School band rentals - we are rocking!

SCHOOL BAND INSTRUMENT rental season is upon us, earlier than usual, and it's been a challenge to get ready this year.

Sheryl, last Friday...

The other music store in town is closing and no longer has instruments to rent or school music books to buy. Sheryl doubled all our school band book and accessory orders this year and we've had an intense few days of sales and figuring out what everybody needs. I picked a bad weekend to bail and work for Gus Macker in Indianapolis, because Sheryl (and Steve Rees on Saturday morning) had her hands full with a ton of people coming in for instruments, supplies and books. She was alone all day Friday and that was a terrible idea. Somehow she makes do and it all turns out OK in the end.

Making things even more challenging is Boyd Music of Jacksonville closing. They issued a rather confusing letter to parents earlier this summer, and just to clarify, Second String Music is NOT closing. We've done our school band instruments through Boyd for a long time and enjoyed a good relationship with them. Now they have sold their instrument rental business to the Music Shoppe, based out of Normal, Ill. It's been a challenge during the transition but we finally got a huge shipment of instruments last week, put them in inventory, and we are ready for the first wave of rentals.

Sheryl told me yesterday afternoon to stick around in the store because it was going to get crazy. I went into the back for two minutes and came back out to five people standing there asking questions about instruments, books and guitars. I opened the store before 10 this morning during the nasty thunderstorm and people were coming in to buy books and get rental info before we officially opened.

We appreciate our loyal customers and we appreciate your patience and support. The biggest thing is parents coming in with confusion about how rentals works, and that's why we are here - we will walk you through it and make it as simple and painless as possible. It will be a challenging five weeks while parents get their childs instrument.

Bear with us, have patience, shop early, let us get your info if needed and get back to you with answers and most of all, help us enjoy this crazy time of year. We are here to help and make the process easy, hopefully.

We are ready for fall, and we are even getting ready for Christmas, believe it or not. Come see us at Fifth and Maine - we are thriving and rocking as usual!