Clients
And
a little history about us...
It
all started back in 1999. I had been trying to start a new company in
the music business which would have included a demo recording studio,
some rehearsal studios, and CD duplication... a little bit of everything.
While I was researching some CD duplication companies, I had contacted
a local company called ON4 Productions to get some pricing information
from them. After getting the information I needed, I held on to their
number so that I could contact them at a later date and work up some business
between ON4 and my new business (once it was up and running).
After
a year of trying to find a reliable business partner and hitting one dead-end
after another, I was getting nowhere fast and I decided to put the whole
idea on hold. I had contacted the primary owner of ON4 to let him know
that I was putting my plans on the backburner for a bit, but the phone
call had taken a turn... a good turn. We started to discuss the possibility
of me getting on board as a sales rep for ON4, and within a month, I was
brought in as the new Sales Manager.
Due
to the fact that I had been in the music business for several years prior,
I had a lot of contacts in the industry, which enabled me to hit the ground
running and immediately bring in some business. Over the course of the
next couple of years, ON4 saw a huge increase in business, mostly due
to my previous connections in the industry as well as some connections
that I had acquired through some major networking within the Atlanta and
Nashville music communities. During this time, I had the privilege of
working with some amazing unsigned bands and independent artists, and
also worked with some of the biggest names in the music business. I would
like to take this opportunity to mention a handful of them...
Everything
was looking good for a while, but 9/11 came along. We didn't feel an immediate
impact in business immediately after 9/11, but the ripple effect finally
hit us about a year or so later. Business began to slide and it seemed
as if there was nothing we could do to stop it. The economy had basically
experienced a year-long nosedive, and people weren't so eager to place
CD orders like before. We were trying everything we could think of to
keep business up, but nobody was biting.
In 2003,
I was trying to figure out a way to get our business on the upswing again,
and I came up with the idea to start an online music community which could
be used to cross-promote with ON4. The side business was going to be owned
and operated by me, hopefully resulting in a better bottom-line for ON4's
clients as well as ON4. After thinking about what could best serve the
clients at ON4, the concept I ultimately decided on was a promotional
website for bands where they can upload their music, pictures, a bio,
etc. I started to do some research and found out that I wasn't the only
person to come up with this idea. As it turns out, there were several
websites that had a similar business model (MySpace was just a blip on
the radar at this point) and they basically offered the same thing I was
going to offer. But I thought that it was still a good idea, and bands
can never get enough promotion, so I decided to go forward with the concept.
Second Encore Promotions was created.
I hired a
local web company to build the site from scratch, which was to include
features such as artist profiles, a Featured Artist section, a Spotlight
section, and an interactive voting system. I wanted it to stand out from
the rest of the promotional websites out there, and I felt like I was
on the right track, but it was going to take a while to build it the way
it needed to be built. During the months it took to build the site, ON4's
overall business continued to drop due to the sluggish economy and fierce
competition, so the owners at ON4 decided to merge with another replication
company, which was somewhat of a "sister" company to us. The
problem I had about this merger (I had no control in their ridiculous
decision...) was that the new owners of ON4 couldn't have cared less about
the independent music scene and didn't support the music community like
ON4 had always done. The new powers-that-be were more interested in corporate
accounts rather than local bands, and from that point on, I realized that
it wasn't a good fit for me anymore. There's nothing wrong with going
for the bigger guns, but that's not why I got into this business. In one
way or another, I had been involved with the independent music scene for
nearly fifteen years, and I wasn't about to give that up anytime soon.
So from that point on, I focused more on Second Encore to continue to
stay involved in the independent music community.
Second Encore
Promotions' website finally launched in April 2004, and it was off to
a great start. I was getting thousands of hits every day and bands were
signing up left and right. I was getting great feedback from the bands
on the site as well as their fans, family, and friends. Things were looking
good again. But by the beginning of 2005, I noticed that bands weren't
signing up to the site like they used to, due in part to MySpace (which
was basically nothing when I launched my site). I still had a lot of features
that MySpace didn't offer, but at the end of the day, MySpace's popularity
was exploding and all I could do was hope that the bands out there would
still use Second Encore as another avenue to promote themselves. I should
also point out that ON4 was merely a memory at this point. As it turns
out, the office in Atlanta had closed down, and the previous owners of
ON4 (who had made the decision to merge in the first place) no longer
worked for the new parent company. (Way to go, guys.)
For the next
year or so, I continued to watch MySpace's popularity grow substantially,
and it was an uphill battle (to say the least) to compete with that popularity.
So in late 2006, I decided that I needed to reinvent the wheel at Second
Encore and come up with a new business model. Reluctantly, I went ahead
and shut down the site so I could focus more on the future of Second Encore
rather than deal with the day-to-day operations. I knew that I wanted
to stay in the independent music scene, and I knew that I wanted to keep
the Second Encore name, but I wasn't too sure what I was going to do yet.
About a month
or so later, it occured to me that even though I had been out of the CD
replication business for nearly three years, I was still getting phone
calls and emails from local bands asking for a recommendation as to where
they can get there CDs pressed up. Due to the fact that I was usually
the guy at ON4 that did most of the networking, I guess people considered
me the "face" of ON4 and CD replication, so maybe that's why
they contacted me. Anyway, about two months of getting these types of
"referral" calls, I was talking to Bill Chavis (owner of Chavis
Records, who was a former client of mine at ON4), and it hit me like a
ton of bricks to possibly get back into the replicaton business. I had
the contacts, I knew the business inside and out, and Bill's immediate
support of the idea (Thanks Bill!) got me thinking that it might be possible
(and maybe even a great idea) to get back into the CD business, so I looked
into it.
But to
be competitive, I was going to have to find some vendors with extremely
low prices and the best quality available. Fortunately for me (and for
Second Encore clients), I was not only able to negotiate incredible prices
through my vendors, but all of my CDs and DVDs were also going to be replicated
through Sony. It doesn't get much better than that, so I immediately built
a new website and changed the name from Second Encore Promotions to Second
Encore Productions.
In late 2006,
I officially re-launched Second Encore as a CD replication/band merchandise
company, and I began to spread the word that I was back in in the replication
business again. In just a few short months, we have been able to get involved
with some sponsorships and work with some very cool clients, some of which
are listed here...
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