FI V E M INUTE S W ITH
DOUG LADY
Senior Vice President, Hal Leonard By Brian Berk
It is fair to say a lot has changed in the more than five years since we last inter viewed Hal Leonard senior vice president Doug Lady. We kick this inter view off by discussing the last five years, then shift to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hal Leonard’s distribution deals and much more.
The Music & Sound Retailer: We last inter viewed you for this same feature five years ago — September 2015 to be exact. Can you tell us about some of the things you are most proud of at Hal Leonard in these past five years since our previous inter view? Doug Lady: I can’t believe it’s been five years! There are many things we’re proud of at Hal Leonard that we have accomplished since then. We have diversified our offerings with our growth in the distribution of product beyond print, which I can touch on in a minute. But even with our core print product, we have been continuously evolving. Our product-development team has been setting trends in the print music publishing area with cool, hybrid publications featuring unique codes to access accompanying online audio tracks, teaching content and videos. We also completed the acquisition of Music Sales in 2018, the largest European print music publisher at the time, which now has enabled Hal Leonard to become an 800-employee global company. Beyond just the top-line growth, we have been able to bring in even more talented people formerly with Music Sales who are contributing to our collective expansion and creative output. Now with our seven offices throughout Europe, our Hal Leonard Australia office in Melbourne and five offices in the United States, we have built this company of talented, smart and creative people around the world, who are working hard to give people tools to participate in the beauty of music-making!
The Retailer: On a personal and company basis, how difficult has it been handling the COVID-19 pandemic? Lady: Here we go with the understatement of the year: “It’s been challenging in many ways!” But we are working our tails off and pivoting, literally on a daily basis, to take advantage of new opportunities and create different formats of product to respond to musicians’, teachers’ and students’ needs during these challenging times. Although areas like our MI business, our digital and e-commerce areas are doing extremely well, our school music business has been naturally challenged due to the various incarnations of music programs going back to school. Although we have been impacted like almost all companies around the world, we swiftly “reforecasted” our budgets early on in the pandemic. We factored in an immediate downturn followed by gradual recovery through the year. Knocking on wood, we are happy to say that we have surpassed our re-forecast each and every month since we put the plan in place in early March. So, we are hopeful that we will get through this without being impacted too severely. 28
The Retailer: Hal Leonard has inked a plethora of huge distribution deals recently. Can you tell us about them and why they are important for the company? And can you discuss your partnerships for face masks and shields as well? Lady: Happy to! We paused for a few months on kicking off new deals because, frankly, we were just trying to adjust to this new reality and figuring out what the market was going to demand. We felt, even if we signed a new distribution deal, it would be difficult to get much bandwidth with our customers to give it proper kickoff in those early months. However, most recently, we laid off the pause button and resumed some of our pending deals from the beginning of 2020 — one of which is representing an incredible, quality line of cables: the German-made Cordial line. It is one of Europe’s top cable lines but have had little presence in the U.S. until now. We’re very excited about Cordial, as it fills in a much-needed offering in our technology/gear area. We also took on the beautiful, boutique line Michael Kelly Guitars, which is actually part of Samson, one of our most important distribution partners. As far as pandemic-protection product, we have worked with our partner Gibraltar in developing new shields to protect both school music and private music studio students and teachers. In addition, for singers, we are now representing the Singers Mask — which is designed by professional Broadway singers and seamstresses — that protects spread by singers, but does not muffle their singing. And lastly, through our new Gator distribution deal, which we kicked off earlier this year, we are representing [Gator’s] innovative wind instrument bell covers and face masks for horn players. We feel it’s important to help our future music-makers so they can safely make music together whenever possible during these times.
NOVEMBER 2020