists and beginners alike, JL Smith & Co. is a must-see, must-shop destination. It’s less of a store than a company: It occupies a suite in a business park a few miles south of Uptown, close to I-77. JL Smith operates one other outlet like it, in Detroit. The company began in 1981 as a band-instrument repair business and soon thereafter began selling brass and woodwind instruments. It opened the flute store in Charlotte in 1995.

Because it is in a business park rather than a retail area, the store is a bit difficult to find. The business park is located off of busy Blairhill Road, and the park features multiple “courts.” Each of these dead-end courts contains small, regional offices of larger enterprises, and each court has perhaps a dozen or so businesses occupying it.

JL Smith is the only retailer on its block. You have to hunt a bit because signage is subtle. The location only offers flutes. Venture inside and you’ll hear, appropriately enough, the soft playing of flutes in the background.

Upon entering the space, I was immediately greeted by a friendly staff person. Walk-ins are welcome, but the store’s staff encourages you to make an appointment.

“We like appointments because we can have the right instruments on hand to let the customer see and try out,” said the salesperson. Store hours are from Monday through Friday. The store is closed on weekends, but Saturday appointments can be arranged.

“We carry everything from beginners’ flutes to advanced and gold-plated models,” the salesperson said. A good flute for a beginner can be had for anywhere from $400 to $700.

“That said, our most popular flute is the Yamaha 221,” the salesperson added. “We sell it for $695, though you’ll often see it for much more than that. It is listed at $981.”

JL Smith offers a try-beforeyou-buy program for a nominal fee of $20 per trial. Other popular lines for beginners include models by Jupiter, Pearl and Gemeinhardt. As was the firm’s original specialty, the company offers a full range of support and repair services.

There were more than a dozen retailers selling flutes in the Charlotte metropolitan area. The MI Spy chose these four because they provided a good mix of both chains and local retailers, and because they were all concentrated in the south end of the city.

All four were staffed by knowledgeable personnel who were all friendly to a fault, which might be expected given the south’s reputation for hospitality. What’s more, JL Smith and Howren Music and Sound can best be described as the kind of local gems that are disappearing way too quickly from the national landscape.

MI Spy liked the attentive service — and the extended hours — he encountered at Music and Arts. Yet shoppers who don’t live nearby might be daunted by its location far from the city center, as well the confounding layout of the shopping center.

At Sam Ash, MI Spy was impressed with the salesperson’s attentiveness and knowledge. What’s more, in a world where a bad night’s sleep or an attack of allergies often prompts the best of workers to call in sick, he was there, late in the evening, while under the weather.

All things considered, MI Spy considered Sam Ash the winner this month, though the other three were far from slouches.

The long and short of this is that, should a parent require a durable, easy-to-use flute for a 13, 14 or 15 year old, the southern suburbs of Charlotte are a great place to shop.